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RAKIM From Long Island, New York
I haven’t heard much from him lately It’s true, the man credited as the most technically brilliant rapper of his generation, has kept a low profile since the 1987 high of his Paid In Full album, produced with DJ Eric B. Since then he’s been collecting plaudits from the next generation of hip hop stars, playing games with his three sons and one daughter (‘basketball, baseball, football . . . you name it’) and . . . exploring the possibility that the world might end in 2012. It is a worry According to Rakim, the signs are all there. ‘With so much prophesy it would be wrong to sit back and say, “It’s just going to be another day.”’ The end will be accompanied by a total eclipse and what he describes as, ‘some problems with gravity.’
Have years of acclaim thrown him off balance? Probably not. ‘I’m a modest cat,’ he claims, believably. ‘It’s amazing just to be mentioned in the same breath as some of those artists who made hip hop what it is.’
Yes, I remember: Tribe, De La, Grandmaster Flash . . . Well, you don’t, but Rakim does. ‘De La Soul, I grew up close to them. I was in Wyandanch, they were in Amityville. So we go back.’
Hip hop’s changed a lot since then . . . ‘No doubt,’ he agrees, but he’s got a solution: ‘You’ve got to ask yourself, “what would [legendary b-boy DJ] Kool Herc do?” It’s like, “What would Jesus do?” The ones breaking the rules, they know who they are. There’s money to be made in this business, but it’s not everything.’ What’ll be the big songs on the night? For the purist it’ll be all about the cuts from Paid In Full. In it Eric B set a trend for plundering James Brown’s back catalogue for dancefloor-friendly samples. Coupled with Rakim’s effortlessly smooth flow, it’s a record for the ages – particularly the title track. ‘I don’t even have to rap that one,’ Rakim says. ‘The crowd do all the work for me.’ (Jonny Ensall) ■ The Arches, Glasgow, Mon 9 May, with DJ Naeem and guests.
72 THE LIST 28 Apr–26 May 2011
ALT-COUNTRY/ LO-FI ROCK BILL CALLAHAN Glasgow School of Art, Sat 7 May
Bill Callahan is in his woodshed. Nature is tormenting him. ‘There are some annoying wind chimes, chiming in the wind,’ he grumbles. ‘Some birds are trying too hard.’ And how is our lusty troubadour, formerly known as
Smog, on this glorious spring day? ‘I’m still trying to figure that out,’ he replies. ‘It’s early. Stop yelling.’ The List would like to repudiate, once and for all, those rumours of Callahan being curmudgeonly. Any man who calls his new album Apocalypse and enlightens it with honey bees, cowboy romance and gardening analogies must surely be tender of sentiment.
And lest we forget, our Maryland protagonist has
whiled away the last two decades breaking and mending our fragile hearts with his exquisite, down- home alt-country odes. (Have you heard ‘Rock Bottom Riser’ of late? Case in point).
Callahan’s Apocalypse conjures swarthy herdsmen and rodeo sundowns. ‘Yeah, I think the opening song, “Drover”, is kind of colouring people’s feelings that it’s a Western record,’ he offers.
One can’t help but project such cowboy imagery directly onto Callahan, as we hear him croon about cattle and land; as woodwind and violins canter around him. Is he an accomplished buckaroo? ‘I’ve been riding since I was a kid,’ he nods. ‘My aunt and uncle had a small ranch in Montana and an old horse named Rocky that I learned on. It was really old and would just stand still, which was nice.’
What does our burnished-rock wrangler make of Scotland? ‘Lots of good,’ he says. ‘I went up to the Highlands and saw things I’ll never see again anywhere.
‘Good people, the Scots,’ concludes our lovable bard. ‘I remember the first time I heard someone say “wee”. I was ordering an espresso at the time. You don’t forget your first wee.’ (Nicola Meighan) ■ Apocalypse (Drag City) is out now.
PSYCH-ROCK/ DRONE MOON DUO Captains Rest, Glasgow, Sat 14 May Fans of their droney psych-rock should probably thank the boss who, two years back, told Eric ‘Ripley’ Johnson his services were no longer required. ‘It was one of those things where I didn’t like my job, but didn’t have the
courage to just quit,’ Johnson tells The List, from a car headed south, somewhere between San Francisco and LA. ‘Getting laid off forced me to reassess things. It made me
decide to take that jump.’ So, Johnson, part-time guitarist with fuzzy, motorik rockers Wooden Shjips, suddenly minus a day-job, found time on his hands to dedicate to his other side-project – making beautifully spacey, rolling, krautrock rhythms with his girlfriend Sanae Yamada. ‘I don’t like to over-intellectualise what we do,’ Johnson
says, ‘I mean, I think of us as a rock‘n’roll band. But I guess the music we make ties in with our Buddhist beliefs.’ Johnson, a soft-spoken Californian with a salt-and-pepper beard, recently relocated from San Francisco to a ‘very remote’ place in the Rockies, Colorado and meditates daily. ‘Meditation is about quieting your mind, and picking up on very subtle things. I guess that’s why I respond strongly to very minimal music, very slow, repetitive stuff – Terry Riley, Philip Glass, La Monte Young.’
With Wooden Shjips (who have a fan in director Jim
Jarmusch; he asked them to play last year’s ATP festival in New York) due to release another album in autumn, a European tour with Moon Duo, and plans to write another record with Yamada, Johnson gives redundancy a good name. ‘Things have sort of taken on a life of their own. Multiple
times a day, even when bad stuff is happening on tour, and things are breaking, or getting lost or whatever – I think, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing right now.’ (Claire Sawers) ■ Mazes (Souterrain Transmissions) is out now.