Darc Mind / Symptomatic Of A Greater Ill

Anticon

Recorded between ’95 and ’97 for Loud/RCA (before Loud’s ignoble fall from grace), Darc Mind’s Symptomatic Of A Greater Ill is almost without comparison in the history of NY rap. Songs on this album, “Visions a Blur” chief among them, sound as if they arrived from another planet. Inevitably, critics will struggle to figure out how Darc Mind fits into anticon’s larger oeuvre. If less for the sake of accuracy than to discourage aimless pondering, anticon suggests that, number one, it doesn’t, and number two, they’re profoundly grateful to be releasing this record. Kevroc, the vocal half of Darc Mind, possesses a unique sense of timing and nearly instrumental phrasing. Delivered in a low, Moses-fresh-from-the-mountaintop rumble, his rhymes are densely packed with strange imagery. Skimming the album’s lyrics, it’s easy to detect the sea change occurring ten years ago in hip-hop: the transition from “Illmatic” to “It Was Written;” the ascendancy of Biggie and Jigga; a new affection for name-checking luxury brands; and r’n’b hooks creeping from the shadows into pop-rap ubiquity.  And the beats, oh, the beats. Like DITC in their prime, DJ and producer GM Webb D (aka X-Ray) unpacks a treasure chest of horns and keys, ruggedly reworking the choice bits with full-bodied basslines and chopped drum breaks. Between the fractured, unsettling “I’m Ill” and the horn-stab-and-drum-machine-driven “Fever Pitch,” rap’s history and its future are willfully crosscut and interlaced. Had Symptomatic Of A Greater Ill been released in ’97 as planned, it could have affected the orbit of mid-to-late ’90s hip-hop. It might have given heart to skeptical and exhausted innovators who were giving up the game, and shown the world that a certain kind of NYC rap record, both traditional and envelope-pushing, was still possible.

• SHARE

  •  Twitter
  •  Stumbleupon
  •  Digg
  •  del.icio.us
  •  Facebook
  •  Mixx