N.A.S.A.: The Spirit of Apollo
It certainly sounds like a great idea: bring together two DJ’s, one from North America and one from South America, along with about forty guests. Simmer for four years, and then unleash upon an eager public. In practice… well, that’s something else again. The Spirit of Apollo sounds, and feels, like a frustrating relic of what might have been, but wasn’t quite.
For the most part, the results smolder, but never fully come alight. It’s not for lack of talent. Producers/DJ’s Squeak E. Clean and Zegon are competent, and on those occasions that things click, it’s because of collaborations that work precisely because they’re counterintuitive; if putting David Byrne and Seu Jorge alongside Gift of Gab and Chali 2na (as on “The People Tree” and “Money”) is cool, pairing Tom Waits with Kool Keith on “Spacious Thoughts” is downright inspired. However, some of the disc’s other combinations come off as a form of musical stunt casting, as with the ubiquitous Kanye West and Wu Tang cameos (the fact that O.D.B. appears here gives you an idea of about how long this disc has been in the works). There are some gems here, but you’ve got to pan through an awful lot of averageness to find them.
Another gripe is, I suppose, strictly from my own musical sense. There’s nothing wrong with hip hop that sounds like the area or region it’s from–I’m not a partisan of East Coast, West Coast or Dirty South, as long as it sounds good. But if you’re going to bill yourself as creating a postmodern form that’s above national and musical boundries, you’ve got to show and prove when the needle drops. It’s not like there’s a shortage of South American talent from which they could’ve drawn, including sound maestros like Soulslinger and Andre Abujambra, and a host of MC’s from various points south of the Rio Grande (Fermin IV, M.V. Bill, Gabriel O Pensador, Dante Spinetta, Marcelo D2 et al.). The duo bills itself N.A.S.A. for “North America South America,” but it’s rare that the album breaks out of a predictable North American groove. Had they taken advantage of this additional pool of talent, the musical possibilities would’ve been much broader, and the results just might have sounded the way they looked on paper.
As debut albums go, this is a decent first shot. It’s not on par with The 36 Chambers or Ruby Vroom or Three Feet High and Rising, albums that showed from the first seconds of the first track that these were artists worth watching. If anything, Spirit of Apollo’s closest kin would be The Bends or Bleach, albums that hinted at talent that would be refined upon, and finally delivered in full, only after the artist had matured over a handful of recorded works.
Tags: Chali 2na, David Byrne, hip hop, N.A.S.A., Seu Jorge, The Spirit of Apollo