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█ █ P U B L I C . S O U N D
█ █
█ █ presenting our newest release
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r e l e a s e . i n f o :
Artist.....: Spank Rock
Title......: Yoyoyoyoyo
Rip Date...: Feb-01-2006 Cat.No.....: n/a
Style......: Hip-Hop Label......: Big Dada
Quality....: VBRkbps Type.......: Album
Size.......: 60,4 MB Source.....: CDDA
r e l e a s e . n o t e s :
aking the stage at Luke and LeroyÆs, a club in ManhattanÆs West
Village, this winter, Naeem Juwan appeared out of place.
Sporting a dinner jacket and a trimmed, conservative hair cut,
Juwan, who performs under the moniker Spank Rock, could have
been mistaken as a schoolboy, spiff and clean behind the ears,
playing hooky amid the shaggy crowd formed in the clubÆs atrium.
His oversized glasses, whose design suggested the size and shape
of a carÆs rearview mirrors, only distinguished him further.
Gripping a microphone in his right handùan object which, in his
firm grasp, could have been a keepsake or passportùand peering
over the assembled crowd, Juwan seemed nothing short of a
stranger, lost and searching for something familiar in the
engulfing dark space.
The DJ played a record. The bass of a hip-hop song thumped from
the speakers and, for a moment, Juwan became recognizable, even
reducible to a series of general propositions: Here was another
underground rapper, I sighed to myself, some rhyming solipsist
who plundered Kanye WestÆs closetùthe proselytizing and mixed
metaphors were sure to follow. But as my expectations
diminished, the DJ changed course. The bass drum accelerated,
the snare skittered, synthesizers bleated. It was rambunctious,
and the preceding hip hop beat, which was hardly boring when the
DJ first spun it, seemed prosaic in hindsight. Bodies began
moving, the clubÆs air heated and, yet, Juwan stood still,
positing himself as a motionless figure in contrast with the
shaking melee.
A sampled voice, disembodied and stuttering, suddenly aired a
crass and, for at least half of LeroyÆs patrons, impossible
demand. ôP-p-p-put that pussy one me, p-p-p-put that pussy on
meö the record beckoned. Upon hearing the salacious aural cue,
Juwan broke his stolid pose and jerked his torso to and fro,
pecking his head to the DJÆs beat. He began speaking into the
microphone in long, staccato rhymes. In the tightness of the
clubÆs space, JuwanÆs words, fast and unforgiving, became
inaudibleùduring a songÆs crescendo, his voice, a nasal
monotone, sounded like the hum and blurting of a kazoo. The
scene, coupled with Spank RockÆs hyper music, was confounding
yet entertaining, sardonic yet joyous. A playful irony hung in
the air like a slowly twirling disco ball.
Perhaps in another rapperÆs hands, the performance might have
been pornographic, misogynistic, or just plain creepy. Juwan,
however, was simply outlandish. Witnessing Juwan, a frenzy of
rhymes and contortions, rap atop the overly sexualized song was
like watching video feed from a karaoke bar: It seemed like
self-conscious imitation, where the affect of appearing like a
rapper was more significant than the rapping itself. And
whatever sex or sexism was present in the lyrical content of
ôPut that Pussy on Meö had been checked, like blinders against
the sun, by JuwanÆs enormous, nebbish glasses. All bifocals and
flapping limbs, Juwan seemed incapable of exuding anything
genuinely coital. Even his moniker, Spank Rock, was silly beyond
the pale of the erotic.
Riding the release of his single ôPut that Pussy on Me,ö Naeem
Juwann has, for the past six months, begun capturing the ears
and, perhaps, the groins of hip hop listeners and enthusiasts of
Miami bass and Baltimore club, those provincial celebrations of
big beats and bigger butts. In light of the general trends in
hip hop and club music, however, Juwann is an unconventional
success. While hip hop is capable of evoking a range of
sentiments, the ability to be ironical has been, on the whole,
beyond the genreÆs reach. As should be apparent anyone who has
been privy to the growing absurdity of hip-hop music videos,
there are rappers and DJsùthe artiste-auteurs claiming pure
authenticity in an art form based on pastiche and sampling, or
the autobiographers making fortunes glamorizing poverty left
behind long agoùwho are certainly ironic. But rarely have
rappers admitted to consciously inducing or creating this irony
themselves. Any irony has, rather, been left to critics,
satirists, and cynical listeners to diagnose ex post facto.
The irony which saturates ôPut that Pussy on Me,ö and other work
by Juwan and his producer and cohort Alex Epton, is of a wholly
different nature. ôPut that Pussy on Meö is, without a doubt, a
self-conscious record. (Even the recordÆs cover, a crude image
of a headless woman, perched forward, jeweled, and clutching her
naked rear end, is a visual pun about the sexual roles endorsed
by club music.) But ôPut that Pussy on Meö is not self-conscious
in the way most rappers would use the term. Whereas a so-called
ôconsciousö rapper is aware of the content in his lyrics, and
the image it projects, JuwanÆs consciousness extends to both
content and formùJuwanÆs music suggests that he is aware of both
his image and the fact that hip hop and club music are capable
of eliciting these images in the first place. JuwanÆs control
over the form of club music in a song like ôPut that Pussy on
Meö is illustrated by the fact that he has, at once, produced a
record that is entirely danceable yet seems to make fun of
itself for the songÆs entire duration. The song is the stuff of
CasanovaÆ whispers, but in JuwanÆs performance, it becomes a
bump-and-grand anthem incapable of wearing a straight face. To
be clear, though, Juwan is neither a theorist nor conceptual
artist, but is an entertainer first and foremost. He just
happens to be one with a flair for the ironic.
In the fall, Juwan opened for last yearÆs wunderkind MIA on her
tour of the United States. It was his first time on an extended
tour, and he admits that some audience members were stumped by
his performance. ôI think people are receptive to my sense of
humor,ö Juwan said in an interview by phone, shortly before New
Years. ôBut some people didnÆt get it. When I was on tour with
MIA, there were all these girls in the front row, and when they
heard the first song would be something like æPut that Pussy on
MeÆùthey might not have taken me so seriously.ö Yet, for all of
the humor in his act, Juwan would hardly call himself a
comedian. ôI take myself very seriously,ö Juwan said. ôThere are
so many more things that go on in my, and everyone elseÆs,
lifeùitÆs not like I wake up and put club music and æPut that
Pussy on MeÆ all day.ö
Prior to his incarnation as Spank Rock, Juwan rapped and
performed in a more pedestrian fashion. Raised in Baltimore,
Juwan moved to Philadelphia after graduating high school in the
late 1990Æs, and began his career as a more earnest rapper in
the vein of Mos Def or the hordes of underground rappers on the
Rawkus imprint. Yet Juwan found the austerity of underground hip
hop stifling. ôI wanted to be completely expressive and cover
everything IÆve been going through. I wanted to be more honest,ö
Juwan explained. ôUnderground rappers can be too high and mighty
on themselves without giving any real human emotions.ö Besides
an inability to fully express himself, the trappings of
underground hip hopùa subgenre whose artists tend evince a
singular bravado that flattens, rather than ferments, with
ageùprevented Juwan from further musical experimentation. In
light of ôPut that Pussy on Meö and his work with Hollertronix
DJ Low Budget on last yearÆs BMore Gutter Music mixtape, it
seems as if Juwan has found that experimental release in music
which leans closer to dance music than strict hip hop. But when
asked whether he considered himself a club artist or a rapper,
Juwan was adamant that he is primarily a hip hop artist.
Juwan cites his continued allegiance to hip hop as an indication
that, contrary to whatever humor has been present in his past
releases, he is a serious, rather than a satirical, artist. This
seriousness, Juwan admits, has been lost in releases like ôPut
that Pussy on Me.ö Yet he promises that his entire persona,
encompassing both the ironical and the sincere, will be on
display in this springÆs forthcoming LP, Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo, to be
released on Ninja TuneÆs Big Dada subsidiary. The album, Juwan
expectedly proclaimed, will include ôthe conscious rapper and
the booty anthems and everything else in between.ö How exactly
JuwanÆs more serious material will sound, and whether JuwanÆs
ôconscious rapperö material will be genuine or a self-conscious
play on underground rap, remains to be seen. In the meantime, we
still have JuwanÆs more whimsical work which, although
ostensibly concerned with womenÆs bottoms, can be quite heady in
its play on hip hop and club musicÆs norms and conventions.
Learn more about Spank Rock at their website, www.spankrock.net.
By Ben Yaster
p l a y l i s t :
01 Backyard Betty 03:29
02 What It Look Like 03:07
03 IMC 02:33
04 Rick Rubin 03:33
05 Touch Me 03:24
06 Bump 05:19
07 Sweet Talk 04:12
08 Chilly Will 04:33
09 Far Left 03:53
10 Coke & Wet 02:11
11 Competition 03:32
12 Screwville, USA 02:04
41:50 min
g r e e t i n g s :
1real - 1way - aes - amok - bcc - bex - boss - cmg - cmc - cms ..
def - dh - disc0 - emp - drum - ftd - fwyh - gxe - hit2k - jfk ..
jrp - just - kinky - kw - om - rac - radial - sb - sfe - soup ..
sour - tr - trt - ube - uki / respect to music lovers worldwide ..
never forget : go to the show. but the t-shirt. order the vinyl ..