Fans who have found me through my cruise ship career might be surprised to see me review hip hop/rap. It’s not a favorite genre of this demographic and not one I’ve probably ever covered in the piano lounge but I actually really love 90s hip hop. The samples chosen were largely from funk and jazz records from my favorite eras and the beats really grooved. I love the texture the samplers and drum machines imparted to the recordings and love the delivery of a lot of the rappers from this era, even though I’m not normally paying much attention to what they were saying.

I think because the medium requires so many more words than a sung song of the same length (words go by a lot faster in rap and have no limitation of marrying with a melody) there could be the potential to really say more than a song could, but I’ve not heard much rap live up to that. I’m satisfied when it’s just not about something ugly or inane and the beat smacks.

So I was super happy to stumble upon Deltron 3030, which is a concept album mostly depicting a sci-fi future scenario involving a mecha-soldier and his defection from an evil empire. I learned that from Wikipedia as I didn’t actually catch all that the first time around…But I was enjoying the miscellany of sci-fi references and the really awesome beats that Dan the Automator made for it – I’ve since followed him around Spotify and have admired all his production work so far.

“3030” is probably the best track, with this amazing orchestral sequence Dan the Automator sampled from William Sheller (I’ve yet to listen to this guy, a French composer and songwriter) bringing an epic breadth to the track. “Mastermind” has a crunchy beat to it and my favorite is probably “Virus” where Del the Funky Homosapien rhymes ‘virus’ with ‘papyrus’ and it’s great.

My wife was wondering if the album wasn’t just a hodge-podge of science fiction terms and I can’t say that it isn’t – I definitely drift off towards the latter half. But it’s really inspiring to me that these guys stuck it out with their concept, blending their cross-media loves into their music. I have in mind to continue my ‘Quixote’ concept/character with later EM/FM releases so it’s really nice to have guiding stars like this one.