Oh No - Heavy 1:53
Teh internets are rife with explaining the fact that Oh No (Michael Jackson) is the younger brother of Madlib (Otis Jackson Jr.). Well I'm no different! Besides that this album is pretty dope. Or dare I say oxperimental! Probably the most oxperimental album I've heard in a long time or ever. Oh no does a really great job of combining really phat and crunchy hip hop beats with psychedelic Mediterranean rock. There are 28 tracks and each are around a minute to a minute and a half long. The whole album is a second shy of 40 minutes. It's really great background music. I feel like the tracks are more templates for something bigger to come. Like it's just a 40 minute sample bank waiting for someone to take control of it and churn out a 50 minute album with 12 or so tracks. I do enjoy this layout though. As soon as I'm wondering "oh where's this gonna go" the next track is on. He's clearly playing it off as a soundtrack to a high action spy movie. It definitely has that vibe. Oh No must've put a lot of work on this because there are a lot of samples in each track, and spanning over 28 tracks it's pretty impressive. I'd like to hear the albums he got all of this from. Looking forward to see where this guy is going to go. Check it out if you like some oxperimental non-vocal (mostly) hip hop.
Posted on 03/18/2008
Tags: Experimental Hip-Hop
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I need to get me this bad boy..I'm sick of reading about it:) Thanks Sam, for reminding me of my failings yet again.
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No problem Cody! It's on my resume "Failings Reminder". This album sounds waaay better in my car. The basslines are sick and heavy. Doesn't translate as well on my headphones.
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I am a renewed human being now, thanks to the internet and your reminder..The new instant gratification paradigm is really instant, and sometimes scary. It is cool, but I guess I just have to get over the fact that I think something is missing..like the artist getting paid, the thrill of the search,etc. etc....Ok, I'm over it.
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Ask and you shall receive. It's creepy like that.
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I love that rockin' Selda sample..
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It totally works well on it. I love how on the Gladius track the strings play with and against the electronic sound.
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Lika
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Word.
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Sample rich, n' thick n' chewy. I THOUGHT that was Selda
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Noice! Some jammin' shit man.
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I just heart a few samples of the album until now, but that was already enought for letting it be clear, that this is dope. I only heart one incorporation of Turkish or North African influences into HipHop as far, and that was .... ahem ... fucking memory. I'll make that up, as soon as I remember ;), must be Torpedo Boyz or Pepe Deluxe or somebody else. Thanks for the full length tracks.
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Listened to Oh No a few months ago, for me it belongs in this trend of using exotic samples with hiphop , deejay om's indian hiphop, then madlib's indian hiphop, this one and finally onra's vietnamese hiphop. i think this is the worst of the bunch to tell the truth, it's not bad and there are obviously some really good songs, but the rest is mostly good because the sampled originals are good, you should listen to onra, a french vietnamese, who did a similar album. http://www.undomondo.com/2008/02/onra/ cheers
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Didn't know that Onra and Deejay Om, will check that out immediately, thanks.
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I haven't heard of onra or Deejay Om either mersenne. I'll have to check it out. It really isn't anything new to sample Indian music. Downtempo has been doing it for years. That and there's the whole "Bombay The Hard Way" series. I don't think Oh No brought anything original but I enjoyed the album. Vietnamese hiphop sounds too good to be true. I gotta check it out. Your always on the forefront mersenne!
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Onra is a great editing job, no doubt and Mr.NO is certainly working with "better" (funkier) samples...I think both are cool, but they are both missing something...vocals. This is coming from a guy who loves instrumentals. I'm not knocking what they've done here with different from the norm source material, in fact it is ingenious. But is it just an exercise in fusion? or A natural progression of hip hop DJ's that have mined every western source to the hilt?
Anyway, I'm glad I got a chance to hear both..I wonder where the progressive vocalists are to flow over these beats?
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See to me I was thinking when I heard this Oh No album that the tracks could've been elaborated on to create a whole 4-5 minute song. They felt like test tracks for something bigger. Maybe he's just experimenting with a new sample base and something more cohesive will follow. Of course if he did elaborate on these tracks then he would've had a 4 cd album built on this concept. Would be great if he could get some Palestinian MC's to rhyme over it. Or other middle east hip hop artists for that matter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Eastern_hip_hop
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Yup, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. On the upside though,the problem with most Hip Hop instrumentals is that they are repetitive..he squelches that by making them short, but then they come out, like you said, as sketches..
Did you check that Onra, Sam?
If we are in an exotic beats trend..I'm all for it.
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I love that little kitty..very exotic in a cross-cultural-multi-ethnic-hip-hop beat kinda way..In other words, a kitty-mutt.
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i need to get this. Gladius, aside from being a sword, is the name of one of my favorite Famicom games. and Selda, aside from owning that undeniable voice, rhymes with Zelda. oxcellent! (;