10.14.2008

Bodymore Murderland

Rod Lee Vol. 5: The Official
(2005, Club Kingz) @ 320 twankles per glisten

Alright, proud to introduce the pages of this blog to the tag "bmore", a city and club-music style that apparently don't get much love in the Bay - I pulled this disc out Rasputin's B-bin for a $1.99.

Rod Lee packs just about every element we respect here @ T&G into his dense and varied mixes - region-specific individualism, penetrating repetition & funk syncopation, explicit sexuality, audio theft and appropriation and an unusually healthy balance of street attitude & social criticism from a tough but uplifting perspective. The best sampling can take a sound you hate and suspend it in a such a way that it floats free of your negative associations and I can think of no better example of this phenomena than Rod Lee's use of Lil Jon's cartoonish sloganeering. I like his early crunk bass-chants but the change in his vocal style that marks his evolution into name-brand and pornstar rubs me like Jar Jar Binks.

I wonder why television's historical best failed to feature more local club soundtracking. I heard Technics did some consulting but that was only one episode and if I remember correct there was a stilted feeling reference to "Jiggle It" or something. And I'm not directly making the claim that Lee came up the whisper but I did still want to note that the official release date for this disc predates the Ying Yang full-length by a month or so.

7 comments:

hugowittorf said...

Bmore! This sounds interesting. You know if there is there any difference to Baltimore Club?

kid slizzard said...

hmmm... difference to club, well I don't quite get your q, but this is Club music, from the city of Baltimore, abbr. Bmore...enjoy

Walkmasterflex said...

europeans

hugowittorf said...

Well, there's a genre of music called baltimore club, which probaly just is the long name for bmore.. or is it in fact another style of music, similar but somehow different.. i would'nt know, since i only know of baltimore club (and now bmore), rather than actually beeing familiar with how it sounds.. further more i'm trying to figure out if this baltimore club (popular among europeans discobellish hipsters) is just the same old bass music with a new name, possibly made with computers.. although i rather read an article or blog telling me then having to search the internet for mp3's to find out myself, i'm not that curious...

kid slizzard said...

right now I'm thinking about the Ramones going to England for the first time and Johnny Rotten and the Clash trying to prove how tough they are

Jacob said...

Bmore, short for Baltimore, short for Baltimore Club.

Anonymous said...

whats the pass word for extracting the rod lee zip