DJ Muggs & Planet Asia, Pain Language
Featured Album
A ceaselessly creative, uncompromising hardcore rap record
In the 17 years since Cypress Hill's debut album helped expand the sound of West Coast rap for the '90s, the group's producer DJ Muggs has also broadly expanded his own universe. His willingness to stretch the boundaries of his grimy G-funk into a wider space that incorporates trip-hop, acid rock, film-score atmospherics and left-field R&B has allowed him to appeal to an increasingly-fractured rap fanbase. Pain Language, his collaboration with the tireless West Coast underground lyricist Planet Asia, showcases his tremendous scope in full. There are triumphal orchestrations that would do RZA proud ("Lions in the Forest"; "Deadly Blades"),vintage doom metal with two-ton drums ("9MM") and hatchet-killer pianos ("Death Frees Every Soul"), blunted jazz fusion noir ("Black Mask Men") and a soulful celluloid eeriness that permeates throughout. It'd be a hot collection of beats for any MC, but Planet Asia takes it to a higher plane, rocking a righteous-gunman persona by mixing elaborate abstractions ("Polished professional, the patriotic poor for life/It's a long run using the side of the brain that I write wit") with up-front threats ("You get fractured for what I manufacture/When it's a war we kill the captives — for laughter"). An uncompromising record — strictly hardcore and ceaselessly creative.
