Rapper Justin Warfield's My Field Trip to Planet 9 debut was hailed as a minor classic a year or two back - a weird and wonderful mix of psychedelia and hip-hop which was in a field of its own. His profile was raised still further when he provided the insane William Burroughs inspired rap on Bomb the Bass' Bug Powder Dust single last year.
So what does this promising young hip-hop artist do next ? He forms a four-piece guitar band and comes out with a 60's and 70's influenced rock album. Obviously.
Now, while taking chances is to be roundly encouraged among our musicians, someone should have taken him aside and told him that this really isn't very good. The world *always* needs something fresh and a little different in the field of hip-hop but is definitely *not* crying out for a third-rate Lenny Kravitz clogging up its CD players. Especially given that Lenny himself is now a second rate pastiche of the artists he admires.
It's all that feigned lazy-hazy drippy hippy retro BOLLOCKS rock, nicely executed but ultimately tiresomely predictable after only a few songs. Except "Alice". It's just fucking *awful*. And so is "Come Back Again" come to think of it.
Good bits ? Well the 'hidden' track at the end at least has a bit of energy in it, and the sort of punky Aerosmith vocal on "Moontower" and the sub-Soundgarden riff on "In a Mirrored Ladybong" are OK, although definite points off for the title of that last one!
Yes, I'm being a bit harsh on this ultimately inoffensive pile of fluff but when an artist who is genuinely exciting and fore-thinking abandons his forte to produce something so downright retro and bland as this, then it's a crime. And if no one else is brave enough to tell him then gimme his phone number and I'll have a word with him.
