Canadian music is enough to strike fear into the hearts of most right-thinking people – yes Alanis, Celine, Bryan and Nickelback, we're referring explicitly to you hear – so imagine the night-terrors and panic attack that come with the prospect of listening to a Canadian hip-hop album.
And not just any Canadian hip-hop album, either – a Canadian hip-hop album made by the son of some Jehovah's Witnesses who can't seem to find one style of song that suits him. Against the odds, though, that album is Atlantic: Hymns For Disco by K-Os and we'll be jiggered if the bastard didn't win us over.
After Mos Def followed up his near-perfect debut with two duffers of galactic proportion, the world has been in need of a conscientious rapper with commercial appeal. The fact that it seems to have found it in Canada is a little unexpected, sure, but we'll get over it. Canada, it seems, already knows about K-Os – Atlantis: Hymns For Discos is his third album and has sold over a jillion records since its domestic release last year. And given the choice of playing catch-up to the country that invented instant mashed potato or ignoring K-Os altogether, we're happy to play the newbie.
The first thing that hits you about Atlantis: Hymns For Disco by K-Os is the sheer number of influences and stylistic leaps that the album takes. Over the course of its 13 tracks, K-Os leads Atlantis: Hymns For Disco into old-school rap freestyles, 1960s girl-group pop, jazz, reggae, Jailhouse Rock-era rock and roll, Dylanesque folk and – most bafflingly of all – spiky indie that's identical to Maximo Park. Usually when you hear an album as varied as that you wish that the creator had trimmed down the variety a little and let the album sit together as a whole, but in the case of Atlantis: Hymns For Disco, the hotchpotch of genres is ultimately what keeps the album together, just like when Gorillaz and Gnarls Barkley do it.
Production-wise too, Atlantis: Hymns For Disco is a chance for K-Os to show off – by the middle of Sunday Morning's free-form jazziness it's abundantly clear why he's done so well in his homeland, and Cat Diesel's orchestral – presumably live – harpsichord comes out of nowhere and hits you like a hammer. And as for K-Os' rapping – it's a mix between solid Mos Def-style fluidity and weird Slick Rick-ish British-accented confusion. needless to say, the first one's probably best.
Atlantis: Hymns For Disco by K-Os will have its detractors who'll say it sounds too commercial – and to some extent they'll have a point. For all of his production prowess, shards of Wyclef memory will puncture his credibility from time to time, and there really isn't comeback once you've been reminded of It Doesn't Matter. On the other hand, though, a song like Black Ice deserves to heard on commercial radio stations, and it'd go down a storm if it ever was.
All in all we can't help but be impressed by Atlantis: Hymns For Disco by K-Os. Shame he's such a bloody hippy.
Ian H. says
This review was a great chuckle. As a Canadian, I sympathize with the disdain for popular Canadian acts, as of late. But please don’t hold it as our only legacy.
Let’s not forget Canada has created many cool bands worth some props like The Guess Who (“American Woman”), The Band, Steppenwolf (Magic Carpet Ride and “Born to Be Wild”), Niel Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and more lately, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and Death From Above 1979. Even more, as far as Canadian hip-hop acts, acts like Dream Warriors, Swollen Members, Maestro Fresh-Wes and Main Source have all made music worth checking out.
(And Yes, by Main Source, I mean that group that introduced Nasty Nas to the world was actually a Toronto-based act, aside from Large Profressor). Aww.. but it was funny read and you are right about
K-OS.