DJ Yoda - The Amazing Adventures of... (Antidote)
4/5
By: Yousif Nur
It's true what they say, a snail always leaves a trail; and any discernable DJ Yoda or even hip-hop fan by now should know what to anticipate from anything released by him - the unexpected trail.
You may well have read the interview we did with him the other week about how he cuts and pastes different samples, beats and scratches together from tv shows, films and songs, but with a twist. Y'see, he's quite feasibly the only DJ (bar the possibility of Dan Greenpeace) in the world to mix together a track by Betty Boo or Rick Astley to an eighties Atari advert or the Airwolf theme - with Pat Sharp giving a plug on the release. It has to be heard to be believed folks. Not only that, but name one other person in the rap scene on the wheels of steel today that's not gun-toting, drug pushing, po faced or reluctant to crack a smile here and there - they're all as controversial as a wet towel. A particularly cold, damp towel that's quite unpleasant to dry yourself off with at that.
But what differentiates 'The Amazing Adventures...' from eighties edition and other cut 'n' paste ditties would be that it's Yoda's debut artist album, meaning all the beats are self-produced. Some of them date back to 2001, so to say it's been a long time in the making would be quite the understatement. Collaborations involve old school hip-hopper Biz Markie, Princess Superstar, British young hope Sway and Jungle Brothers to name oh-so-few of the elite group to undertake project:yoda.
It kicks off with much of the expected samples from old American television nostalgia interspersed with scratches and repetitive 'y-y-y-y-oda's. Anyone remember the theme to the game show 'Call My Bluff'? I can't quite recall the name of that song, but on 'Fertilizer' it's mixed with Flavor Flav's 'Yeah Boy' and also intertwined with an odd farmer muttering the word... yep, you guessed it, 'fertilizer'. Peaches' mate Princess Superstar looks forward to what the world will be like in 2048, to growing old but not necessarily wiser with 'Let's Get Old', with a retro thirties swing nod. Next is probably the greatest and only ode completely devoted to breakfast cereal, on ahem, 'Breakfast Cereal'. Biz Markie ponders 'I wonder what cereal they eat in Japan? / All I know is that it's sweet / from hood to hood / to street to street...' Trust us, somehow, its definitely one of the better tracks on 'Adventures...'.
In one way or another, there'll be tracks that'll either irritate you to bits or have your sides splitting with laughter - case in point, a twelve second interlude of a mystery 50 Cent impersonation slur, concluding with a 'g-g-g-unit!'. 'Chatterbox' features Sway musing about one thing we all hate thusly - 'Hello, one thing I don't like is when people keep on talking, they keep on talking and they don't give you a chance to speak'. It's an electro influenced tale of bigmouths who just. don't. know. when. to. shut. the. hell. up. Phew. Mr David Viner is quite the surprise package on the album, with a blues track 'Pussy Cat', replete with meows and scratches recorded specially for this release with the esteemed DJ.
Looks like the North London DJ otherwise known as Duncan Beiny has taken us on quite the amazing adventure, and we'll be glad to retrace our steps on a regular basis.
Artists in this article: DJ Yoda
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