Cannibal Ox

After an intensely creative season, in the early years of the new millennium the hip-hop scene – barring a few cult phenomena (including those tied to the worthy Anticon and Rawkus labels) – seemed to have fallen into a stalled phase. Then, suddenly, the name Cannibal Ox appeared on the radar of critics and music fans: a Harlem duo made up of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, who in 2001 released "The Cold Vein," one of the most important hip-hop records of all time. But to fully understand how things unfolded, we need to take a step back and move over to Brooklyn, where at the time the producer and musician Jaime Meline – better known by his alias El-P, short for El-Producto – was living.

Fresh off his experience with Company Flow (the minds behind "Funcrusher Plus," another underground gem that in 1997 shook the foundations of hip-hop with a scorching mix of dub'n'funk beats as heavy as boulders and lyrics of social protest delivered with intellectual rage), Meline decided to found his own record label, Definitive Jux (often shortened to Def Jux), together with manager Amaechi Uzoigwe, to keep spreading the gospel of an experimental hip-hop whose natural habitat was the underground. Meanwhile, just a little north of Brooklyn, two rappers who had been chewing on the craft since early adolescence had already been around for a few years.

The first was named Theodore Arrington III, who had arrived in the Bronx with his parents at the age of three, gradually absorbing the influence of whatever was playing at home: soul, funk and jazz. By the time his family moved to the Jamaica neighborhood in Queens, young Theodore had already gotten close to the sounds of hip-hop, but it was only after hearing Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" that he truly saw the light. He threw himself headlong into his notebooks, churning out rhyme after rhyme. Once he moved to Harlem, he had the chance to share that passion with several peers his age, which made him realize that maybe he had a future ahead of him along the path of that gripping fusion of beats & rhymes.

Among those peers was Shamar Gardner, a guy who since childhood had gotten used to moving from one New York home to another, following parents constantly chasing new and harder jobs to keep the household afloat. Young Shamar grew up listening mostly to rhythm and blues and soul (stuff like Luther Vandross, Patti LaBelle, Loose Ends and Cameo), but one of his first loves was comic books, both military and sci-fi themed. Unlike Theodore, Shamar's first love was rock. At the time – we're talking about the late Eighties and early Nineties – Guns 'n' Roses were all the rage, and even our man couldn't resist Axl Rose's falsetto and Slash's iconic black top hat. But it was a short-lived love, because waiting around the corner were the records of De La Soul (who had struck gold in 1989 with the sunny, optimistic "3 Feet High and Rising") and A Tribe Called Quest (who helped build a bridge between hip-hop and jazz with "The Low End Theory").

As time went on, both Theodore and Shamar became regulars of New York's underground hip-hop scene, and when they met, the connection was immediate and deep, ready to be put to the test during rap battles, where rappers faced off in freestyle duels. To further strengthen the ties among the scene's various figures, at a certain point Theodore (who by then had taken on the name Vast Aire) pulled the idea of the Atoms Family out of his hat: a collective of beatmakers, DJs and MCs meant to share material and, when needed, even record a few sessions, perhaps using Shamar's little Casio recorder (he too had by then already adopted a new alias: Vordul Mega). The boundaries of the Union Square railway area quickly proved too cramped, though, which pushed the Atoms Family to try to take things up a notch. Producer Cryptic One was brought in, and he oversaw the recording of some demos marked by a sound that, even back then, some were already pointing to as one of the leading paths of New York's New School: jagged, at times moody rhythms, and lyrics rich with references to science fiction.

In 1998, one of those demos ended up in the hands of producer El-P, who at the time was riding high on the “underground” success of "Funcrusher Plus" (over 30,000 copies sold) and was a member of the crew The Indelible MC's. It was only a handful of tracks, but he liked them so much that he urged Vast and Vordul to cut ties with the Family and go it alone. The two did just that, immediately setting about choosing a name for this new venture. Cannibal Ox came about purely by chance during a phone call, with the two of them tossing words back and forth. Later on, Vast — who likes to give multiple meanings to the words he chooses — explained that odd pairing of words: "The cannibal represents aggression, rage and a warrior mentality, while 'ox' is street slang for the sharp blade of a knife, but it's also a symbol behind which lies the idea of the circle formed by freestylers as they battle it out with rhymes." And further: "Cannibal Ox says we're lyrically sharp. That's the basic metaphor. All this talk of 'blades' comes from the fact that we live in Harlem and see guys going at each other or cursing each other out every day. Then there's the cannibalism angle, which in a way says we're ready to devour other MCs with our lyrics."

"The Cold Vein", recorded over the course of a couple of years due to a shoestring budget, is a portrait of street life and the poverty that afflicts Harlem. It's a portrait painted in dark, apocalyptic tones, influenced by science-fiction literature and film, but also by the comic books that had loomed so large during Vordul's childhood and adolescence, and which, at a certain point, had drawn Vast in as well. Among those comics, the one that had the greatest impact on the making of the record was undoubtedly "Kōkaku Kidōtai" ("Ghost In The Shell", its American title), the manga written and drawn by Masamune Shirow, which in the late Eighties foretold a 21st-century Japan largely dominated by nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science.

In portraying Harlem (and, indirectly, all of New York's underbelly), the point of view Cannibal Ox adopt is not, first and foremost, one of praise or condemnation, but rather one of simply observing in order to try to understand. To do so, they draw on futuristic, visionary sound textures and beats that are never predictable, always oblique and jagged, as if cooked up in a mad scientist's lab. As for the lyrics, they move between a realism that's at times truly frustrating, dystopian flashes, and allegories laced with acid irony.

On this hallucinatory journey through the labyrinths of Harlem, where symbolic creatures materialize — malnourished pigeons scavenging for something to eat in the filth, vultures ready to swoop in, "early birds and poachers," but also snobs "with their beaks in the air" — there's no escaping the sense that it's all hopelessly futile, that despair will eventually get us by the throat, that "sadness will prevail," to borrow a phrase from Today Is The Day. "You love New York, but New York don't love you," the two rap on "Stress Rap." In short, the man wandering through Harlem is Man in his difficult existential condition, forever grappling with something standing between himself and his own spiritual fulfillment. "The Cold Vein" is a metaphor we invented to describe adversity. Lurking within any obstacle or problem that even threatens our own survival is the 'cold vein.' And further: "(Those symbolic creatures) are images that represent the slow evolution of a human soul."

But, of course, "The Cold Vein" wouldn't sound the way it does without El-P's fantastic production (he's the mad scientist mentioned above). Building on what he'd already achieved on "Funcrusher Plus" (a sound that was visionary and, at the same time, robotic, violent, loaded with groove), El-P engineered a kind of crossover between the dense textures of Bomb Squad, the icy but incisive rhythms of old-school outfits and rappers like Beastie Boys, Boogie Down Productions and Schooly D, and the soundtracks of science-fiction films (first and foremost "Blade Runner", his favorite), resolving it all into claustrophobic, swirling orchestration, poised between chaos and structures forever on the verge of exploding. The choice of samples also makes a difference, spanning a stylistic spectrum that runs from Philip Glass to Nektar, from Brian Eno to Spooky Tooth, taking in Salt-N-Pepa, Bo Hansson, Al Green, Giorgio Moroder, Wall Of Voodoo, Beaver & Krause, and so on.

El-P's fascination with science fiction arrived after he read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel. It all stemmed both from a desire to break with established conventions (taking risks in the process, just as the graffiti artists he loved so much did, unafraid to break the law to leave their mark on buildings or on train cars sleeping in New York's stations), and from a taste for reproducing the chaotic soundscapes of a city that, when it comes to noise and its layering, has few equals in the world.

"The Cold Vein" wasn't Def Jux's first release, but it was without doubt the one that first put the label's name on the map of indie and avant-garde hip-hop, with explosive impact. Naturally, this also meant that, virtually overnight, Cannibal Ox's name suddenly became red-hot within independent music circles. New York was once again one of the nerve centers of the hip-hop universe, prompting many to draw parallels with "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)," with which the Wu-Tang Clan had kicked off the so-called East-Coast Renaissance, with New York playing the lion's share.

But while the two records share a rather cynical view of reality (albeit with the necessary distinctions, given that Cannibal Ox turn cynicism into a lever for rising above the "sickness of the present," whereas the Clan can never quite shake off a creeping fatalism), sonically there's a chasm between them. While RZA's crew's most accomplished work immediately established itself as one of the pillars of hardcore hip-hop, "The Cold Vein" represented, instead, an evolution of Company Flow's aforementioned "Funcrusher Plus," its lessons filtered in part through the futuristic, sci-fi, dystopian visions of Deltron 3030's self-titled debut, released right at the dawn of the new millennium, as if to underline that this was also the dawn of a new era for hip-hop. An era in which hip-hop, having torn down all the barriers still resisting its creative development, would become one of the most important musical forms of expression (and to say it's the single most important wouldn't even be an overstatement...) and one of the most capable of capturing the Zeitgeist of these tortuous years of ours.

We pigeons became phoenix with open mind to open yours…

With J Fluid contributing on the turntables, "Iron Galaxy" (which had already appeared a year earlier on the split single shared, not by chance, with Company Flow) heralds the start of the journey with intermittent intergalactic signals, thrilling-mode orchestral breaks and a slowed-down sample lifted from Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill" ("It's a cold world out there..."). Once the beat and rhymes take flight (the opening line, "My shell, mechanical found ghost," is an explicit nod to Shirow's manga), the disruptive scope of the operation becomes immediately clear: Vast and Vordul's flow is fluid, dynamic, almost panoramic as it moves through a sonic fabric shot through with sci-fi chills and intimately mutant in nature. New York is presented as a deeply degraded, chaotic city, thick with bad vibrations ("New York is evil at its core"). A city on the edge of the abyss, where life all too often resembles a fatal illness ("Life's ill, sometimes life might kill").

"The Cold Vein" came out on May 15, 2001. Four months later, the attacks on the Twin Towers would bring the Apocalypse into the beating heart of the Big Apple, and nothing would ever be the same again.

After the epic grandeur of "Iron Galaxy," the following track "Ox Out The Cage" (marking El-P's first appearance on the mic) seems to fall back into a more traditional format, but notable anomalies still churn beneath the surface, like a toxic, digitally altered guitar riff that sounds as if it were beamed in from a Jimi Hendrix trapped in a space-time bubble ("I grab the mic like Are You Experienced/ But I don't play the guitar, I play my cadence"). Things proceed with the fractured beat, the scratches (courtesy of DJ Cip One) and the electronic buzz of "Atom," which set the stage for the hypnotic march of "B-Boy Alpha," with its distorted bass, off-kilter turntable maneuvers, more cinematic samples (this time transformed into full-blown alien transmissions) and, to close things out, a small piano figure that wanders off like a drifter. The opening line is nothing short of legendary:

My mother said, 'You sucked my pussy when you came out

Don't ever talk back

I handed you life and I can snatch it back

In "Raspberry Fields," the machines creak away, menacing and pitch-black, while the synths drone on like bagpipes pushed to their limit. Making this dystopian journey through the Big Apple even icier and more obsessive are "Straight Off The D.I.C." (with its counterpoint of blunt synths) and the syncopated "Vein." Despite its circus-like interludes, "Battle For Asgard" (featuring C-Rayz Walz and L.I.F.E. Long) stands as one of the moments closest to the sound of "Funcrusher Plus," evoked here through a steroid-pumped, jagged-edged funk beat.

The futuristic scenarios of "Real Earth," marked by one of the record's most disjointed beats, blend with biblical references ("I'm like Moses with a staff that parts the Red Sea/ But it's a new day, so I use the mic to depart emcees") and scientific ones ("Negroids act like Sigmund Freud/ Dreaming of a perfect thyroid, screaming cerebrum steroid"), setting off a lyrical-musical short circuit.

In "Ridiculoid" (with El-P once again sharing the mic) the beat is whip-sharp – it comes out of the speakers like a cleaver controlled by some closed-circuit mechanism – yet the whole track has an airy mood, helped along by the synth carpet that keeps dawning endlessly in the background. "The F-Word", on the other hand, tells the story of a b-boy's unrequited love, backing the rhymes with a series of more expressionistic-than-usual synth brushstrokes and cosmic clearings that act as an ethereal counterweight to the beat's insistence.

One of the most linear tracks is "Stress Rap", built around a minimal carpet of metallic rattles interspersed with android gurgles. With its swaggering strut (an updated take on Goats' "Tricks Of The Shade"?), "Painkillers" (sci-fi electro coda aside) is the album's most heterodox track, and ideally serves as a prelude to the closing one-two of "Pigeon"/"Scream Phoenix", where all of "The Cold Vein"'s symbolic weave converges and resolves.

The first track ideally links back to "Iron Galaxy", weaving a plot that's both epic and visionary. Lyrically, it's the album's most important moment: "'Pigeon' was a way of saying we'd been through a lot, that we'd burned out, but that in the end we were reborn", the two recall. The pigeon is a symbolic bird in the Cannibal Ox universe: it represents a kind of everyman desperately searching for his own path, the only one that can bring him back to life. Set against the "pigeon" is the "phoenix", the bird at the center of "Scream Phoenix". As Carl Gustav Jung wrote, man and the phoenix have much in common, since both share a great capacity to withstand adversity and overcome obstacles until they find the path to rebirth. Man and phoenix, in short, are both capable of leaving the "cold vein" behind. In "Scream Phoenix", Cannibal Ox take on the role of prophets who, having tasted the light, having tasted the truth that confirms we are, deep down, an active part of the "living fire" ("the truth is I'm proof of living fire"), also offer their "brothers" the chance to rise from their own ashes: "We pigeons became phoenix with open mind to open yours…".

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11/10/2020