A message in that movement ; Spitkicker Tour members bring back verbal sophistication to rap
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Concert preview
The Spitkicker Tour
The Spitkicker Tour with De La Soul, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, Common and Biz Markie. 7:30 p.m Wednesday at the Showbox, 1426 First Ave., Seattle ($24- $30; 206-628-0888 or www.ticketmaster.com).
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To get an idea of what De La Soul, Common, Pharoahe Monch, Talib Kweli and Biz Markie are up against with The Spitkicker Tour, let's look at another rapper on the road this season, Eminem.
With "The Marshall Mathers LP," Eminem contributes what may be the most violently misogynistic and homophobic mainstream rap album yet.
Hype and media acclaim (not to mention a "get-out-of-responsibility-free" card from music writers nationwide) has made "Marshall Mathers" a bona fide hit, topping off the Billboard R&B and hip-hop charts for four weeks and counting. In the midst of "Mathers' " reign, De La Soul - whose last radio megahit was 1989's omnipresent "Me, Myself and I" - will soon give us "Art Official Intelligence (Mosaic Thump)." The group's fifth album, and first release in four years, features contributions from Redman, Beastie Boys Mike D and Ad Rock and others yet to be named. Its first single, "OOOH!" is already blazing on the underground circuit.
What people have really been latching onto, however, is the strange theme dominating the "Art Official" preview CD. It's all about the . . . cookies? Yep, they're pushing some serious Chips Ahoy love.
Goofing on representations of hip-hop is what De La and its Spitkicker partners have always done; they wax poetic, political or just puckish.
The tour's title borrows from the notion of spit, or water, being the most necessary ingredient for growth. One can take it a step further: It spits in the face of rap's current fascination with materialism and excess, bringing it back to its roots in spreading messages, concentrating on fascinating wordplay and making rumps shake. If Eminem is the polar opposite of Christina Aguilera and further afield from Limp Bizkit on the pop-music spectrum, consider Spitkicker artists to be off the map, on a higher plane.
The political stylings of Common are the best known and currently most popular of the bunch, but most of us know Pharoahe Monch and Talib Kweli in their other guises, Monch from Organized Konfusion and Kweli from Blackstar. Styles and breakbeats differ in flavor but the spirit of verbal sophistication, elevating hip-hop from its current money-grubbing level, is the same.
De La is probably the best known outfit on the Spitkicker bill. When the genre was beginning to bounce hardcore, the 13-year-old Long Island trio ushered the Daisy Age with their cheerful 1989 debut, "3 Feet High and Rising." In the money-chasing, gun-blasting '90s, De La pushed sobering existential rhymes about getting hoodwinked by the recording business on "Buhloone Mindstate," and blasted socio-economically conscious reveilles on the CD "Stakes is High."
Riffing off baked goods feels like a return to the fun-loving freeform feel of "3 Feet High and Rising," but the group is far from regressing. In their four-year absence Maseo (Vincent Mason), Posdnous (Kelvin Mercer) and Dave Jolicoeur (formerly called Trugoy) have racked up partnership credits, the most recent being the compilation CD "Hip Hop 101," where De La Soul coupled with Camp Lo on a cut.
Spitkicker, then, presents an opportunity for De La and its peers to showcase mad production and lyrical skills on one of the widest ranging tours these groups have ever embarked upon. Biz Markie will play DJ between sets from Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, Common and De La Soul. During the last 30 minutes, the artists will take the stage together to perform some of their best known collaborations on wax, including classics such as "The Bizness," featuring Common and De La Soul.