Cannibal Ox
The Cold Vein

THE REVIEW

"We pigeons became phoenix with open mind to open yours..."

Year 2001 of our Lord: rap is in a stalemate, pseudo-MCs decked out in jewelry increasingly fill television screens, nauseating all true fans of the genre, who now see the end of it all ever closer. And when you least expect it, here comes the miracle: El-P, former leader and brain of Company Flow, creates his own label, calls it Def Jux as a provocation, a name that echoes the now decrepit and insignificant Def Jam, and starts releasing artists of great respect, who shine in the darkness that surrounds them. Like Cannibal Ox, aka Vast Aire and Vordul, two MCs from Harlem who, with their visionary and unique style, had already made a name for themselves in the New York underground (Vast Aire's membership in the Atoms Family is well-known), without, however, ever fully emerging.

Until, in 2001, "The Cold Vein" is released. 14 tracks plus a bonus track, all produced by the genius of El-P, which seem to come from another planet, from a parallel dimension explored only by our own, a record terribly "ahead" of everything ever released before in the (short) history of rap. We move forward with futuristic and spacey sounds à la Blade Runner, which perfectly meld with the rhymes of our artists, more technical those of Vordul, more conceptual and visionary those of Vast Aire, and as listening continues, they give us amazing pieces like the angelic "Iron Galaxy," the dark and distressing "Raspberry Fields," the highly electronic "Vein" (perhaps El-P's best production ever), the more "classic" "Stress Rap" and "Painkillers," up to the true masterpieces of the album, found towards the end: "Real Earth," where a edgy and memorable beat accompanies Vast Aire and his intellectual-futuristic delusions ("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...), "Pigeon," a track with almost indie-rock echoes (with a distorted guitar in the foreground), in which they use the pigeon metaphor to indicate the everyday man (and perhaps also everyday rap and music, with its mediocrity), and finally the bonus track "Scream Phoenix," a sort of "Pigeon Pt.2," where the pigeon becomes a phoenix for rebirth and ultimate elevation, a theme indeed very frequent in black music.

In short, "The Cold Vein" is an epoch-making album, an absolute masterpiece, a sort of "What's Goin' On" of our days, and without a doubt one of the highest peaks reached in the entire history of black music. Not having it is simply a crime, it is a fundamental work for the evolution of rap as much as the records of Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd are for that of rock, a whirlwind of images and sensations hardly describable, an open-eyed dream that will leave you changed inside, and from which you will hardly be disappointed.