MC 900 Ft Jesus
Welcome To My Dream

THE REVIEW

The last decade of the last century opened with an artistically very fortunate explosion for the world of hip-hop, following the revolutionary and unexpected splendor of the eighties. On one side of America (New York), an attempt is made to turn hip-hop into music that continues to experiment without losing its immediacy, while on the other (Los Angeles), a standard is created made of heavy beats and themes revolving around women-money-guns, which soon becomes a cliché good only for brainless charts and sad news reports. Among this mix, perhaps few remember Mark Griffith, aka Mc 900 Ft Jesus, a classical musician from Dallas who ventured into hip-hop. But his is a unique and captivating sound, still appreciated today for its solidity and bold choices, capable of inspiring even diverse and distant scenes.

This "Welcome To My Dream" is his second album, dated 1991, and it is extraordinarily varied: capable of drawing inspiration from the godfathers of the genre as well as from certain cinematic jazz, funk, and more electronic and soft-focused sounds...

The beginning of the album is truly surprising: Falling Elevators with its pulsating bass and percussion laying the foundation for a fantastically R&B organ, a few scratches, and that wonderful mute-muted trumpet, finally the voice, which merges into this noir drape with delicate yet restless rhyming. A tutelary name not too distant could be Gil Scott-Heron, referenced in the metropolitan and almost esoteric atmosphere of this track and also in the more tribal feel of the beautiful Dali's Handgun. Killer Inside Me is the club-banger song that cannot be missing from a respectable hip-hop album, brisk and filled with funk horns and basslines, all sprinkled with colorful scratches. Adventure In Failure prefigures Beck almost three years earlier; while The City Sleeps is stunning in its loose and so restless gait that it becomes almost daunting, despite a sweetness that can be perceived among the flowing verses and the intertwining melody. The instrumental interlude O-Zone is astonishing, capable of soaring high and light between flavors of fusion and acid-jazz and a perfect demonstration that this album could appeal even to those who usually do not appreciate the genre.

The rest of the work moves on less eclectic but absolutely no less valid territories: the obsessive spoken-funk Hearing Voices In My Head and the danceable and chaotic Dancing Barefoot are exceptional pieces (perhaps the latter a bit dated), which many would sign up for immediately.

"Welcome To My Dream" is truly a remarkable album, compact as is rarely heard in the genre: direct, often raw, yet engaging and somehow hypnotic.