Showbiz & A.G.
Party Groove / Soul Clap

Before Party Groove / Soul Clap, the debut EP of the historic hip-hop duo Showbiz & A.G., a commercial spot featuring a series of videos from current Italian (t)rappers popped up.

Far be it from me to act like a boomer at all costs, but I think some questions need to be asked: what happened from 1992, the year of the aforementioned album's release, to today? Hip-hop and urban sounds are experiencing a moment of incredible popularity among younger listeners, but at what cost? In other words, where is the essence of the genre, which a certain DJ Shadow already saw threatened by greed and an insatiable desire to make money back in 1996?

It's difficult to answer these various questions, but one aspect seems undeniable to me: the immediacy, spontaneity, and, why not, the delightful innocence of past productions seem somewhat lost, replaced by a music industry that often either churns out cookie-cutter characters or plays the card of forced and out-of-place experimentation (see the latest works of Travis Scott and Little Simz).

I don’t want to get lost in tedious discussions, yet the chasm separating the debut of Rodney Lemay and Andre Barnes from some recent releases (especially Italian ones) is vast.

In Party Groove / Soul Clap, you will find everything you can expect from an album made between the late '80s and mid-'90s: powerful and minimal beats, built with a couple of funk or jazz samples looped over hard-hitting, powerful, and edgy drums; self-celebration, punchlines, a genuine and street attitude: in other words, the rap of the "giant" A.G.; then there's scratching, vocal samples, unending energy, combined with the desire to honor and update African American musical traditions.

There are five actual tracks, plus an intro, an instrumental version, and a remix, for a total runtime of about thirty minutes. A promotional EP, one might think just routine advertising. Yet, we are in front of an absolute classic.

I will avoid boring you with a tedious track-by-track analysis; I just want to mention the “just clap your hands to the beatbox” which introduces a trainload of obsessive funk sounds by Showbiz, enhanced by the braggadocio of his partner Andre (“I done killed more suckers than a World War/And even more after a world tour/From state to state, sea to sea/On every continent, I'm a G-I-A-N-T”. I'm obviously referring to “Soul Clap”). And the rest is no less impressive, for example, “Diggin' in the Crates”, where the two pass the mic to their companions Diamond D and Lord Finesse, all seasoned with a beat featuring an interstellar bassline and drums that sweat the Seventies from every pore.

Some tracks (both versions of “Party Groove” and the devastating “Catchin' Wreck”) can also be found on Runaway Slave, an excellent LP that appeared a few months later. Missing is the remix of one of the two main tracks and the closing “Giant in the Mental”, a real train of rhymes that would send many self-proclaimed rappers home (“Thoughts are faded, I made it, you hate it/The way I kept this, step to this and get assassinated/That's what you'll get, but I won't let/You get in my face cause you must be a space cadet”. And nothing, in the end, I did the track-by-track).

This is Party Groove / Soul Clap, take it or leave it (“take some or leave some”, as James Brown would say), a work where high philosophy is not discussed, and it gets straight to the point, a snapshot of a genre in full evolution that some may find old, faded, yet it still overflows with colors and sensations.

Here, if I really had to say what is missing from some contemporary hip-hop releases, I would say it lacks soul, that “keep it real” which used to be repeated stubbornly, almost like a mantra. A soul that, on the contrary, is more than present in the stunning EP by Showbiz & A.G..

Can I get a Soul Clap?

C'mon!