SLIMM CUTTA CALHOUN – “It’s OK”
Another day, another magnificent hip-hop single. It’s almost easy to take this year’s embarrassment of riches for granted: things are so good right now that you can almost lie back and pretend nothing astonishing’s happening at all, almost waste your time fretting over album rock or indie sevens or snidey back-and-forthing over Britney and Christina. Almost. But what’s goin’ on is this: hip-hop, having struggled to prominence commercially and artistically, is now where rock was 35 years ago, unstoppable and untoppable, bossing the chart and using the freedom of the Top 40 as a slingshot to double its acceleration, to gloriously bastardise itself, to gobble up rock, pop, rave, disco, and dance just like it used to eat up dusty funk records and old breaks. The world is its crate.
Well, that’s my story, anyway. “It’s OK”, an Outkast offshoot that’s a carnival to “Bombs Over Baghdad”‘s riot, starts off with the cheapest synth you’ll hear outside a Future Bible Heroes record, and then slides into the creamiest chorus you’ll hear outside…I don’t know, Heaven? If you want to be boring about it, it’s the song the ’83-vintage Prince would make if he was alive today. Thankfully Slimm Cutta is alive today, so we can leave comparisons like that to history, and just enjoy this lazy digital funk for itself. When he rhymes yum yum with bubblegum you know he understands: when his guest-star Dre drops in for some cyber-tweaked cross-gender psychedelia at the end of the track, following Alice down into Wonderland, you know, yet again, that this is a special time to be listening to music. And you let the track stop and repeat and sit back knowing that tomorrow you’re likely to hear something even better.