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As far as most of the collection’s videos are concerned, the only perceivable unifying principle linking Wildchild’s Wonder Years, Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf’s Red Light, Green Light and Breakestra’s Getcho Soul Togetha is the need for ceaseless energetic movement, vivid colourful images and attempts to contextualise either the artist or their music through the inclusion of significant cut-away shots. Breakestra’s video is the most obvious interpretation of an artist’s music in that it involves a setting like a basement club where protagonists participate in social dancing that resembles an engaging missing-link between ‘70s groovin and ‘80s breakin’. There could be no better way to dramatise this group’s retro renditions. There is however one, astounding exception to the lack of a link between music and video. It would be an understatement to describe the Mr Spoon-esc rod-puppetry, stop-motion video for Quasimoto’s Come On Feet as bizarre. Moreover, what’s more strange than the video itself is the incredible fact that the song (a disjointed cartoony soundscape through which a helium voice urges haste) existed as a recording long before the now inseparable visuals and not the other way around.
In the few instances where one or both elements of a contribution fail to offer the same stimulation as the collection’s highlights, at least the audio commentaries can be relied upon to at best, open up a previously unnoticed avenue of appreciation, at worst give a few cheap laughs. Commentaries start out with a welcome technical and practical slant as various people involved in their making highlight many of the legal, practical and artistic considerations that influenced the development of their original visions. For instance, the Jaylib mcnasty Filth track is openly said to be an attempt to tap into the BET stripclub video/jiggy club record market and it is interesting to hear how they achieve this high budget look on no budget. Likewise, Kazi’s A.V.E.R.A.G.E. is, at a cursory viewing, little more than its title suggests. However, the commentary provides some timely comments regarding the practicalities of using real-life, security-sensitive venues as video sets.
It’s not all good. Much like Peeter De Lane (as voiced by Rob Brydon for ITV comedy series Director’s commentary,) this DVD’s commentators do increasingly end up clutching at straws and resorting to strained sarcasm because there is either nothing to explain or the commentators have nothing planned to say. Sometimes a good video needs no explaining as is the case with Madvillain Rhinestone Cowboy. Madvillain’s second, start-stop 101 offering features little more than a series of fleeting glimpses from various angles of Doom in the foreground with a dancer in the background and still somehow manages to be addictively exotic. In spite of that video’s obvious simplicity, two guys spend most of that brilliant track pretending that MF Doom is in fact a Ja-ja Binks CGI motion-capture creation. The commentaries finally give up the pretence of being directly informative with Madlib’s Good Morning Sunshine. To be fair, it’s another one which does not appear to require any explanation. Nevertheless, a giggly woman explaining, in graphic terms, why she no longer eats meat isn’t that amusing the first time around. It’s not like there wasn’t better uses for the space taken up by the gratuitous/unrealised commentaries. I would much rather have heard more about storyboarding, censorship and ghost-directors than most of the casual shtick. One instance of a self-explanatory video getting a decent commentary is the unexplained speech-synth biographical monologue that accompanies the compiled live footage that went to make up Red Light, Green Light.
Toward “extra credits”’ home stretch, the syllabus shifts from film-making and performance arts over to history. First up is a documentary whose premise is the search for an extremely rare funk record prized by the lucky few beat-diggers who own a copy (and desperately desired by many who do not). This vinyl holy grail quest leads to meeting with a member of LA Carnival and whilst it is touching to find him happy with his lot in life, it is also sad to see what became of somebody so talented. From funk to Jazz and the final performance on the DVD serves as the backdrop to an interview with the guy who played vibraphone for 1960s jazz collective Stark Reality. The final part of 101’s history lesson feels less like edutainment and more like deliberate, if albeit benign, revisionism. I do not remember Dooley-O’s Headbanger's Ball and I do not regret having missed it first time around. Apart from the likelihood that current Stonesthrow artists like oh No or Wildchild have work more deserving of inclusion on the collection, this track is dated and probably slept on for a reason.
The second half of this multimedia double-pack is a mix by head honcho Peanut Butter Wolf. Whereas the DVD offers a detached overview of Stones Throw’s more recent output, when the mix commences with an uncertain acapella practice verse by Charizma, this is clearly a far more involved project about and for Peanut Butter Wolf. This mix is more of an audiobiography of Wolf’s influences, achievements and associates than it is a promotional showcase of the label. On paper, the expansive tracklist is striking and track sequence is promising: in practice, the mix CD half of 101 provides some possible answers to why Stones throw are not as big as they might otherwise be.
Oh No’s other significant offering I'm Here, a typically Californian State of mind rap saying how he feels and what he’s thinking at that given moment in time, is as regular and of-the-moment as this collection gets. It’s not long before a track like Wildchild’s Kiana confirms the mix’s reservation for a one-way journey to that long since over-populated tru skool, boom bap Never never Land. There slowly emerges an Uncomfortable coupling of retro boom bap and electronica aesthetics, as best demonstrated by MED’s Linking all the label’s hiphop and electro – and connecting with the educational value of the DVD - are a handful of tracks where wolf reaches further back into time and into his archive crates for more historical cuts. A highlight of Wolf’s unofficial history is Stark Reality’s Dreams/Comrades whose wild sloptacular bass and guitar work is dying to be sampled. There are also contemporary tracks in the spirit of classic funk/jazz-fusion such as Oh No and Dudley Perkins’s ‘70s-style weed homage Green Tree and Breakestra’s Showbiz . These are great tributes to the proper music as the collection builds toward one special centre-piece. At least one more deejay has acquired their holy grail because LA Carnival’s Blind Man/Color Deservedly gets a full play out. The juxtaposition of Madlib’s unfathomable production wizardry and the tight, cohesive vintage funk is a poignant one but the collection is marred by a preoccupation with the golden era sound. There’s nothing wrong with the featured tracks- that’s as long as you’ve never heard of D-nice, LL Cool J, Slick Rick and all the others who did this stuff before, bigger and better. Ultimately, Wolf’s showcase of hiphop from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s by the likes of Dooley-O feels like being taken to a natural history museum only to be presented with skeletons of a short-necked Diplodicus or a midget-vegetarian Tyrannosaurus Rex. For instance, Nomeliss Derilex’s Fraudulent comprises the same sorta reverbed vocals as Biz Markie, the same idiosyncratic self-deprecation of Biz Markie – and the track even sports a scratched soundbite from Biz Markie –and yet, the sum outcome of these influences is more Paul Barman than Biz Markie.
© CD Goldie/ukhh.com 1999 - 2004
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Various Artists Stones Throw 101 DVD & mix CD 
When one relatively small label not only survives the corporate mass extinction event of the late ‘90s but then, to this day, remains at the forefront of hiphop culture, that’s worth celebrating. Within well under a decade, Peanut Butter Wolf’s Bay Area label has chalked up 99 releases. It is then a happy coincidence that with this double-pack, they’ve reached the “101” mark and so aptly this commemorative DVD/CD combo serves as an edutaining primer for those who have so far slept on the Stones Throw camp. Inevitably, due to their recent acclaim, Madlib and his collaborations with Jay Dilla and MF Doom warrant prominence but everybody connected with Stones Throw gets their five minutes of fame. Whereas the DVD dwells on the present and reaches back into the past as context to show where the label’s headed, the sprawling mix CD concentrates on acknowledging its creator’s influences and inspirations - and in so doing, digs deep for lost or forgotten gems from the late ‘80s golden era. The DVD offers a wide syllabus of film-making-related issues and the mix CD feels more like Peanut Butter Wolf’s extra-curricular curet’s egg.
101’s video collection hits the ground running in the here and now with an offering from the label’s flagship collabo. Inspired by the Marvel cartoons and comic strips of the mid ‘60s, the video for Madvillain’s All Caps tells it’s story by panning across static illustrations with occasional minimal animation. This coupling of Doom’s insouciant esoteric third-person lyricism and the comic book imagery establishes the notion that the link between this DVD’s music and promo videos tends to be more a matter of mood and tone than of literal representation. The evocative comic-book influences continue with The kooky live-action video for Lootpack’s Whenimondamic. Once again, there is no clear reference to alien abduction and government conspiracy during the track but a lot of deliberately degraded and lo-fi tweeking of 16mm film is put to great use to portray this post-X-Files scenario.
The less consistent portion of contributions is dominated by those videos whose songs stray outside the realm of hiphop. First up, Declaime’s soulful alter-ego Dudley Perkins plays the capitalistic Anti-D’Angelo for Money. His breathy falsetto noodlings waft around without ever arriving at a catchy melody - but the video features a slick and seductive blend of animation, well-shot performance footage and sophisticated visual edits which retain interest in the music for longer than it probably deserves. There is NOTHING however to redeem the whiny, distasteful stalker-song Linda Wants To Be Alone.No obvious reasons present themselves as to why Gary Wilson inflicts this half-arsed, yet supposedly quirky electro college rock (which sounds like it’s being played at the wrong speed) on the public nor why it has been included amid all these rap videos. Nonetheless, it takes the compilation’s wildest stray to provide the collection with one of its best videos. Koushik delivers a beguiling invitation to zone out with a psychedelic soundscape One In A Day which appears to take The Emotions’ Blind alley break on an acid trip to ‘Madchester. Given how the collection has now wandered off far beyond the familiar territory of beats, rhymes & life, Koushik’s mesmeric trilogy wholeheartedly abandons character, scene and any form of narrative coherence in favour of impressionist ambience; utilising weird and wonderful filming techniques.
The commentaries for the collection’s stronger offerings continue to produce more pleasant surprises. One of two videos on the DVD utilising the flashy split-screen style is Rasco’s Take It Back Home and it would have been great to hear an explanation of the video’s complex composition. Instead of this however, Christian Strickland’s commentary provides a far more fascinating insight into the low budget, bed-steal-and-borrow ethos needed to make most of these promos possible. Rather than talking about lenses, angles and edits, the viewer is offered a no less useful mixture of trade secrets and notes on the legal issues and logistics concerning what they can and cannot shoot in the stores and streets of san Francisco. Whereas Madlib’s nifty Blue-note tribute Slim's Return Is arguably the most complicated, most flashy piece of video editing and mixing on offer, it’s probably the least interesting (technically speaking) of the commentaries. It turns out that one of the most gripping and much-needed audio tracks is for the uncanny visualisation of Koushik’s bewitching song. Here two of the three people involved in this unique project explain the fascinating experimental techniques (one of which doesn’t even involve a camera) used to create the flickering mixture of warped and abstract images that accompany the hypnotic music.
If anything, the “Extra credits” bonus footage portion of this DVD curriculum is often better than the main feature. Bridging the ground covered by these extra features and the main video collection is a second visit to Madvillain’s All Caps - except this time, for “the blueprint.” Here the original song and commentary for the finished product have many new implications when shown with the video’s original story-boarding. The behind-the-scenes theme of the extra features action continues with a recording of a Much Music feature about MF DOOM, Madlib, PB Wolf and Egon. It is worth noting how it takes a wing of mainstream music TV to strip away all the theatric inscrutability to get some honest, humble responses from the deliciously mysterious Metal Faced one. Other than a five-year-old Peanut Butter Wolf interview where PBW is for once talking about himself and not bigging up everybody else, most of the rest of the “Extra credits” section is taken up by live footage – or at least interviews embedded within live footage. First of two rap performances, Jaylib’s debut UK performance at London’s Jazz Café features an off-the-cuff Mos Def/Jay Dilla jam session. The second, a ropey VHS recording of an early 1990s SanFrancisco TV show, represents one of the precious few surviving pieces of footage that help to show and prove how PBW’s friend and emcee collaborator Charizma more than deserved his name. Again however, it is the behind-the-scenes, access-all-areas element of this project that provides the extra feature’s best moment. There is a much-needed section documenting the making of Come On Feet. The magic of movie making really comes alive when the team show what camera tricks it takes to create the illusions of size, movement and the image of blood welling up under a monster’s foot stomp. It’s amazing how a cast of well-rounded characters can be conjured through the clever presentation of a collection of many differently scaled models of separate body parts.
Overall, this dvd is Well presented and easily navigable. It does however have a couple shortcomings. The most obvious oversight is the lack of audio commentary for the extra footage. Space on the disc could have been found for these commentaries if only the videos that needed audio tracks were allocated them. Secondly, given the educational connotations of the 101 title, a notable omission from the DVD’s entire duration is the failure to make use of tag lines or captions to label videos or add supplemental information.
The replication, within the first quarter of the mix, of DVD track Good Morning Sunshine Characterises the slant of this project. From the start, the mix’s Emphasis is on instrumentals – or at least tracks that are divested of those pesky words. The mix Starts out with soft, melodic mixing of tracks which tend to sound like interludes or intros to something else. A notable exception to this even drift of preludes and backdrops is the original Yesterdays New Quintet’s Little Girl where some improv keyboard work lounges over what sounds like the slicing of the California soul break. It is during the first quarter of the mix that the DVD’s weakest and weirdest contributors redeem themselves. Dudley Perkins returns in preacher-mode over lilting string swoops and lushly textured production for Falling. Having stolen the show on the DVD, Koushik returns to combine surfer psychedelic with gritty funk for Be With. The blend of heavily reverbed singing over abrasive bass and funk guitar provides the best transition of the whole mix when it goes all artsy to accommodate Madvillain’s haunting Accordion. As with most vocal tracks, Doom only gets one verse to spit and it’s a gooden; far more lucid and extraverted than his usual output. The third quarter of the project also almost entirely comprises instrumental cuts with J. Roc, Cut Chemist and Egan passing the breakbeat baton. Partymeister Peanut Butter Wolf Has no problem mixing between (mostly Madlib-produced) instrumental cuts but proceedings stall when either mixing from instrumental to vocal or between vocal dominated tracks. This shortcoming is best demonstrated by the underuse of Oh No’s I can’t help myself. Oh No’s honest statement of the nature of his relationships with the women he meets on the road bosts a catchy winding melody that intertwines with the female singer’s chorus and yet a full play-out leaves this attractive counterpoint to fall like a loose thread.
It often veers off course and into the wrong genres but there’s always something worth hearing and it’s almost certainly the work of the remarkably versitile Madlib who is responsible for most of the mix’s beats. As typified by the The Mission /Beat #333 double-bill, Madlib sturs up inconceivably beautiful mishmashes of radio, television, jazz and other beautiful elements that could fall out of sync at any moment but never do. Few producers out there could produce music as radically different as Parcae P A’s grimy Ghetto Rhyme Story and the marvellous Madvillain/Madlib Figaro /Beat #222. Whereas the former combines the best of Ghostface and Kool G Rap (grimy, gospel-soul instrumental a la Motherless child with G Rap’s machine gun internal multi-syllabic wrath), the latter manipulates samples beyond identification and geographic location over which Doom reverts to his more lucid KMD style. As seems to be the way of this project, when it comes to the Madlib showcase, PBW saves the oldest till last. Owing much to the bugged out sound of LONS and the exuberance of ATCQ, nasal vocals flip around and bounce over the cut’s monotonous piano and pattering beat for the brief few seconds it takes to get through one verse and hook.
Modest as ever, this mix finds the ‘Wolf determined to first give exposure to Madlib, cut chemist et al long before finally making a last minute self-promotional sprint. Stoking interest in the release of their back catalogue is the sentimental Talk About A Girlby PBW and Charizma. This track shows that Charizma was already a one-man pharcyde who could have easily gone on to deserve some of that DM & Jemini props. The other PBW production featured is a full-playing out of the sliced-action-movie-music based Planet Asia track In Your Area. Wolf’s instinct to always put others before himself is commendable. However, it leads to the unhelpful weighting of the project in favour of doomed pasts rather than promising futures. Peanut Butter Wolf’s decision to have a mixture of extracts from pbw’s curtailed recording career, Golden era obscurities and beautiful yet undervalued rare groove ends the collection on a downer. In spite of the wealth of quality music on offer toward the top of the sequence, lingering after-taste is that of an artist who never realised his potential and a label that is a spent force run by somebody a bit too interested in the elusive “tru skool” sound for his own good.
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