Tobacco – LA UTI (2010) [Anticon] // Grade: A

Listening to Tobacco is a game of patience. The solo project of Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Tom Fec, Tobacco’s music brings a high level of creativity in the form of face-blasting bass, intense percussion and analog synth rhythms, packaged loosely underneath fittingly perverse album art. Fec tested his own limits under the moniker and those of the listener, on this year’s Manic Meat LP, producing a collection of challenging razor-edged, overblown beats. Fec seems to have recognized that in a catalog of pushing the envelope, Manic Meat was just too much. Tobacco revisits a selection of the Manic Meat beats, and invites on a cast of MCs for the LA UTI EP, reeling in material that had jumped a cliff to teeter right on the edge where it belongs.

In a year where avant rap has been on the popularity upswing, LA UTI does not sacrifice genuineness for creative timeliness. Instead, Tobacco looks back to what worked well and builds an entire EP off that execution. The cameo has been a successful tool for Tobacco, and tracks featuring Aesop Rock and Beck in the past have proven the most palatable material. When Tobacco’s compositions become production for another, what was too hard-hitting is transformed into a dark backdrop of grind and slice aggression—and it is the perfect stage for an MC.

Tobacco and Anti-Pop Consortium seem two entities made for one another on “TV All Greasy”. Anti-Pop’s flow loops and bangs through outer space, tripped-out and explosive against race car synths. Percussion claps thud under zooms and snaps  on “Lick The Witch” with Rob Sonic’s words moving at an expert pace. Your head nods, lost in some other galaxy. Serengeti does an admirable job at not getting lost in the fray of “2 Thick Scoops”, the most challenging of LA UTI‘s productions. Screaming synths and low, banging bass pose a threatening environment, but Serengeti’s carefully chosen lyrics and raw tone cut through the noise. LA UTI ends on its standout, “Lamborghini Meltdown”, three minutes of funk from the dark and disoriented side featuring Zackey Force Funk.

If nothing else, LA UTI is a case and point example of an artist’s ability to learn from and reimagine his own work. But more than that, LA UTI is a head whipping ride through the possibility of collaboration.

- Scrooge McFuck