Iicons

Platinum-plated, Grammy totin’ Jersey boys, NBN are distinguished from the many nameless faceless currently taking up space in Vibe and The Source in that they actually give a hoot about content as much as format. Point one in their favour, Iicons is mercifully devoid of the usual filler that is the bane of hip-hop, namely unfunny skits based on outdated gangsta posturing, off-the rack bitch-dissin’ and equal-opportunities deployment of the epithets nigga, pussy etc.

They lay the cards out early: the opening title tune pulses around a natty strings hook and blocky skip-hop 4/4, with old school scratches across the top like diamonds on glass. Like it says on the box, it’s a party record.

And every party has its gatecrashers. Here, Staten Island comes to East Orange in the form of Wu Tang alumni Redman and Method Man, spitting ire all over the flashing surfaces of ‘Rock ’N’ Roll’, with its dropped-beat stop-start animation, naff ’80s metal guitar and smashed glass samples. Later, Pink slithers up against ‘What You Wanna Do’ and wet-humps it like Prince in season, while Queen Latifah shows up in the hot colours of ‘Red Light’.

Hip-hop got homogenised when the homeboys started mass producing, performing acts of grand larceny on tracks from the vaults and conveyor-belting them out (Hi Puffy) without any of the loving attention to detail exhibited here on tracks like ‘Let Me Find Out’ with its absurd chicken clucking sample, or ‘Naughty By Nature’ with the Tijuana brass tacked on, or the almost Doug Sahm-like keyboard riff on ‘NJ To LA’.

The word is imagination, be it the way ‘Swing Swang’ links scat to rap via ancestral jazz, or ‘Rah Rah’, the musical equivalent of a Japanese comic book monster roused from the deep by the thermonuclear vibration of NBN’s sub-bass manoeuvres.

Is it just me or is it hot in here?