The creative use of the sample will (or should) forever be hip hop’s musical trademark, its creative calling card. The looping and use of other’s music to create vibrant, new and fresh soundscapes is a basic rudiment of the culture and where the genre’s musicianship really flourishes. But seriously, even the most backpackinest hip hop purist has to, at some point, grow weary of the use of the same “Louder!…Well clap your hands to what he’s doing….Yeah!”-Mountain sample from “Long Red”. Here to push the hip hop creative paradigm forward is Oxnard, CA native Mike Jackson, better known as Oh No. Using Turkish, Lebanese, Greek and Italian psychdelia and pop loops, this upstart-of-a-beatsmith has added some much needed creativity to a production scene that has yet to let go of Stax’s and Motown’s teat.
Just to be clear, Dr. No’s Oxperiment is an instrumental show—a brilliant, efficient, fast-paced wall of sound where no track eclipses the 2:00 minute mark. The shredding guitar on “Heavy” is sure to make the left side of your body go numb while “Mad Piano” is dark, bleak and nasty all rolled up and ready to go. Really, fawning over individual beats is moot. The myriad textures, fuzz, voice samples and random noises Oh No uses to garnish each “oxperiment” are so pervasive (yet lucid) that the entire 39-minute project sounds like one continuous “trip”.
Oh No impresses on this effort by really keeping things “on the one”. He doesn’t delve into complexities like 6/8-time rhythm structures that could either lose the casual listener or sound redundant and overdone to the refined one. Everything feels like hip hop. The drums bang but they don’t drag as Oh No really keeps things moving and interesting. An involuntary cringe is almost in order when you hear of an American artist sampling or venturing into Middle East/Mediterranean themes (R. Kelly, “Move Your Body Like A Snake”, anyone?). No need to fret here. At no point do Oh No’s adaptations of these overseas jams invoke head scratching - only head nodding.
Dr. No’s is proof that sample-based hip hop does not have to be rooted Al Green samples or blaxploitation funk. Stones Throw (that lovable Left Coast label) has yet again managed to make an obscure genre of music relevant to the music-loving community. With the release of Oh No’s Dr. No’s Oxperiment,this label has broken the creativity knob off the dial. To call this effort refreshing is a violent understatement.
