(Electronic, Disco, New Wave, Tech House) VA - Spank Rock - FabricLive. 33 - 2007, FLAC (image+.cue) lossless

Real name / Naeem Juwan & Alex Epton
The story of Spank Rock is a story about Baltimore, but then again, it ain’t. Because it’s a story about leaving as much as it’s about staying, about moving on while remembering your roots, about innovation and its relation to tradition.
Naeem Juwan, better known as MC Spank Rock, MC Super Disco Spank Ro’ or just Spank Rock, grew up alongside two brothers and five sisters in a West Baltimore row house. “The only element of my household that was consistent,” he remembers, “is that my mother and father always listened to music, a habit my mom says she picked up from her mother.”
Meanwhile downtown, in a neighbourhood little less riven by crime and poverty, Alex Epton was growing up with his parents, both artists from Oklahoma. And while his mom and dad “always supported any vaguely creative endeavors on my part,” they may not have been expecting him to transmogrify into the producer known as Armani XXXchange.
As the two boys grew up their paths twined over and round the city without the two of them ever coming into contact. As Naeem remembers it, “from prep school to the raunchy hood club Paradox, I found myself spread thin across all positive and negative elements of city life.” Epton, meanwhile, was too busy taking classes at the Peabody Conservatory of Music to have much involvement in the city’s club scene.
Naeem had begun rapping in the 8th Grade, getting advice and ample criticism from a big sister who was a little more deep into the hip hop thing than he was. Through her, he was eventually introduced to Shaun J Period (the producer for Mos Def’s groundbreaking “Universal Magnetic” EP), Mos Def and Last Emperor. Period, in particular, took the trouble to mentor Juwan: “Shaun invested a lot of time into helping me develop my skill as a recording artist, and being in such good company at such a young age made me believe that I could be just as important as Mos Def or Kweli in a year.” It wasn’t to work out quite like that. By the late-nineties the wave of underground hip hop was starting to dissipate and both Epton and Juwan were keen to leave a city which, at the time was, in Naeem’s words, “static”.
Alex headed to Boston to the New England Conservatory of Music where he “failed out” before moving on to New York, where he ended up joining pop-punk-electro outfit Zero Zero. Through their album, produced by the DFA, Alex landed a gig interning at the DFA studio. “I did not know anything about how a real studio works. So I learned the basics: what is a mixing desk? what is a patch bay? a filter? eq? microphone?” After his time there he ended up working as a bike messenger and a truck driver to make ends meet, all his spare moments spent on the old Zero Zero ProTools rig, getting to grips with production.
Naeem, meanwhile, “moved to Philly, got wrapped up in the thriving ‘Neo Soul’ scene, started listening to punk, dropped out of college, partied like the world was ending and got rid of all of my hip hop cds. But I continued to make music and develop a style of my own.”
The pair were introduced “with the idea that we would make music together,” by Chris Devlin aka Chris Rockswell. Chris had lived on the same street as Alex and had been at school with Naeem. He had some graffiti in an exhibition in Baltimore and invited them both to the opening and hence engineered their meeting. He remains their DJ and an essential part of the group to this day, respected and admired by the others for “his taste in music and ear for rocking a party”.
The process that led to “Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo” was set in motion. After Alex had helped out engineering at sessions that Naeem was working on with Steve McReady, the MC began to go and visit the producer in Brooklyn. When Juwan heard Epton’s own music, he knew he had to put something on top of it. As Alex explains it, his musical background means that “I’m interested in remixing songs that don't exist. Creating songs just to remix them. Creating songs just to sample them.” As for Naeem, “I always try to be as honest as possible with my music and have it represent my life as it is at that moment in time.” It was a meeting of minds.
The resulting album sounds like “the rap version of Prince's 1999 album,” according to Juwan, or, more self-deprecatingly, from Epton, like “American kids ripping off European kids ripping off American hip hop.” Either way, it’s quite unlike any record you’ve heard before. And one that, in some strange sense, could only have come out of Baltimore, even if the protagonists had to come out of Baltimore to make it.
Not that the connection is dead. Fourth and final member of Spank Rock is battle DJ, designer and motor mouth Ronnie Darko. “We’re all from the same place,” explains Alex, “so we understand each other deeply. And we like to drink together and fuck around and have fun.” Naeem concurs: “Ronnie’s the life of the party. And the one person in the group that’s most likely to get all of our assses kicked.” He pauses, smiles a sly smile. “Next to Alex, that is…”

Enjoying Spank Rock’s ‘FabricLive.33’ depends on several prior factors, especially how you feel about the series’ recent trend of alternating the best and brightest of breaks (Evil Nine, Stanton Warriors, Tayo) with flavors-of-the-week (DJ Format, Cut Copy). What it doesn’t depend on is how much you liked Spank Rock’s debut LP ‘YoYoYoYoYoYo’ from last year, as their Fabric mix retains very little of that album’s cool, calculated Baltimore club sound. ‘YoYoYoYoYoYo’ made raunchy rap OK for hipster kids, but its outstanding production is really what warranted those notches on a slew of music critics’ top ten lists. ‘FabricLive.33’ sees that album’s main producer, XXXChange, joined by pals Chris Rockswell and Ronnie Darko to squash 29 tracks into 71 minutes.
With that kind of ambition, it’s not always gonna be pretty. An uncredited member of the trio said in the ‘FabricLive.33’ press release that, “if something’s sloppy, you kind of own that a little bit, you know?” But despite their best efforts to critic-proof it, a ‘FabricLive’ entry is, after all, a permanent record, not one night in a cramped club, five bucks at the door with a complementary MGD tallboy. Spank Rock manages well enough for the mix’s first third, agreeably if not effortlessly navigating their way through old-school hip-hop (Kurtis Blow), nu-skool discofilth (Mr Oizo vs. Justice), ‘80s electrocrap (Yello) and Switch, coming on strong with ‘A Bit Patchy’, his mighty retooling of the1973 classic ‘Apache’ by Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band.
After that, though, ‘FabricLive.33’ gets a lot worse before it gets any better. The Contours’ smoove 1965 R&B number ‘Do You Love Me’ gets a bottle of Bmore Club bonus beats to its dome, and then – brace for it – Spank Rock opens up a can of Mylo’s ‘Drop The Pressure’. Ironically, a guy in last month’s FabricFirst newsletter said his worst night at Fabric was seeing Mylo – “Nothing personal, but hearing ‘Drop The Pressure’ in 2007 just wasn’t me!” – and here it is on the latest “FabricLive”, made only a tad more listenable with an acapella rap by Spank Rock lyricist Naeem Juwan (credited on the rear cover as “Disco Cool MC Spankrock” – geez, how much blow has this dude done since hitting it big a year ago?). ‘Drop The Pressure’ gets dropped into Yes’ ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, owner of what is one of the worst guitar solos in history. One painfully awkward transition into Para One’s ‘Dundun-Dun’ later, and you might end up breaking the CD in half and getting tiny bits of plastic in your eye.
But wait! The clouds suddenly part at this crucial juncture in the mix, with XXXchange’s hugely funky take on Best Fwends’ ‘Myself’. It’s painfully short as a single track, but extends its life by getting cleverly implemented into the following four. Uffie’s ‘Hot Chick (Feadz Edit)’ is, well, an Uffie track, but if you don’t like her vocal stylings at least there’s her usual jaw-dropping production by Feadz to hold you through. Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘Hustler’ gets righteously hustled by ‘Hustlin’’, Rick Ross’ rap ode to Miami’s coke trade. Naeem Juwan then returns to rap over The Romantics’ ‘Talking In Your Sleep’, which contrary to ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ plays as a welcome ‘80s throwback.
Rick Ross’ ‘Hustlin’’ acapella shows up for seconds, playing over an uncredited, beautiful, strings-heavy beat (perhaps an original?). Following this is the Maurice Fulton remix of Hot Chip’s ‘Over and Over’, one of the mix’s quirkiest additions with its eerie chorus and the spelling out of “kissing sexing Casio poke you me I” letter-by-letter, again and again. Somebody make this song the murder ballad in a serial killer movie, already! Spank Rock closes out the mix with 1976’s ‘Love To The World’ by L.T.D., which was remade by Plantlife in 2005 as ‘Luv 4 The World (Why They Gotta Hate?)’, which in turn was used as the opener to label mate Diplo’s ‘FabricLive.24’, reminding long-time listeners what a superior mix that was.
That’s not to say ‘FabricLive.33’ is without its merits, but Spank Rock are a little too eager to impress on their debut mix CD. Hard to tell what anyone would’ve expected from these guys, but something less far-reaching – say, 70 minutes of bassbin-bashing Bmore Club – would’ve been preferable to yet another ultra-eclectic ‘FabricLive’ mix. Fabric made a premature decision to invite these guys onboard; they’re certainly daring in their selection and mixing, but their talent for it hasn’t quite caught up yet. Maybe it would’ve been better in a few months’ time, but as it stands Spank Rock’s ‘FabricLive.33’ is an easily forgotten letdown.