Big Boi: Sir Lucious Leftfoot, the son of Chico Dusty: Review

It’s refreshing to encounter such an effortlessly forward thinking hip-hop record as Sir Lucious Leftfoot:The Son of Chico Dusty. Big Boi has made a masterful album of perfectly crafted and hugely inventive pop songs, whilst showing off the full extent of his microphone repertoire. It’s an assured example of what commercial hip-hop should sound like in 2010.

Mm hmmm.

Commercially oriented hip-hop, which is to say- music which embraces the mainstream, has always tread a precarious tightrope of authenticity, from it's knowingly pandering to audience expectation, to confounding it and pushing the culture forward. But whilst the stage has never been better set for rap artists to get their fifteen minutes- too often, the ones that make it have fallen into the former category, only for their original fans to cry "sell out" (read: Dizzy Rascal). Prominent artists have been reduced to bit-part raps on a chart-topping middle-eight (Clipse on Justin Timbalake’s Like I Love You), or the parodic re-performance of nihilistic street-hustling, real or imaginary. That posteuring and game-playing could’ve become an inherent part of the lexicon- of course some swagger is perfectly valid, but not for it’s own sake.

Whilst no serious hip-hop fan could doubt Antwon ‘Big Boi’ Patton’s mic credentials, it’s been a shame that he’s had to live in Outkast compadre Andre 3000’s effervescent shadow. A new audience of casual hip-hop listeners bought the Outkast double album, but only ever spun 'The Love Below', dismissing 'Big Boi's offering as juvenile thug-talk, therein irrelevant to their existences. Rather than comparing the records on merit, Patton was ignored on the basis of an incorrect presumption. But were it not for his bandmate releasing 'Hey Ya!', Big Boi would have been sitting on single of the year for 'I Like The Way u Move'. But with his debut solo album for Def Jam, Big Boi should dispell any of those comparisons. This is his moment, and he knows it.

The record is enamored with the grandiose, but whereas similarly pop-inclined rapper Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III was a triumph of style over substance, watching it's central performer became more fascinating than listening to his records- Sir Lucious Leftfoot is a collection of wonderful songs, delivered with a flawless consistency- it’s central character only a conduit for the craft.

It’s refreshing that whilst he's no philosopher, Big Boi avoids the trappings of gangsta-nostalgia. Yes, he pays it lip service- but only by indulging it with irony. Predomionantely, it's a relentless flow of puns, aphorisms and word-play. Even on songs like Be Still, where after a minute’s music you can’t really fathom how Patton is gonna find space to rap between the avant-garde beat work- it’s an unwarranted fear. As soon as he opens his mouth, the music instantly twists to his voice, as though there isn’t a beat in the world he couldn’t rap over. His is a dextrose and malleable voice, able to shift and turn in a microsecond. On the carnivalesque Night Night, he seems to invent new ways of rhyming in metre, putting syllables where they just didn’t fit before. Pay attention, and your jaw drops. His flow is playful, unpredictable but engrossing, flirting with rhythm- never staying in a groove for too long. One moment arguing against beats, only to then conspire with them.

"Lucious. Loo-shus. Yeah, that's right!"

Over the record’s 57 minutes, there’s a staggering amount of ideas fighting for competition. Rather than establishing a globe-trotting style akin to Mos Def’s fine recent work The Ecstatic, Patton crafts these into a cohesive whole. The first listen might seem daunting- at any single moment there’s just so much happening. On opening track Daddy Fat Sax, dreamy 80s synths compete with military drums, vocoder samples are twisted, and casiotone glitches fly in the stratosphere. The effect is powerful if completely uncategorisable- it’s ability to effect a feeling of both serenity and momentum at once.

Similarly, after Tangerine’s fuzzed guitar has lulled you into a driven haze, a wild electric lead trades places with a reverb-heavy jazz piano- taking turns to enforce a change on the track’s mood. It’s forever inventive, a trick carried over the 16 tracks, employing both respect for loops and full mastery of both studio and songwriting. The results are dynamic, transformative, joyful songs. Patton just makes it sound easy, an impression that betrays the 3 years plus that went into the record’s production.

You put it on for the tunes; numbers like Shutterbugg and Tangerine showing off the grace of quality instrumentation and bright arrangement- but you stick around for the rhymes. Describing the record as his ‘Luke Skywalker becoming a Jedi moment’, it’s the sound of an enormously talented rapper with years of experience on his peers, knowing that when you’re good- go with it.