Hip Hop/Rap: Jon Kennedy's Take My Drum to England

I gotta be honest. I don’t know much about Hip Hop or Rap. I mean, of course, back in da’ day, I had white-boy-accessible rap (Beastie Boys, Run-DMC), but I essentially dismissed most rap and hip hop as being repetitive, derivative, and lacking the substance I thought belonged in music.

Geez, it’s tough to be so pretentious in 9th Grade, living in the suburbs, not aware how much rap spoke the truth about the world many people faced, not aware how much hip hop rhythms would soon infect rock music making rhythms I would come to love. Yet, I gotta be honest. That’s where I’ve been on Hip Hop and Rap. I gotta be honest, because if I’m going to set out to write a little bit about the Hip Hop offerings of Jon Kennedy, it can’t be musings about how innovative or similar it is to what’s already been done; I don’t know those things. All I can do is write about the world that is opening up to me through the rhythms, samples, and mixes of Take My Drum to England.

Jon Kennedy’s album, released by Grand Central Records, begins by reminding the listener that this is English Hip Hop. A little British accented boy declares that his name is “Jon Kennedy.” From there, we step into multi-layered tracks with excellent rhythms tracks (whether drums or programming). Kennedy plays everything himself, and draws from hip hop, electronica, funk, R&B, bossanova, and jazz.

“Mystery” begins with the noises of throwing out the trash (or maybe the sound of the recycling man sorting through the cans and bottles), and in the hands of Kennedy, that sample becomes the rhythm track for a perfect movie score track.

Kate Rogers’ gorgeous vocal on “Secrets of the World” comes eight tracks into the album. The vocal enters at just the right moment to speak a beautiful word in the midst of the otherwise instrumental tracks (albeit with some spoken/sung samples). Again I can see the potential for the use of Kennedy in a movie score. After “Brown Acid,” an off-kilter piano funk track which begins with the announcement at Woodstock warning of some bad acid, Rogers’ voice breaks in on “Secrets” with a sweetness like the music for a hopeful montage after a series of stressful scenes.

Then there’s the sitar combined with drum loop (“East is East”), funk with rap spoken through heavy processing (“The Loafer”), and fall leaves cascade to a funk-jump-beat (“A Portrait of Autumn”). The album ends with a piano-led soundscape (“Waiting for the Sea to Freeze”).

This album is atmospheric with a backbeat, sound art that gets a groove on, a hip hop center with a candy-coating of soul, jazz, and all things funky. Kennedy has taken me into a new realm musically, but I’m not asking to go back. I’m liking it here in the Hip Hop/Rap section of The Spectrum.

Thanks to Aowyn at Grand Central Records for her help. Check out Jon Kennedy and other Grand Central artists at www.grandcentralrecords.com.