1/5
Though five-year, 40-guest Spirit of Apollo’s immensity rivals that of the actual space program, N.A.S.A.-pair Squeak E Clean and DJ Zegon prove their chain of musical relativity is only as strong as its weakest link: them.
Operating under a unite-the-world manifesto (proclaimed with first-year-art-student vigor over an album-starting swarm of mechanical junebugs and sparsely intellectual xylophone), the duo rips context from locality specifism, pasting rhymes gleaned from North America’s hit makers over an artificial smattering of South American instrumentals, while only slightly ignoring the project’s cosmos sub-obsession.
Standouts Fatlip, E-40 and Method Man loan the project enough listenability to forget the cheap mixes they’re covering ‘mdash; but most guests get caught in the ultimately boring hiplash caused by this concept album’s lack thereof, and many remain hideously squandered, glued indiscriminately onto N.A.S.A.’s my-first-keyboard beats. We’re left wondering how Clean and Zegon ever convinced so many allstars to join their roster. Whatever their method, it started a self-perpetuating bandwagon that has spiraled so out of control no one wants to be left out ‘mdash; it’s just too bad they’re way better at name dropping than they are dropping beats.
N.A.S.A. is playing at the Casbah tonight. Doors open at 8:30 p.m. and tickets cost $12.