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Baby Elephant is the latest musical venture of producer Prince Paul and sees him collaborating with P-Funk keyboard maestro Bernie Worrell and long-time accomplice Newkirk, and features several guest appearances, including those of George Clinton and Nona Hendryx. Together they have modelled a hip-hop odyssey that amounts to an urban music version of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
In this case the great, lost artefact is the funk, and during their worldwide search they discover it lurking in a variety of guises. There is smooth jazz (Baby Elephants N Thangs) segueing into pure and hazy hip-hop (Plainfield), reggae (Cool Runnins), r’n’b (If You Don’t Wanna Dance), soul (Crack Addicts in Love), blues and honky tonk (Turn My Teeth Up!). Besides the more easily recognisable styles some interesting sonic experiments are conducted along the way, the most successful of which culminate in the heavy trip-hop of ‘Even Stranger’ with its atmospheric North African infusion and crashing beats.
Linking the whole project together are a number of comic skits, with which Prince Paul has become synonymous over the years, having first introduced the concept for De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High and Rising’. Many of these narratives act as threads to the story, that being the continued search for the secrets of da funk. Others feature excerpts from interviews with the various collaborators, not least Worrell himself for ‘100 Keyboards’, who then goes on to revisit his past work with Parliament and Talking Heads for the album highlight ‘How Does The Brain Wave?’, a dense funk pile-driver that imagines a collaboration between Funkadelic and Herbie Hancock, and features a typically vibrant vocal contribution from David Byrne.
To quote the skit entitled ‘Plug’ ‘funk manifests itself in all styles’, which is a point that ‘Turn My Teeth Up!’ illustrates frequently and meticulously, and proves that the Baby Elephant project has it in abundance.
RICHARD STOKOE
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