December 05, 2003 @ 2:46 pm

Elephant Man - Good 2 Go (VP/Atlantic)

by: Joseph Patel

This is how tricky dancehall’s riddim culture is: Only after a dozen or so DJs chat, sing, or flex on a given beat will a producer’s riddim start to get any real play.

This is how tricky dancehall’s riddim culture is: Only after a dozen or so DJs chat, sing, or flex on a given beat will a producer’s riddim start to get any real play. Think U.S. record companies are having trouble sorting out the legalities of downloading? What would the suits do if one Neptunes instrumental got to 20 different MCs and each one of them released separate singles? In Jamaica, though, that lawless, dubplate ecology actually works. If the beat is the same, only two things distinguish any MC from another when a single accelerates to ubiquity: songwriting and style. Elephant Man’s got the latter wrapped up like an old-school Macho Man Savage head squeeze. His latest album, Good 2 Go, is a classic caricature of his personality: He is loud, he is somewhat unruly, and he’s got a sermonizing ebullience about him that would make a rambunctious Ol’ Dirty Bastard look like a Fabolous on Vicodin. With his famously twisted facial contortions and fiery yellow hair, Elephant Man has been called the Busta Rhymes of dancehall. And with good reason. Like Busta, Elephant doesn’t rhyme so much as string together dexterous, melodic shouts and half-grunts. But Elephant is too feverish and too disheveled a vocalist to know the subtleties of restraint. His robust style can breathe over the spare, clipped beats on a song like “Fassy All di Way” and the rowdy, aircraft-guiding instructional “Signal di Plane.” On “Stop Hitch/Bun Down That,” however, egged on by a hiccuping, synthesized bass line, he fires off a tongue-twisting rhyme about his sweet tooth for sugary females. His quick-draw patois and machine-gun vocal acrobatics make for an impressive sonic gymnastic routine. Which leaves songwriting as the only barrier between Elephant Man and American pop conquest, where his man Sean Paul awaits, pimp chalice in hand. Elephant makes strides, as on “Pon de River, Pon de Bank,” where he is a wild beast tamed by an innocent children’s singsong melody. His flow is punchy and energetic, while his scratchy falsetto remains distinctively charming. And the infectious chant of “Pon de river, pon de bank” beckons all who attempt the dance of the same name. Elephant also follows a long-standing tradition—where Jamaican artists interpret American pop songs—providing a hook-by-numbers haven for his garrulous style. On “The Pain,” Elephant and his crew flip Oran “Juice” Jones’s “The Rain” into an energetic posse cut. “Fan Dem Off” is a vestige of bad Americana that has targeted Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” (made famous by Rocky III). It’s oddly perfect, as the song’s faux-inspirational chords resonate with Elephant Man’s raspy, burnt-lung timbre striving to be heard. While Elephant doesn’t live up to his alias (the Energy God) on all of his songs, the less charismatic tunes on the disc are perhaps planted to fuel his fire during his raucous live shows—akin to dancehall circuses. But remember riddim culture. Dancehall Darwinism is survival of the single. Black pop music doesn’t stir the States unless there’s a succession of blazing singles. And Elephant Man, unlike Sean Paul, or, say, Shaggy, has a limited fund of accessible sounds. After dancehall’s recent successes in the U.S., many have been questioning whether reggae is really ready to invade America’s pop world. Judging by the uncompromising effort of Good 2 Go, Elephant seems more interested in only taunting the U.S. with his rowdy style.

Article tags: Elephant, Man, Good, 2, Go, VP/Atlantic 

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