Basement Jaxx: Rooty : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Even as pop music gets more bleepy and hip-hop more digital, many house- and techno-music aesthetes are engaged in bringing dance music out of the underground and onto the radio. For the U.K.'s Basement Jaxx, "pop" and "funk" are very elastic concepts; with Rooty they fine-tune their classy thump into a pop-house hybrid that owes something to a little guy named Prince. It isn't that their tracks sound like him (except for the lusty "I Want U," which is so paisley-purple it's startling); instead, the Jaxx have assimilated Prince's gift for fusing genius grooves with unstoppable melodies. "Do Your Thing" has a speakeasy roll, a post-human Fats Waller solo and lots of Star Wars bot-bleeps. "Get Me Off" is the nastiest little bit of dance porn slathered onto aluminum in ages - it's all devilishly horny femme vocals, a two-ton bass line and a host of synth and sequencer sirens, alarms and warning bells, which ring maniacally like Looney Tunes sound effects signaling "imminent sexual arousal." The most important notion that Basement Jaxx have borrowed from Prince? The idea that sex, like funk, should be as silly as it is sweaty.

PAT BLASHILL
(RS 872 - July 5, 2001)