Mike Ladd: Negrophilia: The Album : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Published in 2000, "Negrophilia" the book, by art historian Petrine Archer-Straw, is a study of jungle fever: the hunger for and co-opting of American black expression after World War I by a Parisian avant-garde besotted with hot jazz and Josephine Baker. Negrophilia [The Album] is poet-programmer Mike Ladd's spin through the same muddied waters -- envy, prejudice, assimilation -- in a new, hip-hop century. Ladd is uncommonly terse for a rapper; lyrically he steps out on less than half the tracks here. When he does, the effect is blunt: "Every day the land we lay looks more and more like L.A./From Dakar to Harare" ("Worldwide Shrink Wrap"). But this voodoo stew of Afro-Latin propulsion, electro-jazz and laptop sorcery is a fierce argument for collision and color blindness. Ladd's band -- including firestorm drummer Guillermo E. Brown, pianist Vijay Iyer (both co-producers) and trumpeter Roy Campbell -- cooks this tangle of worry and dada to perfection. "Sprinkle on the Duchamp, and all get down," Ladd commands. It's not hard.