Roni Size and Reprazent: In The Mode : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For a few years in the late Nineties, people were saying that drum-and-bass was going to be the new sound of the underground, if not pop itself. Things didn't quite turn out that way -- and Roni Size clearly doesn't care. On his latest release, In the Mode, Size and his crew, Reprazent, are more concerned with stretching the parameters of the genre on their own terms than with making it accessible to the TRL crowd. Shot through with uncut techno and hip-hop, the grooves on this seventeen-track CD are hard, propulsive and irresistible. Cameos by the Roots' Rahzel, Rage Against the Machine's Zack de la Rocha and Method Man boost marquee value, but the standout tracks in this disc -- including "System Check" and "Who Told You" -- boast stunning rhymes that are spit by the group's own MC Dynamite. The true star of this collection, though, is Size's delicate balancing act of vibe and aesthetic. In the Mode is macho without the asshole quotient, cool without contrivance. (RS 852)

ERNEST HARDY