shut up and listen

Intro – Male spoken Japanese intro with echo. Drums and main riff kick in. Occasional lead vocal ‘Hit me’ and other interjections scattered around the stereo field and sometimes back in the mix. The main riff is a little six note Eastern/Asian sounding plucked string riff. The bass drum is tuned to resonate and in effect it becomes the bass line, and it has a warping African ‘talking drum’ echo to it. It is augmented with a rim shot snare beat and a tabla flourish panned hard right.

First verse – lead vocal rap is actually quite musical with every second line doubled, doubled falsetto words in pauses in the backing (for example ‘Nigger!’) and a layered ‘Holler!’ in a big pause in the music. Doubled backing vox whispering ‘Yes!’ spread wide in stereo, repeats in between lead lines.

First chorus – Vox: Doubled ‘Get ur freak on’ hard panned apart is repeated and interjected with a centred ‘Go!’, as the drums/bass continue with the riff. The chorus is distinguished by the addition of an eerie, slow, low string backing. It is joined half way through by a lead synth line doing a buzzing impression of a theremin. Ends with all the music dropping out and the lead vocal shouting ‘Who’s that bitch?!’. ‘Bitch’ is doubled and effected with a pitch shift that shimmers off with reverb.

Second verse – much like the first. Some minor differences; the ‘Holler!’ doesn’t get a pause in the music to let it come through, instead there is a pause filled with a male sung Hindi?

Second chorus – exactly the same as the first except it ends with a drop and ‘Quiet!’

Third verse – this is where it breaks the pattern. The lead vocal raps as it did in the first two verses but the backing changes quite a bit. The main difference is the main riff is missing for the first half. The drums/bass drop in and out, and a new melodic/harmonic element appears; an orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence punctuating the flow and staggering the groove. When the main riff reappears in the second half of the verse it is not the plucked string instrument but a casiotone keyboard sound in a higher octave.

Third chorus – this is different to the first two choruses. The main riff returns to double with the casio higher version. Instead of the eerie string and synth ‘theremin’ of the first two choruses, there is the orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence of the previous verse playing under the vocal.

Instrumental ending – strangely the song finishes with more than a minute of instrumental break down. Firstly it seems like a simple breakdown with just the drums and high keyboard riff playing for a few bars, underpinned by a howling wind sound effect, but instead of the expected final chorus climax it continues with a spoken Japanese interlude and the complete drop out of the riff. The drums/bass continue as the orchestral/bass synth stabbing, low chord sequence returns for a few bars, then it leaves to be replaced by the eerie low string backing before it and the wind is replaced by the return of the main plucked string riff for the final fade out. Very odd.

Overall a highly unique sounding track. The production is as involved as most hip hop but with very idiosyncratic elements and a strange structure that ends anticlimactically with almost some sort of demo of each part of the production one at a time. Obviously it is the riff and the ‘Get ur freak on’ vocal hook that makes the track work but in some ways it is anti-Western with little resemblance to conventional harmonic or melodic devices and even an inversion of the conventional song structure (with the instrumental intro at the end).