"5 Stars...Bona Fide Classic...World-class...Its Perfect...Album Of The Decade"

[Webby05]

JOE BUHDHA PRESENTS KLASHNEKOFF

"TUSSLE WITH THE BEAST"

*****

The new generation Standard
This must be the most anticipated British rap album since Hijacks 'Horns Of Jericho' made it off the starting blocks in 1991, a full four years after they dropped their era-defining debut single,'Style Wars'. After all, K-Lash's early career was marked by a magnificent run of singles (from 'Daggo Mentality' to 'Zero' then 'Murda') which saw him hailed as the pre-eminent British street poet of his generation. His lyrics were more vivid, his delivery more impassioned, and his tales more believably complex than those of any of his competitors. Klash felt, could hold his own against the best of the best - in any era or territory.

Now five years, a comp for the CD market (The Sagas...) and a mixtape (Focus Mode) on from the majestic 'Daggo...', comes what is indubilably a landmark album for the UK. Klashnekoff is on top form throughout - compelling contradictions and all - and, thanks to Joe Buhdha's incredible production - His treatment of rap records as 'proper' songs; his attention to detail both within the songs themselves and aross the song cycle - the LP moves with effortless grace. In facts, it's impossible to think what might be better have been done better. 'Tussle With The Beast' is the sound of a world-class artist firing on all cylinders.

1. "THE REVOLUTION"
More than just a catch Gil Scott Heron twisting title K-Lash enters the stage with the self-contained poise of a world champ (cool, calm, authoritative, entirely focused) while Buhdah blesses us with a serious, ground-hugging beat that harks back to the days of picked-out Afros and pumping fists. As statements of intent go ("We used to be proud to be black and positive/But now we scream load about crack and hollow-tips"). K's is airtight.

2. "MY LIFE"
K flips poetry over the emotive big bangs of the kind of bittersweet orchestral soul track that might be excised from one of those songs about the hurt that felt so good. But theres no joy in K's pain, and he's at this visceral best, conjuring cumulative pictures from vivid gragments: "Cos this is my life," he says on the chorus, "Jankrow drive-bys, high-rise estates/Doors with iron grates/Braves with iron face/With irons on their waste/With their eys on your papes" Bleak yes, but beautifully realised.

3. "TERRORISE THE CITY" FEAT. KOOL G RAP & KYZA
Most notible, perhaps, the fact that neither K-Lash nor Kyza sound as if they are punching above their weight on a track with the legendary Juice Crew heavyweight. A steriod-enhanced drum machine goes to war with a vicous arpeggiated bass, zhugga-zhugga kick cuts, cockbacks, an avalanche of sirens and a kitchen sink.

4. "REFUSE TO DIE"
K serves up skittering double-time chicken soup over a reverb-soaked reggae number. Note to reggae literate: while most reggae sampling artists reach straight for the pile marked 'Dancehall Classics '82-92', JB has the conjones to opt for the more esoteric, rootsy sounds of something that might be Lee Perry circa 1978 (The Congos?), doing justice to it with a proper song structure and dubbed-up outro. And K-Lash breaks it down with a sung corus that hints at the beautiful fragility of roots legend Hugh Mundell.

5. "QUESTION"
Jumping to the late '70's slow jam welmed to human beat=box sample - a combination that puts in mind the freshness of 'Operation: Doomsday- K raps "To be Nas, do you know it took discipling?/ Im talking hardwork,grind til its crippling" before hitting the verse (an extremely lyrical piano/soprano sax ballad) with another line of enquiry: "So do you know what your living for?/Tell me what you worth is/Is your self-respect reflected on the surface?/Do you serve gor or serve a purpose?" Here he manages to achieve the unachievable: A motivational rap ballad that completly circumnativigates the large lump of cheese that normally dominates such perilous waters.

6. "SAYONARA" FEAT SKIRIBLAH & KYZA
Holy shit! A piano vamp - the bastard child of 'The Gas Fase' and 'The Takeover' - mainlines adrenaline into your chest while 100BPM of hi-hats slap you upside the face. "Yow! Who wanna start arms with the dargert?" asks K-Lash (who's presently kotching in the park with an SLR) about to get all gunny - gunny on the show. And as much as we want to take the moral high ground about that, we can't front: that corus("Raa! Thats the sound of the lionheart!/ Brrrr-up-Brr-Brr-Up that's the sound of the iron spark!") exhilarates so hard we want to kick out  a Tv screen

7. "BIT BY BIT"
More patchwork fragments of dark street narritive, spurred on by some golden era breakbeat classicism - 'Synthetic Substitution' - allied to a drizzle soaked soundtrack for urban paranoia and K saying "I sing carm hymns over synthetic symphony."

8. "REST OF OU LIVES (BLACK ROSE 2)"
Like big Tony Starks, the thing that saves Klash's more unapologetically dirt-doing moments from sliding down the shoot marked 'gratuitious' is not only the sence that there's a bigger picture - that he's identified the straight path and hes trying to walk it - but also the intagible quality of emotional honesty. K, Like Ghost lays it open. And here - dirt doing safely sidelined - he lays it open like never before, with the kind of bittersweet, hautingly beautiful ode to his mother that Jay-Z would have sold his own mother to have written. Humanity on wax.

9. "TWO GUNS BLAZING" FEAT. MR 45
Notts don dappa Mr 45 makes one hell of his all too infequent appearances on wax. And same goes for the drums from Wilson Picketts 'Engine Number 9' - just the kind of cowbell-assisted groove to feel at home in a post- 'Crazy In Love' world. Add to this some fine electro build-ups, a little nasty funk dirt, a killer couplet-trading climax, and it's on.

10. "BUN DEM" FEAT. CAPELTON
Immensely catchy steel band sample - check. Super-heavy samba school bass drop - check. Irresistible drumline bump 'n' crunch - check. Rediculously percussive vocal delivery that manages to rhyme "Joe Buhdha, my main negro" with a Nottingham centric "Shout to Radford Green, Stands and meadows" - check. Overhype 'Bun dem chorus (from the kind of overhype 'Bun dem choruses, Capelton) replete with misc carnival white noice - check. Compelling autobiographical snippets, and a focus-snapping last verse ("Thats why i spit with a passion/ Because I'm sick of blacks clashin'/Blacks flashing gats/Blacksdying in an action-packed fashion") - check, indeed.

As album closers go, it's perfect. Not only is it so aurally axciting that it makes you want to listen to the whole album over, but, more importantly, on an LP where gun-talk is more or less constant undercurrent it gives us with an unambiguous moral lens through which to view the whole. Equally unambiguous is the fact that Joe Buhdha and klashnekoff have given us the British rap album of the decade so far - and it's hard to see it being topped any time soon. A bona fide classic.

"TUSSLE WITH THE BEAST" IS RELEASED ON FEBRUARY 5

HIP HOP CONNECTION

[Webby05]

no love for klashnekoff?

[T-Dogg]

Hard to love somebody I never heard of.

[Miuzi]

I'll buy it, always support homegrown talent.

[KURUPTION-81]

Ive got the sagas of Klashenkoff which was pretty good. Personally though i dont think he is as good as skinnyman but he is still one of the best from the uk.