Themselves 'CrownsDown' album

Seven months after the release of theFREEhoudini - the celebrated mixtape that announced Themselves’ return - Doseone and Jel will drop CrownsDown, a careful and vicious exhibition of mastered rap tactics and sampling ethics. Themselves’ third album proper has been gestating in the gut of this seminal group for some time. It’s both a return to form and a honing of what’s come before (Subtle, cLOUDDEAD, Deep Puddle) - both the opus that these lionhearted two were always meant to make, and the album that their hip-hop-obsessed teenaged selves always hoped to hear.

On CrownsDown, Themselves hold back nothing, welding brute skill to a concrete set of tracks that represents an essential ten commandments of rap. In preparation, Doseone and Jel revisited their beloved hip-hop collections (e.g. Gang Starr, Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, Saafir) and whittled down the recurring themes that made their favorite records so sturdy. Each song on CrownsDown represents one of these archetypes - you’ll find the “don’t bite” song, the diss track, the story rap, the “bootleggers beware” song, and the “don’t fuck with my DJ” jam, among others. In this way, Themselves revisit something classic in order to invent their own future-school entry to the annals.

Naturally, things kick off with “Back II Burn,” a “guess who’s back” track (co-written by Pedestrian) that bangs forth on good ol’ fashioned synth hits and heavy thump. Rugged slow rhymes and fast-rap pile-ons are delivered with equal aplomb, and Jel ramps up the distortion as Dose spits vitriol: “Whether shining or shunned, none and all can come/and get undone by the two in the selves one.” “Oversleeping” follows with a Bomb Squad-style sampler salvo and a whirlwind of rhyme that reference-checks lyrics from both Nas and Subtle. Next up is “The Mark,” wherein Dose cautions would-be style thieves, while borrowing his own cadence from Ultramag-era Kool Keith. Jel deals out break-driven electro bounce and a furious, unprecedented rap verse of his own, while D-Styles mans the cuts.

“Gangster Of Disbelief” finds Dose dropping science (the fourth archetype) in a rich baritone atop eerie production that harks back to his and Jel’s debut. He connects the dots from Sisyphus to Werner Herzog’s writings to his own neuroses and worldview, while “Daxstrong” takes on the spread-love model, paying proper tribute to Subtle founder Dax Pierson, left paraplegic after the sextet’s 2005 tour accident. Bandmates Jordan Dalrymple and Markus Acher (13 & God, The Notwist) join Dose for an end-song sing-along of TVOTR magnitude. The next two tracks respectively take well-aimed shots at false musical prophets and modern-day bootleggers (MP3-traders). “You Ain’t It” features an Auto-tuned guest spot from Dax himself, playing the melodic foil to Dose’s jagged and rapid fire words, while “Roman Is As Roman Does” serves up electronics-damaged boom-bap for a set of X-Clan-inspired raps.

“Skinning The Drum” rains praise on Jel, who responds in kind with a trademark live MPC performance vivifying the old “Apache” and “Cold Sweat” breaks. On “Deadcatclear II,” Dose is uncommonly nude, spinning a real-life narrative about playing caretaker to a stray cat’s corpse as a child, discovering incredulity for God in the severity of death. All of which lays foundation for the crux end of CrownsDown, “Gold Teeth Will Roll.” Here, over surging cutup soul, Dose growls, “Who will come kill me/taking their rings off like women/because I will swear on their weakness,” casting Themselves in the final archetype: righteous defenders of the culture. This sentiment cuts to the core of CrownsDown. In carving out their own classic, Doseone and Jel not only aim to topple those wrongly kinged, but lay down their own sweat-and-blood-made crowns at the feet of the thing they admire most.

THEMSELVES

10/06 San Francisco, CA Bottom of The Hill *
11/19 Austin, TX Highball #
11/20 Denton, TX Hailey’s #
11/21 Baton Rouge, LA Spanish Moon #
11/22 New Orleans, LA The Parish Room - HOB #
11/23 Atlanta, GA 529 #
11/24 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506 #
11/25 Washington, DC Rock and Roll Hotel #
11/27 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory #
11/28 Cambridge, MA Middle East Downstairs #
11/29 Providence, RI Jerky’s Live Music Hall #
12/01 Toronto, ONT El Mocambo #
12/02 Ann Arbor, MI Blind Pig #
12/03 Chicago, IL Reggie’s #
12/04 Minneapolis, MN Varsity #
12/05 Milwaukee, WI Cactus Club #
12/11 Salt Lake City, UT Kilby Court
12/12 Salt Lake City, UT Urban Lounge

* = w/ Busdriver
# = w/ Eyedea & Abilities

Themselves biography
After a six-year hiatus, Themselves return on a rampage of heady rap wrung from hardworking hands. Of course, the duo of Jeffrey “Jel” Logan and Adam “Doseone” Drucker are never too far from the frontlines of good art and honest music. Last year, their Subtle sextet released its third album, the critically acclaimed and wildly adventurous ExitingARM, and a 2005 collaboration with Germany’s the Notwist yielded the cult gem 13 & God. There have been solo offerings, guest appearances, and ceaseless touring, but not peep from the name behind 2002’s left-field classic The No Music. That blessed interim has seen Doseone and Jel become the fearless musicians and exacting artists they’d always meant to be. Now, hungrier than ever, Themselves are here to scrawl a bold new chapter across rap’s too-stale tome. Furthermore,they set out to accomplish this feat unadorned, returning to hip-hop’s most cardinal and carnal form, the number two: the DJ and the MC—neck-snapping beats and precision prose—accompanied by a little righteous indignation, of course.

Such things do have roots, naturally, and Themselves’ are as colorful as one would expect. Drucker was born in Napa, Idaho, to a hippie pair whose relationship wouldn’t outlast its ideals. Logan was raised in Chicago by Pentecostal parents. While the former spent his preteen years bouncing between Philadelphia and New Jersey, surviving by his mile-a-minute wit and ceaseless imagination, Logan nursed an early love for the decidedly safe sounds of Chuck Berry into raging crush on the unhinged backbone of rap music: beats. He’d pump gas in order to save up for the hallowed SP-1200 drum machine (of which he’s now a renowned master); Drucker would hone his unmatched rap styles in street battles before moving to Cincinnati in his late teens. In that city’s annual “Scribble Jam” competition, as “Doseone,” he famously battled Eminem in a final-round showdown—as well as one of his idols, Freestyle Fellowship’s P.E.A.C.E.—and the experience left him hollow. Meanwhile, Jel had forged a sound unto himself, but couldn’t find a voice able to keep pace. In 1998, tapes were exchanged through the venerable DJ Mr. Dibbs, and history came to be made.

Of that initial meeting, much would be born: Doseone’s ambitious, self-released debut Hemispheres (1998); Themselves’ seminal unveiling, Them (1999); the landmark collaborative project, Deep Puddle Dynamics (also featuring Sole, Alias and Atmosphere’s Slug); and the Anticon label itself. Soon, Dose and Jel moved to Oakland in order to spark a movement with Anticon’s other co-founders, two of which (Odd Nosdam, and Yoni Wolf of WHY?) were in yet another celebrated group with Drucker, the eternally lauded cLOUDDEAD. Since, Doseone and Jel have continued to challenge rap—and our conception of music itself—every step of the way. Through their joint projects and an impressive body of solo work (see 2006’s Soft Money, by Jel, or Doseone’s self-released spoken-word album, Soft Skulls), these two have been nurturing the kind of legacy that only gets better with age. In 2009, Themselves return to a core that’s been warming, strengthening, and expanding all the while.

Do you also would like to share your opinion? If so, please register or login here.

Details

Popular Songs

New Songs

Tracklisting

Themselves - CrownsDown