Aram Danesh & The Super Human Crew- The Grind Review
Posted by Ian Parmenter on 11.29.2008
Great music can come from the most unlikely of places. This is one of them.
Track Listing:
1) Fade To Black
2) Money Matrix
3) Someday
4) Love To Hate You
5) Em.poor.i.am
6) Super Human Crew
7) The Grind
8) Butterfly Jones
9) Get It In Gear
10) Eays To The Sky
The first rule of the Internet: Don’t talk about the Internet. The second rule of the Internet? If there’s no Wikipedia page about it, it doesn’t exist. Well… following that rule, these guys don’t exist. But I’m sure a lot of people will tell you, part of the fun in life is finding things that you didn’t know existed.
So, who are these guys, who don’t even have a Wikipedia page? Well, they have a MySpace... but I refuse to go to MySpace for any reason whatsoever, so I'll have to go with what the label provided me. Aram Danesh is the most unlikely of musical frontmen, an Iranian-born guitar player and real estate executive in his late 30s. He also apparently owns the label this disc is released on, so if this info is wrong, he's the guy to blame. After three jazz-based solo discs, he formed the "multiracial pop/rock/hip-hop collective" known as the Super Human Crew. This is their second album, the first being released in 2005.
What that means to me is that, these guys are about twenty years late. Had they been around back in the late ‘80s or even early ‘90s (And damned if saying that doesn’t make me feel old), they would have easily been one of the top hip-hop acts in the industry. They’ve got beats, great voices, and have great songwriting talent backing them up. It all gets wrapped up in a tight little album that turned me back into a ‘tween’, listening to the local R&B/Hip-Hop station on my headphones after bedtime, when the songs not only had a certain sound, but they had something to say beyond "Let's party" or "Let's screw."
The Grind is a breath of fresh air that reminds you of better days. Right from the first track, “track here”, it brings back memories of 80’s hip-hop, back in the day when it occupied this strange place between R&B, Dance, and Rap, mixing all three into its own musical niche. Though the rhymes and themes are modern, the way they’re delivered as a package is very much old school in a way we don’t often see anymore. Really, the whole disc is a tour of the different styles that get labeled as Hip-Hop. You get the playful-sentimental relationship track (“Love To Hate You”), the more modern-sounding near-rap track (“Money Matrix”), the reggae styled track (“Get It In Gear”), the smooth yet political track with something to say (“Someday”), you even get the ‘self high-five’ self-titled track (“Super Human Crew”).
So… where to begin? First off, I have to love any group that tries to put as many comic book references into a song as possible; in “Super Human Crew,” the four-color quips fly fast and furious, from the easy-to-spot to the more obscure that only comic fans will be able to say “Hey, I get that!” So, they’ve got geek cred. But that’s track six; they don’t bother geeking out on us until after they establish their street cred by talking about every-day issues in the first (and pretty much every other) track. That tells me that not only is the music good, but the production of the album, the thought that went into song choice and order, was on the ball; had “Super Human Crew” been the first track, it would have been easy to peg this as a lightweight nerdcore with delusions of mainstreaminess. Instead, they come across as legitimate hip-hop artists who happen to have a geek side. It’s an excellent decision and one that reminds you albums are more than just a collection of songs.
Each song has a beat to it that, while distinct, still feels related to the others; even when the tone shifts between songs, they all sound like they’re from the same source, the same hearts and minds. They know the boundaries of hip-hop, they flirt with the edges, they never step over them. Most importantly, the music is infectious; you keep tapping out the beat long after the song is over. This is the first time in a long time where I can say the only real complaint I have with the album is that it’s too short; even though its ten tracks, 45-46 minutes of music, it feels like you fly through the album in under half an hour.Which is too bad; this is music with a message and a beat, with talent and heart, and you want to be listening to it for hours.
The 411: It’s hard to call something ‘classic’ hip-hop when it has modern influences, but that’s exactly what we have here: Good old-school hip-hop, in a variety of flavors. With fresh beats and some smooth rhymes, the Super Human Crew doesn’t break any new ground, but they show that they know the old ground like the back of their hand and leave you wishing they had more there for you to listen to.
