Quannum Projects
2005
Thanks For Asking
About This Album
Lately underground hip-hop has been all about variation: bringing hypothetically disparate, or at least dissimilar, artists together to create a new sound. The people at Quannum Records have been particularly successful at this amalgamation, much in part due to producer Chief Xcel, who works on most Quannum releases. But for Apsci's debut record, Thanks for Asking, Xcel held back and let producer/MC Ra Lamotta (former bassist/singer for the indie rock group Vitapup) do the work instead. What results is an interesting combination of thoughtful rhymes, near-operatic vocals, and dark electronica beats, plus those computer-trying-to-sound-human interludes that appear so often on hip-hop albums, giving instruction and introduction, and acting perhaps as the vocal manifestation of the Big Brother who is watching your every move. Not that Thanks for Asking is overtly politically -- or conspiracy theory -- oriented: that's too confining. While "See That," featuring Mr. Lif, does criticize modern American government/media/society, Ra's lyrics are sometimes so cryptic -- fed by internal rhyme rather than actual significance -- that it's hard to figure out exactly what he's saying at all (what exactly does "Info supremacist, the nympho's a chemist/The bimbos that blemish, rescind those replenished/I'm an active pursuant that's passively fluent, the axis congruent" mean, for example?) and what is understood falls into normal hip-hop categories: MC skills and sex, most of the tracks focusing on the former.
Track List (try tracks 2,5 and 13)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.