Crack

Jam Baxter is unlike any MC to have ever penned a verse – he really is that good.

First things first, he is single-handedly saving the UK hip hop scene from the 21st century quicksand by tackling clinically insane subject matter in an utterly unique fashion. Topics such as juicing organic fruits, staring at his bony ET fingers and swimming with sea monsters of varying shapes and sizes dominate his bars.

Secondly, he word processes all of his verses in a highly secretive fashion at Baxter HQ (which is both weird and fully out of the ordinary) and thirdly, his debut solo release, Rinse Out Friday/Spack Out Monday is an utter masterpiece.

With many touting him as the finest MC that these grotty shores have conjured up in a long, long while, it is fair to say that this guy is much more than just another rowdy hype-man with a staffordshire bull terrier and a penchant for frowning and shouting. How can I best describe him? Let's put it this way, if you were to tread on Baxter's trainers he would not give a flying fuck.

Baxter explains: “Being pretty much completely inept at life in general influences my music. I feel distanced from those more standard hip hop stereotypes of everything being so glitzy and polished simply because that's not real life - not as I know it anyway. Rather than trying to pretend it is and portray a squeaky clean image and shit, I just like, you know, empty my brain on a page.”

In a world where most hip hop artists chat egotistical jibber jabber until their faces grow old, Baxter is not afraid to stay true to how it really is. His music is dominated by references to the kind of daily happenings that most people (and certainly most rappers) would be keen to keep hush hush and bury deep in their skeleton-riddled closets, rather than cement said happenings onto heaps of CDs for listeners to pick apart. The snot, the falling flat on your face on uneven paving slabs, the flopped chirpses, the kebab juice stains on your brand new shirt – every detail of this guys utterly wonky existence is catalogued within his grotesque (but glorious) rhymeschemery.

“I'm not going to pretend I'm popping Cristal at the bar and sitting in the front row of basketball games.”

Rinse Out Friday/Spack Out Monday is the end result of Baxter lurking around word processing apparatus for the best part of two years, tapping his thoughts and annotating his experiences onto a screen. He tells me that he spends most of his time at work writing verses and testing them out on his cigarette breaks when no-one is looking (or listening).

The release features the efforts of two of the UK's new breed of emerging beat makers who take equal responsibility for producing one half of the album each. Kerem Fraiche - “a smooth motherfucker” - and Naïve - “this guy owns like 8 old-school analog synths” - make the music, plus there is a plethora of guest emcees adding rosemary, cracked pepper and Oxo cubes to the wonderful broth, including: Verb T, Dr Syntax, Contact Play, Fliptrix and Mowgli, to name but a few. The hugely ambitious double album (hence the duel title) takes the UK Hip Hop rulebook and throws it in a huge bin full of other boring shit. For Baxter, it seems writing verses is much more about catharsis than anything else.

“I wanted the album to nicely capture the change of moving from Brighton, which was kind of a bubble of mash up, where there are no responsibilities and all the free time in the world, to moving back to London and having to hold down a 9-to-5 and adjusting to real life. As I see it, I seem to be either out on the town getting utterly mash up, or completely spooning out at my desk at work and that is where the title came from. In a more general sense, it's a reflection of my two mind states. One is a vague sense of despair at the way the wider world is heading (Spack out Monday), whereas (Rinse out Friday) is linked to times when I am imbued with a complete sense of apathy and acceptance that this is the way it is so you might as well just have a whole load of jokes and not worry about it. I'm a man of two moods in that respect.”

One thing is for sure, if UK hip hop is to ever return to the glory days of the early 2000's, Jam Baxter will play a significant part in the renaissance.

Rinse Out Friday/Spack Out Monday is out now on High Focus Records.

Words by Thomas Hawkins

Tune: Grenadier

http://www.myspace.com/jambaxter

http://www.high-focus.com/

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