Tabi Bonney...

Particularity. Swagger. Beat. Rhyme. Often we fall victim to parsing apart hip-hop artistry as such. Aside from the occasional comment about how an emcee rides a beat, there is fairly little convo in the way of what amounts to cohesion, to the whole picture. Tabi Bonney is a scuff on the kicks of such linear thinking. That is to say, there is something musically compelling about him, that can’t be identified in any one aspect. Self proclaimed genre blender, he pulls from everything he can get his hands on, producing a sound that occupies a precarious space between alternative, rock, and hip-hop. His shit is gumbo, and I feel that excessively. His lyrics on paper, or beat-free, would leave something to be desired, namely quotables. What you do see on tracks like Superhero is a let-me-clear-my-throat oeuvre, and a well developed union of music and flow that augment one another (think okra in a bangin ass rue). What I hear in Tabi Bonney is possibility, and a sound finding itself. His laid back somewhat sparse cadence can be mistaken for laziness, the same way the blues unexamined, can be mistaken for simple. It will be interesting to see where he takes this sound in future projects. His style is undeniably the changing face of an industry starving for new blood, and artists wiling to take risks, and experiment (i.e. mainstream artists like Kanye West). Hip Hop is turning a corner and seems to be going in one of two directions. Atavism, as artists strive for the Bronx born beat sound of minimalist concrete tracks punctuated with gutter verses and brick hard lyrics (which I f%!@k with), or music that is increasingly “hyphenated” with limited writers (such as myself) trying to cram round peg sounds into so many square categories that are becoming insufficient. Tabi Bonney is a round peg, and if he can continue to push and defy being defined, even by his own patterns and limits, he’s on to something.
Check out one of his videos: Syce it/Escalator


Picture from Tabi Bonney's Myspace