Recent Articles

Recent Articles By Andrew Friedman

National Features

  • Phoenix New Times
    Canine Crusaders

    That drug-sniffing dog up ahead? He may not be your best friend.

    By Ray Stern
  • Broward-Palm Beach New Times
    The Muscle Men

    Thanks to a string of Florida "anti-aging clinics," baseball's steroid scandal isn't limited to superstars.

    By Michael J. Mooney
  • Miami New Times
    Picked On

    Farm workers earn nada in America's green-bean capital.

    By Janine Zeitlin
  • Village Voice
    "Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal"

    An election-season essay from one of America's greatest playwrights.

    By David Mamet

Open-mindedness is the key to Seattle-based Boom Bap Project's success. On Reprogram, DJ Scene and rappers Destro and Karim take a well-worn underground sound and polish it into something fresh. Standard anti-conformity and societal rejection themes also abound, but when done with a gentle touch and a souled-out, sung hook (as on the title track), the paranoia is outweighed by the poetic. The two emcees bounce lyrics back and forth -- splitting verses between them as frequently as they don't -- although their wordplay is never overtly clever: Puns and one-liners are replaced with lines like, "When they charge me with murder, I pre-empt the sentence." It also doesn't hurt that Seattle's sure-shot producers Vitamin D and Jake One handle the majority of the beatwork on the album -- which makes Reprogram one of the better-executed underground rap joints to drop in recent memory.

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