PNC's Bazooka Kid is out today, an album which I can do little more than implore you to buy. It will be one of the ten best rap records of the year from anywhere, seriously. I first got it in advance of our interview a month back and fell in love with the big, testosterone-and-coke powered hits, like current single Tonight, and last year's untouchable trifecta of Take Me Home, Find Me and Moonlight Dancing. See the clips below if you've not heard them.
You can hardly blame me for being distracted by those huge bouncing titties, right? They're just so damn big, almost grotesque, and so much fun. But behind them lurks a sensitive side, and it's that which keep you coming back. Final track 1/2 Kast is a quiet landmark, laidback and penetrative in its discussion of the life of a mixed race kid in New Zealand, while Gone, with Che Fu, is straight harrowing.
P and gangs get a lot of press and political heat in this country, but little puts you inside the seductive power and terrifying realities of each like Gone does. "You can hit the strip club/ get your dick sucked/ If you got something she can take a hit off". Sad as hell, but these are lives being lived all round the country right now, and the fact most of our other artists aren't singing about it doesn't change that.
The song I'm posting (for one week only, get it while it's hot) is It Doesn't Matter. Ironically (if you've read my interview in this month's RG you know how he feels about this) it's over a looped soul beat, but the sound is crisp and the tone reflective. The lyrics have a real Jay-Z feel, like Never Change or This Can't Be Life, with PNC "obsessed with change like Barack Obama", dreaming of a time when his "friends livin' like E, Turtle and Drama".
Where the album starts off portentous and heavy with dread (the intro is heavy as hell), before quickly coming the best party around, it closes out far more subtly, the hangover which inevitably follows, but is no more impactful for it. There just isn't a weak song here, and after Smashproof's monumental Brother, Tourettes' genius work on Who Says You Can't Dance To Misery (more on that soon), PNC proves that those who wrote off local rap after a flat few years need to pay attention, because it's primed and peaking right now.
PNC – It Doesn't Matter (From
Bazooka Kid, out today on Dirty Records for free download 'til Tuesday 9 June: UPDATE, the download's finished folks. Go get the album instead)
To download the song right click (PC) or ctrl click (Mac) the link and choose 'save target as' or 'save link as' from the menu.
Go and
read PNC's great Behind The Music series on his own Slicktalk blog here. Alternatively, watch these clips. Seriously, who put out better singles here last year? No one, that';s who.