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February 5-11, 2009
buzz@boulderweekly.com
• Back to the future
Local teenagers take ’70s rock into the new millennium
by Adam Trask
• Rising star
Detroit rapper Black Milk is about to break
by Dan Hinkel
 Back to the future
Local teenagers take ’70s rock into the new millennium
by Adam Trask
Currently, the mainstream teen music scene in America is a festering cesspool of mediocrity and cliché. Untalented Lolitas such as Miley Cyrus “perform” on stage in outfits that would make a two-dollar hooker blush, while the Jonas Brothers are trying their best to turn rock into a Disney Channel infomercial.
But fear not — there is hope for the future.
Statewide Emergency is a local high school foursome that has just completed a raw, promising debut called Another Point of View about love, war, politics and dead rabbits. It seems that Boulder’s rock scene, with its dying breath, has received a sip of life-giving water. This teenage quartet has dodged the manufactured rock and substandard punk that plague many of their contemporaries by operating under the radar, boasting boisterous guitar rock fare steeped in ’70s counterculture that demonstrates musical skill well beyond their years. Of course, like all talented young rockers, they’re not quite sure what all the fuss is about.
“I have to say I [am] surprised when people tell me how good it is,” vocalist-guitarist Matt Pardis confesses. “We kind of had the idea of recording at the end of the summer. So we were writing a lot of songs in the summer, and we didn’t have enough of a chance to play some of them live or really analyze the songs to make sure they were really good before we recorded them. We were in a rush to get finished with it, and we didn’t have that big of a budget to work with, either. There’s some sloppiness that you can pick up listening to it.”
Fair enough, but the core of the album is honest and gritty in all the right places. It makes one wonder what Statewide Emergency might have in store for the future.
“It’s tough to know for sure, since we’ve only got maybe three or four new songs since we wrote the first record,” says Paradis. “I think it might sound slightly more modern. I think it’s gonna be more melodic. A lot of [Another Point of View] is just that ballsy rock sound that a lot of other bands in Boulder have. We’re not going away from that, but making it more melodic, while still retaining its vintage vibe.”
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On the Bill
Statewide Emergency and Rogue Sound open for Badfish at 9 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
 Rising star
Detroit rapper Black Milk is about to break
by Dan Hinkel
Right now, Black Milk is a regional underground power in the wreckage of Detroit. He is an established name among the true heads and a star on the blogs, which are what the Billboard charts used to be, except not indicative of profitability.
But Black Milk sees his production career going toward that rarified big-money dimension, where legacy rap names work with must-hire producers, sonic brands such as Kanye, Just Blaze, No I.D., DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, The Neptunes and the brilliant, shameless Timbaland, who produced three albums while you were reading that sentence.
“That day’s gonna come when people are like, ‘You need that Black track for that album,” Black Milk said on his cell phone as he tooled around Detroit, at one point nearly flattening a dog in the road. “I’ll sell a beat to almost anybody, as long as they got that bread.”
You can see Black Milk opening for Common — verbally agile, socially conscious, totally ripped — on the Feb. 19 hip-hop superbill at The Fox Theatre. That Black Milk will still be the 2009 Black Milk, not the future top-level producer Black Milk. Right now, he is trying to build a fan base with his J Dilla-referencing, snare drum-abusing beats and competent, workmanlike rhymes. However, for this wretched economic moment, he’ll settle for 100,000 fans.
“Real life, the music industry is just so fucked up right now,” he said.
Black Milk is most notable, so far, as the late-period producer for seminal Motor City rap group Slum Village. Slum Village is most notable as the one-time employer of the late J Dilla/Jay Dee, the beatified producer who died of lupus-related health problems in 2006. Black Milk is not ashamed to be influenced by Dilla. Indeed, he believes Dilla is the best producer in hip-hop history, the man whose music best described Detroit’s post-industrial decay: “ugly-beautiful,” Black Milk said.
Black Milk’s sound defies encapsulation, except for the uniting thread of the drums. He brings to his electronic productions what Steven Adler contributed to Guns N’ Roses: a single-minded enthusiasm for hitting the shit out of the drums.
“I make sure the drums are smacking. And people really notice that,” Black Milk said.
He is right. Black Milk’s drum machine cannot be ignored. His solid recent album, Tronic, kicks off with “Losing Out,” a thrilling biographical origin story tied together with snare hits like action-movie punches. Then there is the startling “Give The Drummer Sum,” an epileptic funk head-nodder that sounds like the product of a drum set being kicked down a stairwell. His drums can be distracting, draggy or rhythmically experimental beyond listenability, but they are never soft.
And it should be mentioned, the dude raps. His rhyming is secondary to his production, and he has no pretensions of being Detroit’s Rakim or Nas or Andre 3000. He admits his flow is not lyrical or laden with “crazy metaphors” or “colorful punch lines,” as he put it. He’s about being in sync with his beats, and his comfort with the material shows. He wants the listener to hear that his jogging flow fits with his tracks.
“I always fall into a certain pocket of the beat that most people probably wouldn’t hear,” he said.
Black Milk’s beats are the unchallenged stars of his albums and mixtapes, and he is the production crux of a Detroit scene that is building buzz even as the city itself sinks into its regional apocalypse. Eminem — the Michigander who made millions of dollars by being white and an extremely talented rapper — has yet to come all the way back from a self-imposed exile, but other rappers are pounding out underground work not unlike the kind that launched the most lucrative career in Detroit rap history. Guilty Simpson put the game on notice in 2008 with a few beats by Black Milk on his debut album, Ode To The Ghetto. Elzhi — Slum Village member and reliable show-stealer — used Black Milk on almost every track of his 2008 album, The Preface, including the breathtaking “Motown 25.” And heads are waiting for Random Axe, the awesomely named collaboration between Black Milk, Guilty Simpson and Sean Price from Boot Camp Clik.
The way he sees his career going, Black Milk will keep developing his music. He thinks he is still learning how to produce beats. He wants to sharpen his skills, so that, one day, rappers will seek his production because his sound is special, and he is the only one who does it exactly right.
Black Milk recalled the first beat he ever sold to Slum Village a few years ago. The $500 check “wasn’t about shit,” but he loved the feeling of selling a track to his heroes. He envisions himself repeating that feat, except with more 0s on the check.
“That day is gonna come.”
On the Bill
Black Milk opens for Common at 9 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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