Unsigned: Necro

Album: Gory Days

www.necrohiphop.com

The latest CD/poster delivery from my postman appears to depict: (1) a blubbery American being given head by a scantily clad woman in a graveyard and (2) a blubbery American holding a pistol in the mouth of a woman. Ah, this�ll be the Necro package, then.

My first impressions on pressing play are that this is the worst music I�ve ever heard. The beats are crunchy, staccato and grooveless, the piano loop is cheesy beyond anything Eminem has ever rhymed over, and the production sounds like a demo. I�m impressed by Necro�s flow, though. He�s a competent MC and sits well on the beat. Unfortunately I�m finding it hard to concentrate on his flow because I keep getting distracted by the words. Necro�s obsessions are, of course, violence and sex, sexy violence and violent sex. Ninety seconds into the album�s opener, �Bury You With Satan�, I�m filled with that sense of doom that comes when you know the next hour of your life will be completely devoid of any kind of pleasure or happiness.

Necro clearly takes many of his influences from Eminem - he�s obnoxious, shocking, with an interesting lyrical flow and he knows how to twist words around the necessarily minimal and unnecessarily irritating beats, but is sorely let down by his awful lyrical tendencies. The crucial factors which make Eminem bearable, but are missing from Necro�s music humour and intelligence. Necro never rises above his po-faced shlock-horror tactics, never confronts the listener to demand that they question their assumptions about him and ask �Why does he feel like this? What�s he trying to say? Could there actually be more to this if I look beyond the surface?� The vocals merely sounds bored throughout most of the album, but considering that Necro is only ever talking about the same two things, this isn�t that surprising.

Or maybe it�s the loops he�s rhyming over which he finds so uninspiring. Almost every track is based around cheesy 4-bar loops of either camp theatrical horror or cabaret piano, and always the same clicky little drum machine track. I could wax lyrical about the state of production in hip hop at the moment, but I�l save that for another article.

Necro continues in much the same vein for 14 tracks, with merely one or two slightly-above-average tracks (�World Gone Mad� features a rather nice flute sample & quite cool p-funk synth until Necro tells you that �images of organ incisions get you sick while you puke up what you chewed up and chew up what you threw up�). There are a couple of cringeworthy attempts at singing, and introduction of other rappers - it�s actually only when the other emcees step up that I realise how fucking annoying Necro�s voice is, how dull and unpleasant in comparison.

Suddenly, forty minutes in, I�m struck by the realisation that this could in fact be intelligent social commentary: Necro trying to shock the world into realisation of how sick it has become by reflecting the horror back at it. Maybe the only way Necro can handle the society around us is by internalising the decrepitude, swallowing the carnage whole and then spitting it back out. On the chorus of �Poetry In The Streets' he laments �look beneath the surface of the city and you shall uncover a seething cesspool of human emotions gone sour, a planet where nightmares have become reality, witness to brutality�. I flick back to �World Gone Mad� to listen to the chorus again: �we�re living in a world gone mad, a crazy world where death is a way of life, everyday we read of atrocities that numb the brain but I believe that to deny what is insane or to try to flee from it is to submit to it, to be at the mercy of it when you should just study it�. While pondering this it occurs to me that Necro could be a Christian plot, designed to overload the susceptible teenage mind with mind-numbing horror and violence and abusive sex while at the same time planting the seed of disgust at this mindset.

Apparently this is Necro�s second album proper, following the debut �I Need Drugs�, the three volumes of demos & freestyles and an album of instrumentals (!). All of these are advertised in the CD booklet between pictures of Necro in graveyards and feeling up women. The possibility crosses my mind that actually Necro is a complete hoax, a pastiche of the current hip hop scene, and a parody of the legion white trash rappers bound to try and follow in Eminem�s footsteps.

I still haven�t made up my mind what Necro is all about, but I don�t hate him as much as I did when I first opened the package. After the initial repulsion, his lyrics and imagery quickly desensitise the intellect and although his misogyny and homophobia still make me slightly uncomfortable, I�m actually finding him quite funny. The backings are often almost absurd beneath Necro�s words. �12 King Pimp Commandments� especially makes me smile, and when this time around when the title track slinkers in with its � frankly stupid - Benny Hill style sax sample, I�m lost for words�all I can do is sit and giggle, and wait for his brilliantly awful singing on the chorus.

This is unlikely to ever feature in my personal �Top Ten Albums Ever�, but right now there are a lot of worse things I could be listening to.. It�s completely undemanding, it requires no effort on the part of the listener, there�s no need to identify with the artist, or to strain to feel the validity of his expression, the integrity of his music or put any highbrow interpretations onto it. I don�t know whether Necro�s playing a fictitious character with his music or if he�s being completely honest about his world-view, I suspect the truth is somewhere inbetween. Anyway, it doesn�t really matter.

So what�s the verdict? I�m tempted to say that you should buy this and try listening to it�I can�t honestly say it�s amazing music, or that it�ll be around in years to come as one of the classic albums of 2002, but maybe music isn�t all about that anyway. This is just great throwaway entertainment.

Michael Miller