Oaklandazulasylum

Here's a record by a hip-hop emcee who spends half the album hunched over a guitar, daring to slum it as a bedroom songwriter. As a member of Anticon-- the hip-hop collective that bleeds at will into other genres-- it's no surprise for Why? (born Jonathan Wolf) to mix in live instruments or write straight-up songs; he already matched guitar with beats on Miss Ohio's Nameless, and you could call his half of Split EP a kind of song cycle. And yet every time I throw on Oaklandazulasylum it still sounds like the damnedest thing: surprising, confusing, and so wrong it's right. Ever since Why?, Odd Nosdam and Doseone cut their cLOUDDEAD full-length-- still their biggest claim to fame outside the hip-hop world-- they've been under the gun to cut records that are not only as fucked up as their breakthrough, but as fully-realized, albums where the artists drown you in their desparately individual voices, instead of just passing by in a flash of cleverness. For Why?, Oaklandazulasylum is the first disc since cLOUDDEAD that pulls it off.