Album Review
Exclaim!

Mood Ruff - I Do My Own Stunts [Slo Coach Records/urbnet records]
By NA July 2005


Nearly three years after trekking through the cold, cold north on their Antarctica EP, Winnipegıs brothers from different mothers return to the stage with an album looking this time to match the heat of the impending summer months. On I Do My Own Stunts, the three-man squad of emcees < Odario, Spitz and DJ ICQRI < kick things off with an atmosphere free of pretence, mixing old school-style rhymes with company-B-type soldier songs about the girls they left back home. Sonically, the album plays diversity for all its worth, with smooth summer jams like the ICQRI-produced ³Rocketship² sharing space with the fluttery vibe of ³Slo Coach Train² and roots reggae feel of ³Resident Mash up the President.² The old school hi-jinx of the recordıs first portion give way to a noticeably introspective tone in the discıs second half, a mood change that, if youıre not exactly paying attention to the lyrics, might leave you wondering where the party went. As a whole, however, I Do My Own Stunts shows a good deal of growth from these Peg City ambassadors.

What were you aiming for in putting together this album? Odario: I had a revelation that a lot of new hip-hop artists right now are different from the earlier generation of artists solely because people that were making music in the ³golden age² were raised on funk and jazz, because thatıs what they had to build on. The music was so new and so fresh that it was built from these other forms of music, where as [music of] the new artists today is derived from hip-hop, and that makes a huge difference in the production, the style and the content. It really thins out the quality. So, I wanted to make an album that came from someone that listens to jazz and funk, and music from the ı80s.

Do you find it hard to put together a cohesive album when you get a lot of different producers involved? Weıre living in a ³no-album era² right now, as I like to call it, because no album can get played from beginning to end these days. Itıs such a singles-driven era these days where the ADD kids canıt even listen to a full song right through. So the idea of this album was to make an album for the ADD kids that goes in many different directions sound-wise and content-wise, so that is doesnıt sound like one long song. In order to do that we had to work with a lot of different people and, aside from that, you learn a lot by working with so many different people.