Undercover

J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science – Undercover
Reviewed by Sadie O., 12/19/11
San Francisco DJ (KUSF) and producer, with a big band, play hip-hop, funk, house, dub, Latin, disco, electronic… No FCCs detected. Everything is brilliant, except the last track, for which they saved up pretty much all my least favorite musical styles… Oh well!
1. 5:49 **uptempo sparce house/funk, lots of electronics, horn section. Old school style female hip hop vocals. Ends with lots of squeepies.
2. 5:37 ****big boom bap with lots of Latin percussion and bass. Gnarly! Male Soul vocals. Love the percussion and bass… Song devolves into just percussion and smooth jazz sax for last minute or so…
3. 4:12 ***funk/house with horns and electronics, hip hop party vocals.
4. 4:55 ****uptempo but relaxed disco/funk. Think Ohio Players. Oww!
5. 0:12 *cute Spanish radio announcement.
6. 4:24 *****bitchen-ass Latin funk riddim, Spanglish hip hop vocals. Great electronic noises, wild trumpet solo.
7. 8:07 **mellow piano intro, then slow dub Reggae instrumental. A hint of elevator jazz in the flute solo (!), but overall good sound. Devolves into random horns for last minute or so.
8. 4:25 ***shakers intro, then jazz/funk instrumental with lots of bass and horns and a Latin tinge. Some pretty groovy noises in here.
9. 5:10 ***odd processed female vocals and woobles intro, then gnarly downtempo house/dubstep. Female hip hop/R&B and male hip hop vocals.
10. 0:25 *male Jamaican spoken word intro with tons of echo.
11. 7:43 ****uptempo, high energy makossa-funk, Jamaican-accented male spoken word. MC Zulu doesn’t mess around... Quite a jam.
12. 8:49 synthetic strings, lounge jazz, female R&B vocals. They had to be incredibly stoned when they wrote this… Ugh, so much elevator jazz… kill me now…