You asked for it, and now you've got it: India-rooted Canadian hip-hop. Yeah, boy!
Meet Amerodd.
Before you click yourself over to Amerodd's Myspace space I must caution you. There is so much crap all over everywhere that your web browser will ask you what it did to deserve such torture. Mine died the first time. If your computer can't handle the pain then maybe you should just stay right here.Amerodd is angry. He's an angry person, but he's not quite sure how to focus his anger. Players and ballaz make him angry. B****es and hoes make him angry. Police and racists make him angry. People who call him a virgin make him angry. And finally, basic grammatical rules make him angry. What's left to do but RAP about it? And when you lay down your tracks, and you're still angry, what do you do then? Barf homemade graphics all over your dang Myspace. My favorite is the one that reads:
F*** Hoes,Sans asterisks, of course. Next to the image of an AK-47, of course.
F*** the Law,
F*** you all motherf***ers
who want to f*** with Amerodd!!!
Go ahead call the b**** a** cops!!!
Okay, so we see WHAT Amerodd is. But WHY? Aren't Canadians a docile bunch? Where is this rage coming from? In the bio (which is an absolute headache to read) we learn that Amerodd was born in India. The details are vague (or mashedly unreadable), but apparently his family fell on hard times prior to their Canadian voyage. And whatever strife he endured out east didn't let up when he came west. My theory is that he probably got made fun of in Canada because the only word he bothered to learn in English was b****a**motherf*****.
Somehow along the way he mistook himself for a gangsta. For whatever reason he felt the need to represent.
I'll give him credit for being one of the few Indians on the hip-hop scene. The Canadian hip-hop scene at that (which, now that I think about it, is probably the only place this side of Calcutta where you could get away with such a combo). You know what else I give him credit for? His tunes aren't half bad.
Wait, what?
Yeah, that's right, I spend paragraphs dumping on his silly posturing and the laughable image he's created only to come back and say his songs are worth listening to? The imagery and frontin' have been hip-hop's greatest downfall, and once you get past that you'll usually find that there's no substance to a lot of rap's "artistry". With Amerodd's music (seperate from the Amerodd characature he's created, at least for now), he struts what he has, and it ain't much. All he has, when it comes down to it, is his anger, his ethnicity, and his belief in Jesus.
These three components of Amerodd's being haven't been resolved with each other and that in itself creates sort of a fourth component, one of conflict. It doesn't appear that he's really taken charge of this conflict, hence all that posturing, and what results is this baffling swirl of lyrical content. With his Punjabi accent he asks Jesus why these motherf***ers are acting like b****a** punks, and when will He (the good Lord) do something about it? Or how soon will Amerodd blast them himself? Fascinating, and probably for all the wrong reasons.
Three songs are available on Amerodd's Myspace. "Jealousy and Hate" has a pretty sweet sitary beat but otherwise follows the well-trod gangsta rap path. I've got a bit of a soft spot for angry street hip-hop (though, honestly, I could never get into 2pac), so I kind of dig this one. "End of My Life" is a more passive song and Amerodd comes off sounding like a victim (how ungangsta-ly). The third song, "Curfew", is an odd little disjointed musical jaunt. Something about a Hindu-Muslim society, something about escaping from prison, something about a military mission. I'm sure it makes perfect sense in Amerodd's brain, but to me it feels like an unintended experiment.
And that seems to be Amerodd's greatest strength. The best parts of him are unintended. He's trying to do all the "right" things as far as hip-hop is concerned, but he comes from such a different place that, while fileable under the "wannabe" category, the end result is more curious than bland.
I rate Amerodd 6 busted caps out of 10
