Adam F Presents Drum and Bass Warfare

A Great Party We Weren't Really Invited to Do
by: matt cibula

A few years ago, drum'n'bass artist Adam F decided that d'n'b wasn't all he wanted to do-he saw himself as a hip-hop producer too. This could have ended in tragedy, but it didn't: he worked his ass off and ended up knobbing on a few different cuts, including L.L. Cool J's "The Greatest of All Time" off the G.O.A.T. album. He then decided to go batshit and release his own hip-hop record, called KAOS, featuring that LL cut and a bunch of high-profile guests; that record, unsurprisingly, killed.

Okay, listen close now: this two-disc release features drum'n'bass remixes of Adam F's hip-hop tracks from KAOS. And none of these remixes are actually BY Adam F, and the second disc is a mix featuring tracks from the first disc. Got that? But the stuff's hot, dude, real hot on the real, and it will definitely fill up your car or apartment or Discman with some amazing sounds that will spin your head like Linda Blair.

All this stuff is cutting-edge, as far as d'n'b remixes of two-year-old hip-hop tracks can be. The track "Smash Sumthin'," which featured Redman in full-on crazy street preacher mode, pops up a couple of times: the Roni Size remix is all aggromath techno, while the Bad Company UK mix buries Redman a little and instead goes for speed and precision. "The Greatest of All Time" is also doubled-I think the sly Ray Keith mix is better than the Back2Basics straight-on version, but they're separated by a whole bunch of tracks so that they both sound great.

Some of these pieces work better than others: "Karma," with Guru rapping and Carl Thomas getting all smooth, really doesn't justify having two mixes here; I can't think of any voice less adapted to d'n'b madness than Guru's laid-back flow. But John B at least tries on his mix to give it an edge, while the High Contrast mix is strictly paint-by-numbers. And Beenie Man's duet with Siamese on "Dirty Harry's Revenge" completely shows up Capone and Noriega's spitting on "Listen Here."

The second disc is better: it condenses the 73 minutes of the first disc down to a lean 49-minute mix, courtesy of DJ Craze. Craze manipulates these tracks like crazy, eliminating all b.s. filler to create something that slams and slams and slams like you just won't believe. It's all surface and no content, but when the surface is this great it might not matter.

But overall these songs just make you feel stupid for not having heard the original record. Unless you're well-schooled in KAOS, you won't appreciate the transformation of those tracks to these ones. It's like hearing about a party that you weren't invited to, and it ends up getting to you after a while. Whether you love this stuff or are just kinda "yeah" about it depends on how much you care about stuff like that. 10-Mar-2003 11:38 PM