As Donny Goines makes a Breakfast Club-inspired mixtape [click to listen] and a whole class of rappers identifies themselves proudly as “’80s babies,” it’s only natural that a project would take on a whole organic concept of ’80s Pop-inspired production. Bay Area rapper Kaz-Well‘s debut Fish Outta Water isn’t the first album (this summer [click to read]) to have that title, and it isn’t the first time a rapper’s gone back two decades (see Blueprint and Edan), but this Tape Vault Records effort features is a lone example of applying LL Cool J‘s “I Need Love” approach to an entire long-player, for better and worse.
Kaz-Well‘s lyrical sensibilities are very much in the vain of artists like Pigeon John [click to read] and Project Move. This emcee brought a lot of relationship tension to the album, and the songwriting ambiguously caters to the production leaving the listener curious as to whether Kaz is reflecting to his formative DayGlo years, or just executing a hipster-friendly concept. “Three Words” is easily the former, recalling pager number exchanges, hallpasses, over synthesizers, a plethora of hi-hats and the kind of production that sounds like first base in any teen John Cusack movie. “Another Day” is the standout track, where Nas vocals are scratched to remind anybody that this most certainly is a Hip Hop track, as Kaz considers hope, escapism and a more tranquil time in a while that appeals to similar-minded themes found in ’80s records, in what sounds like it could be a Foreigner “I Want To Know What Love Is” cover.
Fish Outta Water is produced entirely by DJ Scotty Doo, also responsible for maintaining Tape Vault. Like Kaz, Scotty will make you believe he’s an artistic genius in one place, and likely make your musical tastes blush in another. “Take Me Home” with its Sweet’N Lo chorus and quirky female vocal adlibs is overt in its corny Pop inspiration. Both unique to Rap records and authentically produced, many frequent listeners in the genre would probably be put off by the track’s sweetness, no matter the intention. “Let Me In” goes a step further, and sounds so bugged out, it sounds like a DJ Toomp [click to read] or ’00s-era Mike Dean composition, bringing things much closer to a Rap fan’s comfort zone. Altogether, the team executes its plan, if the plan is indeed to make guilty-pleasure ’80s Pop line up with reflective Rap lyrics of purer times, albeit a complete 180 from today’s “blackout” or screw-face music trends.
Whether or not playing it for the objects of your affection ever got you what you were after, “I Need Love” is a guilty-pleasure classic record. Kaz-Well‘s Fish Outta Water is no classic, but it has very pleasing moments. Like an MC Paul Barman, despite the suspension of taking Kaz and Scotty seriously, both prove to be pretty talented. Barely an LP with its nine tracks, “Another Day” shows the potential for lasting quality, while a handful of the eight others go in a different direction than nearly any rapper is willing to today, being a gift and a curse at once. Like the memories of those who lived it, the ’80s were uncertain, they were awkward and they weren’t the most stylish decade, but they damn sure were colorful – all things true of this album.
