Sid Roams – Zombie Musik

Since Dana Dane and Brad Jordan have battled nightmarish insomnia, Hip Hop has had a hard-on for horror. While emcees like Brotha Lynch Hung, Gravediggaz and Ganksta Nip have always been able to supply the rhymes that equate to bloody wounds, chilling suspense and deep paranoia, producers in the genre have not fared as well. Production duo Sid Roams have built the brand working closely with Prodigy, no stranger to paranoia, conspiracy theories and lyrical suspense. After The Project Kid album with Big Twins of Infamous Mobb, Joey Chavez and Bravo bring their Venice, California craft back east for Zombie Musik. This collection of instrumental Hip Hop tracks tells a story without ever showing the cuts, guts and gore typically found in the lyrics and samples. This is Hitchcockian Hip Hop, and a true testament to top-notch veteran producers.

As with similar releases from Madlib, J Dilla and Ayatollah, these songs are often around the two minute mark. While the seasoned Rap ear may suffer from short attention span, Sid Roams refuses to let loops dictate these songs. Keyboards accent the progressions of the songs throughout, and songs like “Hack and Slash” have a linear display, that shows production with no cigarette break-looping or redundancies. As the case with last year’s slept-on Prodigy release Product Of The 80’s, video game effects are clearly a leading influence to Roams. “Body Catchers” is what any musician wanted 8-bit games to sound like, if they were remixed properly with some added low-end. Zombie Musik is its best played as it was intended. It’s unclear whether the makers had a Prince Paul-like script for their sounds, but the music carries through 27 blood-soaked scenes, that feature vocal samples to make the work very specific.

Although this album might make for a haunted house score, it’s still Hip Hop. “Genetic Freak” is a pensive composition that could easily translate to a Rap-R&B hit, but the group screws Guru‘s first verse from “The Planet” to make the “crazy” street. “Cold World” sounds like an early Wu-Tang track, if RZA pulled up a chair for Havoc. Although there’s no actual rapping on this project, one cannot escape the influence from Wu to Mobb to G-Unit that makes this work centered for heads.

Longtime associates of both Alchemist and Jake One, Sid Roams deserves to ascend into the mainstream. Zombie Musik could easily be pieced into hits for 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and Game that withstands radio and appeases fans. This is Hip Hop programming with a cinematic sense of purpose and execution. Chavez and Bravo leave 2009 as extremely capable producers who find the rare knack to entertain listeners with and without the help of emcees. Zombie Musik has the potential to wake the dead, in terms of creativity.