Happy 15th Anniversary to Edan’s second studio album Beauty And The Beat, originally released March 29, 2005.
Edan’s Beauty And The Beat is a truly unique piece of art. It bursts with creativity, imagination and intellect in a way few albums have before or since. Like many of the best types of albums, it honors its influences while still being forward-thinking. It’s eclectic without being impenetrable. It’s erudite without being didactic. And 15 years after its release, it’s a joy to consume.
Whenever I listen to Beauty And The Beat, I feel like I need to play it all the way through, from beginning to end, with no interruptions. And that’s whether I’m listening to it in the car or through headphones while on the job or taking a walk or on a home stereo. The album has a ton of replay value, because even at only 34 minutes in length, it feels like an epic undertaking.
Beauty And The Beat is one of the best albums of the 21st century and among the greatest albums ever released. Edan Portnoy is able to take his music to the next level in terms of scope and ambition. It’s like if some mad scientist cross-bred a Cold Crush Brothers bootleg cassette with a Lord Finesse album with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with a VHS copy of La Planete sauvage with Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Edan continues to operate as a triple threat, rhyming, beat-making, and scratching for the album. However, he’s notably grown as both an emcee and producer. On his debut album Primitive Plus (2002), he channeled the spirit of late ’80s and early ’90s hip-hop into an incredible long player. But, by his own admission, he was still a “child.”
“I was just goofing off, making songs as fast as I could and trying to make myself laugh,” he reflected in an interview with Hip-Hop Core. “On this one, I was a bit more ambitious. I wanted to craft something with a lot of care and to be a little bit more conceptual with it. I used to just rap about rapping, but I gotta grow up and evolve.”
The album is simultaneously reverent to golden era hip-hop and ’60s and ’70s psychedelia. Yet while honoring the past, it still sounds futuristic, even fifteen years after its initial release. This is true on both the musical and lyrical ends.
Edan follows spiritual godfathers like Afrika Bambaattaa and Prince Paul to create the musical backdrop for Beauty And The Beat. As a producer, Edan samples an eclectic mix of soul, psych and prog rock, and obscure records from countries around the globe. On top of that, he adds moog sounds, as well as tons of reverb and other vocal effects. The result is dense and overpowering, but is never a chore to listen to.
Edan is also a much more refined lyricist this time out. He forsakes the fart jokes for lessons in history and contemplations on science and math. Which isn’t to say that the album is devoid of humor or fun, but it’s more focused.
He creates a cohesive narrative throughout Beauty And The Beat, even though he never settles on a particular story to tell. He spans the universe and different dimensions to take the listener through a trippy soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been filmed yet. Like a hip-hop Bob Dylan, what he’s saying has power beyond the actual words, and rather how it makes the listener feel.
Beauty And The Beat is similar to Madvillainy (2004), in that it’s experimental in ways that feel unfamiliar. And like Madvillainy, there’s not a hair out of place. There’s no wasted movement here, each song flows logically to the next, as the energy builds and discharges as appropriate.
Beauty And The Beat finds its center early on with “I See Colors,” the album’s first single. The song is an aural mushroom trip, as it blends samples of multiple versions of “I Can Sing a Rainbow” (Including the Dells’ “I Can Sing a Rainbow/Love is Blue” medley), mixing in other shimmering chirps and beeps. “They can't fuck with this I'm just too vivid,” Edan declares. “Like rainbows falling out the sky that turn liquid.” The track bounces between shifting planes of reality, as he reflects on the expansion of his consciousness and building worlds with his mind. “After you latch on to lost masters, come back to re-evaluate the now chapter,” he states in an encapsulation of the entire album.
“Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme” is an in-depth history lesson on the origins of hip-hop, where Edan covers, in chronological order, the emcees and groups integral to rap music’s development. Rather than just list various rappers and crews, he explains their importance to the growth of the genre, particularly as lyricists. He also goes beyond the household names. While Melle Mel, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J get namechecked, so does Coke La Rock, The L Brothers, and Jaz.
“Murder Mystery” is one of the most unique storytelling rhymes that I’ve heard, especially since it’s not clear who was murdered or if there are supposed to be any suspects. Still, imagery like “The source of the blast was a porcelain gat” and “Foes in the bath with a cauldron of rats, gone in a flash” wash over the listener.
The song then seeps into the murky and disturbing “Torture Chamber,” where Edan teams with hip-hop veteran Percee P to conduct a high BPM lyrical assault, filled with descriptions of two-headed tarantulas and man-bred swordfish. Percee P’s rapid-fire delivery remains flawless as he raps, “Wild lames get migraines like the sun of hot flames, they bought frames tinted or their eye drains.”
In general, Edan has considerable chemistry with all the guests that appear on Beauty And The Beat, many of whom are long-time homies who came up with him in the Boston hip-hop scene. He works especially well with acclaimed rapper/producer Insight, who he splits mic time with on a pair of songs. They function like a reincarnated version of Run-DMC or EPMD, bouncing off of each other and weaving their lines and flows together effortlessly. The two first combine on “Funky Voltron,” which sports a subtle ’70s soulful disco groove, and the two go line for line throughout the track. “The Science of the Two” is an even better entry, with the pair trading lines during the three-part suite, which gets progressively more sinister as it unfolds.
Edan makes use of contrast in styles, both lyrically and musically on “Making Planets,” one of my favorite songs of all time. The song is a contrast between realms of good and evil, as Edan first flows over a serene, mellow track, reflecting on the creation of both life and music, rapping, “The music is rap, my favorite color is math / The plan of attack is bless a planet with wax.” Then, after a beat change that feels like a tectonic shift, Boston-born collaborator Mr. Lif returns from his Salem’s Lot vacation spot to give a tour of the inferno. He describes shifting hellscape of pain, despair, and damnation, ready to disperse “Pain, you can’t explain landscapes of flame / Frames of inhospitables are crushed in the minerals.”
Edan teams with Boston-resident Dagha on “Rock & Roll,” a jam soaked in the late ’60s rock influences. The two rap over rugged guitar grooves, with Dagha bending the beat to his will, rapping, “Educated rebel with the heavy metal flava / Levels is elevated to decibels of danger / Volts from the generator blow the detonator / Decimate the place and left the radius a crater.” Edan transforms his verse into a clever list of prominent ’60s and ’70s rockers, similarly to GZA on “Labels,” cleverly referencing artists from The Doors to Jethro Tull to King Crimson to Blue Oyster Cult.
“Beauty” exhibits pure hip-hop surrealism, and is seemingly a sequel to “Murder Mystery.” The song itself is a re-working of “Rap Beautician,” from the Home - Boston Underground Hip Hop compilation (2001), where it starts with similar lyrics and cadence, but soon zooms off into entirely new territory. The song’s second verse is a work of art, evoking imagery of Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, or Frida Kahlo. Edan lays out a bent narrative featuring bizarre museums, thieves, and winged dogs. He raps, “Briefcases open to expose sheet music / The thief hears the piece performed and weeps to it / Master violinist plays the solo one handed / The notes on the page become ants that run frantic.”
The brief “Smile” is one of Beauty And The Beat’s most grounded entries, but also one of its most harrowing. Here Edan describes a nameless rapper who’s a musical genius but struggles with depression. While he attempts to mask his despondency from his peers and audience through high energy, it’s apparent that he’s “going through the motions” and teetering on the edge. Even 15 years ago, rappers didn’t often overtly speak about the effects of depression on record, and rarely in concrete terms.
Edan ends Beauty And The Beat with “Promised Land,” a grandiose statement of Edan’s own cosmic dominance. The song is an unofficial remix to “How We Met,” from Count Bass D’s Dwight Spitz (2002), but Edan reframes on this album. On Dwight Spitz, Edan’s minute long verse had an almost playful quality, a brief aside of a guest appearance on a longer themed album.
Here, as a closing statement, “Promised Land” takes on a triumphant, almost inspirational feel. Edan’s production plays a big part in the recontextualization, sampling soaring string and horn sections and laying on heavy reverb to boasts like “I did a show on a fireball” and “I put a nameplate on an asteroid belt” and “I wore the Prime Meridian as a wristband.” The song serves as a dramatic exclamation point for a journey that turned Edan into galactic superpower.
Unfortunately, Edan’s output slowed down considerably after Beauty And The Beat. He hasn’t released a full-length album since. He dropped the instrumental Echo Party mixtape (2009), which further showcased his skills as a DJ, mixer, and production wizard. Nearly a decade after that, he released Humble Pi (2018), a joint EP with Homeboy Sandman, where he mostly handled production.
Over the past decade and a half, Edan has done some production work, collaborating for artists like the aforementioned Homeboy Sandman, Mr. Lif, and Your Old Droog. He’s had sparingly few guest appearances as well, gracing tracks with the likes of Cut Chemist, Blu, Memory Man, and The Whitehead Brothers. He dabbled in doing mixshows/music-based podcasts before they became all the rage. Mostly, Edan has been touring. He crafted an elaborate and intricate stage show, which really needs to be seen to be appreciated.
I have no idea whether Edan will release another solo album of some sort. Five years ago, he spoke of recording a rock album, revealing he was writing songs, but nothing has materialized. He’s a notoriously meticulous worker, so who knows whether he has something in the chamber that has just been incubating for a long time. I’m certainly ready to hear what he has to offer next. Beauty And The Beat is the type of definitive artistic statement that leaves you wanting more, and I truly hope that someday Edan will continue to expand his catalogue.
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