If producers are the new royalty of hip-hop, then RJD2 is that disheveled peasant just waiting to pull the sword from the stone. While people like Pharrell Williams, Dr. Dre and Timbaland roll with pop megastars and have more money waved in front of their faces than a Yankee on a hitting streak, RJ is off looping video-game samples and playing with his drum machine.
This is not a diss to the former three, but it says something about the integrity of a producer when he begins choosing emcees so mediocre you can’t help but wonder if he’s scared of being upstaged.
Like many whiteboys with a computer program and an idea, RJD2 has surely had the offer to earn his green making beats for whatever No Limit soldier decided to go AWOL that week. Instead, the Ohio-based producer signed with El-P’s Definitive Jux, a label that, with the likes of Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox and Mr. Lif, can justifiably be called the best independent record label in hip-hop.
With Deadringer, RJD2 continues the tradition of solid debuts put out by Definitive Jux, but at the same time displays many of the problems symptomatic of a young producer putting out his freshman effort.
Deadringer is solid through and through but loses steam on a handful of needlessly over-long tracks that wander off into experimentation and self-indulgence.
On “Salud,” RJD2 toys with a sample, saying, “This is the first record I’ve made under my own name and the first one I’ve made under my own control entirely.” It’s a telling sign of his overzealousness, as though he’s trying to make his career-defining magnum opus in just his first trip to the plate.
Not that it’s a bad thing. “Smoke and Mirrors” lilts over soft horn and drum loops in Moby-esque playfulness, while “The Chicken-Bone Circuit” romps through a break-beat arrangement with the same reckless abandon that made so many people fall in love with DJ Shadow’s “The Number Song.”
But RJD2 has got bigger things in mind than copping the style of other big-name beatmakers. “2 More Dead” has got such an infectious, head-nodding hook that it’s most certainly going to find its way to a mixtape near you, and “Take Da Picture Off” plays like an ill DJ battle to which RJ only invited himself.
He’s got a ways to go before being able to hang with the likes of Shadow, but staying with Definitive Jux is a huge step in the right direction. And if DeadRinger is any indication, RJD2 will someday be king of the hill.
