After a twenty-hour drive in a cramped VW Golf, a three-hour nap (disrupted every five minutes by dubstep pulsing from our neighbor Joel’s minivan), and a full day of concert-going, the Oregon Voice Coachella Committee wandered as close as we could to the main stage where Friday’s headliner, Jay-Z, was scheduled to perform. Despite our aching ankles and heavy eyelids, we were determined to give the “greatest rapper alive” (but what rapper isn’t) our fullest attention. With the help of his hypeman and longtime friend Memphis Bleek, Jay-Z fired off hit after hit: “H.O.V.A.,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” “Beware of the Boys,” “Big Pimpin’,” “Hard Knock Life.” It was the creme of his crop, a retelling of his prolific career.  As he bounced around the stage engaging his ocean of adorers, his energy never waned, although at the two-hour mark his voice took on a worn, hoarse texture. Behind him, towering three-dimensional JumboTron structures displayed hypnotizing imagery. When the time came for Jay-Z to play his recent hit, “Empire State of Mind,” the screens conveyed helicopter footage of New York’s glimmering skyline. At this point, Jigga had fulfilled all his requirements. He could have retired for the night, and everyone would have been satisfied. But he proceeded to ice Coachella’s cake. He invited out “somebody super duper special”: arguably the world’s flyest diva, his lover, Beyoncé Knowles. The two of them performed a rendition of “Young Forever” as fireworks erupted from the stage. I walked away with a reaffirmed conviction that Jay-Z is a gangster.

On day two my Coachella high intensified when I witnessed Major Lazer, a Dancehall crew comprised of two American DJs (Diplo and Switch) and a Jamaican psychopath with an affinity for partying (Skerrit Bwoy). They gained Youtube notoriety with their freaky deaky videos, creations of Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric. In the video for “Pon De Floor,” Skerrit Bwoy and the track’s two guest artists bump their pelvises against the booties of their female counterparts. This creative sort of dry-humping, known to Dancehall enthusiasts as ‘daggering,’ featured prominently in Major Lazer’s Coachella performance. Instead of playing the individual tracks from their lauded album, Guns Don’t Kill People…Lazers Do, Diplo and Switch kept bassy beats playing continuously, interwoven with samples from the album and punctuated by sound effects (blow horns, zapping laser guns, and the words “Major Lazer” pronounced in a Jamaican accent). But regardless of a DJ’s skill, watching DJs spin is never much of a spectacle. That’s where Skerrit Bwoy comes in. Throughout the party, he and a wedding-dressed dancer paraded around the stage vigorously daggering one another. Into his wireless microphone, Skerrit Bwoy yelled a few phrases repeatedly: “We party every day!” “Major Lazer in the club. We crazy in the club!” and “We are the solution!” The party culminated when Skerrit Bwoy set up a ladder in the middle of the stage, mounted it, dropped his jeans to his ankles, jumped onto the bride’s upturned butt, and daggered away.

After she repeated in kind, descending several feet onto Skerrit Bwoy crotch, she approached the table where Diplo and Switch were spinning, balanced firmly on her head, and shook her ass in ways that I, sadly, will never be able to. What was possibly the sweatiest, craziest, crackingest party I’ve ever attended, was just another night’s work for Major Lazer.

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Andre Nickatina, formerly known as Dre Dog, brought some Bay Area rap to  WOW Hall on Friday April 16th. The after party was held at the strip club that Nickatina himself just opened in our very own Springfield. They announced this before Nickatina came out while throwing dollar bills out into the audience; it was classy.  The audience was similar to a frat party, a lot of drunk grinding, but Andre Nickatina was on his game.  I had been nervous because I heard that you either get a really good show or a really bad show from Nickatina, depending on how drugged out he is prior to his performance.  Luckily I got a good one, so either he took it easy this time or he’s just mastered the art of rapping while under the influence.

He played Conversation with the Devil early on which was a relief, because it’s one of his best songs.  Killa Whale was a hit as the whale calls echoed through the room.  He also did Dice of Life (Cuz all my homies love the bottle, like Tyson loves Cus D’amatooo) which is great mainly because it’s over an Irish, medieval melody created by what sounds like a mandolin. He had the crowd  enthusiastically spell  C-O-C-A-I-N-E (several times) prior to “ayo for yayo, walk around with yayo, all in my nasal, I must have been craze yo”.  Around the middle of the show he yelled to the smokey audience, “Let’s give it up for drugs and alcohol, without them I wouldn’t be here today.” I think we all can learn something from this San Franciscan Pisces’ lyrics: “So on the days you feelin’ real bad, think of the best week that you’ve ever had.”

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            After birthing legendary indie shredders Monotonix, Israel offers the world yet another musical gift: Soulico, a crew of four Tel-Aviv DJs with an impressive library of rare Middle Eastern folk and disco vinyl. Last October they put forth their debut album, Exotic on the Speaker, an energetic amalgam of hip-hop, dancehall, and traditional Mid East music.

            Twelve of thirteen tracks feature MCs and singers from all over the world including scores of Israeli hip-hop artists; Panamanian dancehall maestro MC Zulu; Ghostface Killah; underground rappers Lyrics Born, Pigeon John, and Del the Funky Homosapien; and Rye Rye, M.I.A.’s streetwise teenaged protégé from Baltimore. Although almost half of the lyrics are in Hebrew, the language barrier isn’t much of a problem; “Pitom Banu 2020” hasn’t one word of English, yet it is easily one of the album’s most appealing songs.

            The first song, “El Nur,” commences with a shout of “Salaam alaikum” (peace unto you in Arabic), and then Ghostface Killah delivers a verse in his classic Wu Tang cadence. The overall thesis of his rap: I’m super tight, I’m hard, don’t fuck with me. It’s hubristic and unoriginal, yet charming as always. The beat that backs him consists of standard electronic drums, rapid pluckings of some foreign-sounding string instrument, and a loud, buzzy synth line. The rest of the song features Hebrew rapping and singing (no idea what they’re saying…but it sounds neat?). Each collaborator pulls his or her own weight, making the song fantastic as a whole.

            Unfortunately, some of Soulico’s musical guests are not so worthy. For example, on the eighth track titled “Come Back,” Onili, an Israeli pop diva, sings in a breathy, overly sexy voice. But it’s not sexy. It’s just frightening. She and a couple other featured artists whose performances add no value to the album ought not to have been included in the otherwise awesome debut project.

            But the most incredible song of all, and the most Israeli in sound, is the title track, “Exotic on the Speaker,” featuring Rye Rye. A cheap-sounding synthetic orchestra pounds thrice, a Klezmer fiddle sings a folky phrase, and a drum machine creates an intricately detailed beat. Rye Rye fills her two minutes and forty-three seconds with rhymes about nightclubs and parties in her sincere and youthful voice. Inclusion of Rye Rye on the album was surely a good call.

            But for their part, the DJs of Soulico (Sabbo, Rob, Shimmy Sonic, and Wido by name) mix and produce a superb album. Perhaps their greatest virtue is their transcendence of the confines of genre. “Queen of Hearts” is an ultra-catchy dancehall reggae song, “Politrix” could easily be a song off of Beck’s Midnight Vultures, and “DaraboukaTron” sounds like a bunch of robots on acid partaking in a tribal drum circle. They’re a dynamic team, Soulico, a talent that is exciting to hear regardless of your culture, homeland, or language.

Exotic On The Speaker (Feat. Rye Rye) MP3

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The seven songs, stacked seemingly in happy/sad alternation, push forward an agenda of slightly pessimistic exploration into America’s faded pastoral landscapes. It must be the economy, right?

Soft, burbling electronic tones guide the listener from the rural account of spiritual warfare in the opener “Black River Killer” and through the rest of the EP. Similarly, “Going Down” manages a happier note of corroded morals accompanied by an Air-approved, far away synth line.

On “Shoulder Full of You,” the harmonic melody playing over the comparatively restrained acoustic guitar line, causes a break in the low-down tone of the song, like an occasional passing view of rusted grain silos on a desolate highway.

“Preacher’s Sister’s Boy,” the next song on the EP, has the same light-hearted, electronic whistle and a tambourine-laden beat that has all the swaying of the road home with suddenly a lot more to see on the way.

Taking this into consideration, the next song “Black Rock” drops the listener into a chanting melody repetitive like a word association exercise for the entire first minute, which is actually about half the song.

But still, like most good EPs, Black River Killer gets ahead with the help of a strong tailwind at the end. The last song “Big Black Bird” substitutes the requisite electronic sub-tune with a lonesome harmonica and an unprecedented bassy swagger. In a word, or two literally, it’s country music.

Rated: 7 passing glimpses of grazing cows along the highway out of 10 endless, yellowed fields.

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