Gangbangsters - War On Drugs

Hear The Track Here

It would be true to say that I'd kind of given up on the whole hip hop scene, certainly of the commercial variety, and even the online, indie kind I was hearing at the time seemed dull, machine-like and devoid of any real meaning. Certainly the over-reliance on beats of musical accompaniment would very likely send anyone nuts over time. I'm a big fan of using percussive scoring and that's something very few beat merchants ever bother with. Gangbangsters, along with a few other Soundclick indie hip hop musicians, changed that gloomy scene for me with some ridiculously clever blends of hip hop and other musical genres, including rock. So is it strictly hip hop?

Actually, who gives a **** so long as it works eh?

War On Drugs cannot, in any way, be termed hip hop. It's a wall to wall electronic blitz with special appearances by the King and Queen of Jussay Knokids themselves. Ron and Nancy Reagan rap of the joys of drug use, set to an extremely hard edged piece of electronica and yes, I know this kind of thing has been done endlessly, if it works, it works. For me, this is the kind of track I cherished back when the use of vocal samples from famous people wasn't such a copyright minefield, and even the music fits the period. So, yes, it does sound dated to me, but I think maybe that was exactly the intention as the War On Drugs was during the 1980's, an electronic Golden Age.

So while this doesn't have me spinning cartwheels of delight, it's certainly a solid piece of work and shows that Gangbangsters put a lot of effort and sweat into getting this out the door. Either that, or he was a lucky enough bastard to have it creep up on him. It happens. Whatever, the inspired use of Ron and Nancy is obviously the main highlight but the musical accompaniment more than holds up its end. Give it more than a couple of plays and this could be setting up ruts in your hearing canals...

Highly Recommended Electronica.