M C 900 Ft Jesus Welcome To My Dream CD

1991 Enhanced W/ 2 Bonus Trax, 1 Video.



This is an Enhanced CD which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
MC 900 Foot Jesus: Mark Griffin (vocals, guitar, trumpet, keyboards).
Additional personnel: Chris McGuire (bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Elon Bradford (Crucial Reed Technology); Steve Dirkx (bass); Al Emert (drums); Mike Dillon (congas, percussion); Patrick Rollins (turntables).
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
The follow-up to Hell With the Lid Off is darker, less cartoonish, and far more influenced by funk and jazz than before (if it weren't for the slightly whiny vocals over top of the opening cut, you might mistake the backing track for something from Miles Davis' fusion period). In a lot of ways, Welcome to My Dream was a precursor to trip-hop, layering hip-hop beats over jazzy breaks and dream-like instrumentation. The problem is tracks like "Killer Inside Me" and "Adventures in Failure": the backing tracks are killer and the delivery of the rhymes are top-notch, but they're ultimately a bit silly, which makes it a bit hard to take the rest of the album seriously. That's a shame because there are some great tracks here, like "The City Sleeps'" and "Falling Elevators." As before, DJ Zero scratches with aplomb. ~ Sean Carruthers
WELCOME TO MY DREAM, by Texas artist Mark Griffin, better known as MC 900 Ft Jesus, is a collection of compositions that crosses musical and cultural borders while maintaining a unified sound and a singularity of purpose. The easy tag to lay on Griffin would be that of a "white rapper," but that would be both unfair and misleading. True, most of the lyrics here are delivered in a syncopated, urgent chant, but that's where the similarities between this and standard hip-hop end.
Instead of the gangster bravado or carnal boasting that many rappers indulge in, Griffin combines a sense of alienation with a poetic craftsmanship that renders his paranoiac shaggy-dog tales doubly arresting. His odd-man-out persona sometimes recalls the stance of late-'50s Beat poetry, an influence laid bare on "Dali's Handgun," with Ginsberg-like raving over acoustic percussion. Griffin's poetic ambitions are possessed of a more modern air on "Hearing Voices in One's Head" and the starkly chilling "Falling Elevators," which find the narrator in a disaffected reverie that signifies without the aid of rhyme or meter.Down Beat (3/92, p.38) - 4 Stars - Very Good - "..The arrangements are grounded in funk but far more ambitious than the average hip-hop fare.."