Connie Price & Keystones Tell Me Something CD

Personnel: Connie Price & the Keystones (vocals, drums, percussion); Fanny Franklin (vocals); Dan Ubick (electric guitar); Steve Kaye Quartet (violin, viola, cello); Tracy Wannomae (flute, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone); Todd M. Simon (flute, trumpet); Kevin Lightening (flute); Dwayne Kelly (melodica, Clavinet, organ, Wurlitzer organ); David Ralicke (tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, trombone); Joel Bowers (tenor saxophone); Barry Bowers (baritone saxophone); Jordan Katz (trumpet); Hoagie Haven (flugelhorn); Sgt. Harvey Pepper (French horn); Jeremy Ruzumna (mini-Moog synthesizer); Richard Lee (electric bass); Sean Oshea, Pete McNeal (drums); Davey Warf Rat Chegwidden, Ricardo Rodriguez (percussion).
Audio Mixer: Steve Kaye.
Recording information: Lion's Den Studios, Topanga, CA (2007); Nu-Fi Studios, Van Nuys, CA (2007); Sun King Studios, Atwater Village, CA (2007).
Authors: Lalo Schifrin; Big Daddy Kane.
Photographers: Robin Laananen; Dan Ubick.
Musicians, arrangers, and producers Dan Ubick and Todd Simon, who go by the unlikely name Connie Price & the Keystones, make warm, artfully layered hip-hop with an organic sound that draws equally on vintage 1970s funk and the postmodern collage aesthetic. TELL ME SOMETHING is both heady and rootsy: guest rappers like Big Daddy Kane, Percee P, and Ohmega Watts lay down intelligent, on-point rhymes while Ubick and Simon provide horns, guitars, and other live instrumentation, as well as more general atmospheric sound-painting. The result is groovy, surprising, and eminently listenable.
On their second record, funk and soul revivalists Connie Price & the Keystones (aka Dan Ubick and a bunch of friends) decide to branch out from the pure instrumental music they had displayed on their debut, Wildflowers and add the talent of top West Coast MCs (an exception being the Bronxite Percee P, but as he's signed to Stones Throw, an imprint of which released Wildflowers, and whose founder Peanut Butter Wolf appears here on background vocals, the reasoning is clear). What results, Tell Me Something, is an excellent album that bridges the (small) jump from funk to hip-hop, how the urban blaxploitation soundtracks from Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield tie in so seamlessly to rap. During the tracks that feature vocalists, the band lays off on heavy horn riffs and B-3 chords, approaching the pieces from a more hip-hop perspective, where drums and bass are most important, the rest of the instruments only coming in as accents or to fill out the hook. This careful arrangement then allows the songs that feature both more melodically driven MCs (Blood of Abraham, Mikah 9 from Freestyle Fellowship) -- or the singer Aloe Blacc -- and the more rhythm-oriented rappers to sound equally good. Percee P, who shows up on three tracks, steals the show, flaunting his complex internal rhyme and storytelling skills with good nature and ease. Ubiquity labelmate Ohmega Watts, too, is impressive on "Master at Work," which fluidly compares a rapper both to a boxer and a warrior ("I'm punching a wooden man, blast though bottles of glass or bricks with bloody hands" and "I read scrolls and demonstrate excellence through discipline, taking the weight") as smooth keyboard lines play out eerily underneath. The band is finally allowed to show off their skills during the lone (disregarding the dark, sparse bonus cut) instrumental track on Tell Me Something, "Hoagies Revenge," which gives the trumpets and guitar space to really explore the groove without the worry of overpowering the vocalist. But it is that, their very ability to accompany lyrics while still retaining their own sense of self, that makes Connie Price & the Keystones a great group, and what makes Tell Me Something a great record. ~ Marisa Brown