Saturday, January 25, 7:30 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
To celebrate the release of a project called Sensei of Syllables, the Rock Island-based MC/poet/spoken-word artist Aubs. (with the period) has assembled a huge crew of Quad Cities-and-beyond artists including Equinox[x], Ahzia, Legnd, Taj, Kels, Orlando Coolridge, Apple Tree, Poor Bill, Da Round Hero, and Sage the 64th Wonder at Rozz-Tox on January 25.
The music of Aubs. (a.k.a. Aubrey Barnes) scans as underground, experimental hip-hop a few generations removed from the Bay Area luminaries surrounding Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow, or the Native Tongues tradition that brought jazz-influenced, cerebral hip-hop to the masses in the early '90s. But his style on the mic lands closer to straight-up spoken word or poetry than rapping. Aubs.' verses sometimes rhyme, but other times stretch off into free-verse territory in which the raw sounds and assonances of the words themselves matter just as much as their semiotics. By this point, any conventions of rhyme or meter have long been thrown out of the window in certain corners of the history of hip-hop. Everything is allowed, and there are no real rules to limit an artist’s personal expression (see: Latyrx, Dr. Octagon and Sir Menelik, Busdriver, Cannibal Ox, and cLOUDDEAD, just to name a few touchstones). Aubs. creates his own style on the mic that still maintains a sense of rhythm and still pays attention to patterns and breaks in the beat structure, but often finds him stretching way over the bar line and winding his way through an extended phrase that needs more real estate to get out of him.
From a lyrical perspective, Aubs. focuses on existential questions, facets of his personal identity and his place in the world as a black man, and observations of the often cruel world around him. Sometimes he gets into purely imagistic writing that paints a visual picture of the natural world, or the anatomical parts and molecules that makes up the human body. The forces of math and science remain a point of return for him, serving as a sort of constant in a sea of uncertainty. His great EP Aubizms. from early 2019 lays out a solid view of his craft in all of its heady verses planted over spaced-out, sample-heavy beats. Opening track “Soma,” produced by Quad Cities beatmaker K1NG SUPR3M3 (who plays at Rozz-Tox a week before this show, on January 18) is a perfect starting point with its loose-limbed percussion loops and stuttering synth phrases. The beat provides a malleable rhythmic bed for Aubs. to snap over. His verse seems to encompass a whole galaxy of imagery, as his eyes skip from parts of the human body to god(s) to trees and leaves, before he zooms out to address ideas of love and hate that motivate humankind.
Later, “Black Like Me” offers a series of reflections on life as a black man which range from vitriolic to tongue-in-cheek, as he discusses preconceptions that shape other people’s ideas of who he is or addresses the physical reality of having black skin. (“I’m so black that you would swear that I’m a vampire because when I’m in photos with no flash, all you see is floating clothes.”) The track manages to bridge the gap between sober social/racial reflection and a kind of self-deprecating humor with its series of miniature observations, each of which plays out like a stand-alone punchline or a punch to the gut. I look forward to checking out Sensei of Syllables, the forthcoming project that this show is celebrating, to see what directions his craft goes to next.
Aubs. headlines the January 25 Sensei of Syllables event with doors opening at 7:30 p.m., admission is $5, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 or visiting RozzTox.com.
