After spending years with Major Way and Rowdy Records outlining their sound, Big Marc and Sho Nuff finally burst forth with their debut album in 2006.
Wood Work, clocking in at 16 tracks and over 66 minutes, hardly a skit or interlude among them, reflects the years of preparation
Da Backwudz stuffed into their expansive and sonically diverse first release. Even with all this material, the record rarely feels cramped, only showing signs of strain well beyond the half-way mark. With only one record, Da Backwudz have carved out a place for themselves within reach of
Goodie Mob and
OutKast, immediately outstripping their crunk club contemporaries with a referential nod and a lyrical wink.
Da Backwudz make music that most definitely reflects where they're from. Several star producers, most notably
Dallas Austin and
Milwaukee Black, crafted tracks that fall somewhere in between OutKast's limitless eccentricity and
T.I.'s triumphantly Southern club bangers. The record features guest spots from Nas, Slim Thug, George Clinton, Sleepy Brown, Sade, Killer Mike, and others. Even without considering the contributions of the Decatur MCs, the album is a bumpin', chillin', Southern experience, never repetitive, always crunk but never too much so, and innovative enough to sound Southern without being limited. For example, the crunkest track of all, "Makin' Money Countin' Hundreds," centers around the horn part from
Bob Marley & The Wailers' "Iron, Lion, Zion."
Of course, the noteworthy production merely sets the stage for the commanding tag-team presence of Big Marc and Sho Nuff, who manage to toe the line between irreverence and utter seriousness without once stepping too far in either direction. Their flows will remind you of OutKast, but their lyrical approach is quite different. The ATL legends are a clear influence, but Da Backwudz do not imitate. They kick off the album with the most obvious OutKast reference, the swinging, uptempo "Welcome 2 Da Backwudz," which twangs with Dirty South charm, and follow that with their first single, "You Gonna Luv Me," which rolls slowly through your hood and proclaims the arrival of the next Atlanta hip hop phenomenon.
The third track, though, is the point at which
Wood Work most clearly pulls away from the competition, and the competition never catches up. The second single, "I Don't Like The Look Of It (Oompa)," features a sample from the Oompa Loompa songs in the original
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Feel free to begin your listen skeptically, but prepare to be converted. The beat drops with a depth you can feel in your gut, almost subsonic. The rhythms are crunk, but the sounds are not, and the lyrics even less so. They're certainly not serious, and they're definitely within the acceptable norm of Dirty South club track subject matter, minus most of the misogyny and a
little bit lighter on the materialism, but the lyrical dexterity would handicap
Lil Jon. The video for this track made it far outside the South, but received little attention from non-hip hop listeners. They should listen up.
The next few tracks continue to expand on Dirty South lyrical and musical themes, never following convention and never getting mired in the gangsta posturing that hinders many a Southern MC. Rhymes about girls, weed, cars, and jewelry are never too self-involved, and when the earnestly sung hook to "Fantastic" kicks in, you begin to realize that Da Backwudz are lovingly making fun of Dirty South hip hop. And they do so without discrediting it or themselves. Half an hour into the album, you're jumping out of your seat and getting crunk, but you're smiling and laughing while doing so.
The album is divided neatly in half by its only interlude track, "Wood Grain," which is itself an interesting listen, beginning with deep guitars and synths followed by a harmonized lyric that soberly draws the line between the no-work-and-all-play first half and the second half, which consists almost exclusively of serious but not overwrought tracks that paint impressionistic pictures of poverty and struggle without getting too complex and pulling Da Backwudz out of their element. The lines of "Wood Grain" set the mood:
It's more than the country / It's more than the cigar / It's the blacktop and the cell block / The have-nots without a laptop / For the corporate to the criminal, rhythm and rhyme / A movement, a state of mind / Anything outside the norm to give yo' soul that warm feelin' / Tryin' to break this glass ceilin' / Da Backwudz / Don't go too deep, you might get lost
This last line perfectly embodies the approach the duo takes to their more serious content, and indeed all of their music. Just as the first half of the record was both unabashedly crunk and self-effacingly satirical, the second half is poignant, plaintive, and sometimes touching, but without getting too serious to be believable. If Da Backwudz followed a track like "Fantastic" with some
Dead Prez flag-burner, the record would be absurd, but that is not Backwudz style. When they're throwing down and flossin' hard on the first half of the record, the rhymes are subtly tongue in cheek, and when they're standing up for their rights on the second half, they never forget to relieve the pressure by chillin' and letting loose every once in a while.
The serious songs are snapshots of ghetto reality and general alienation, most of which maintain some levity, but the peak of the second half, "Feelin' Lonely," addresses several quite serious topics. That track features the most inspiring moment of the record, in which one of the song's fictional protagonists is wrongly scorned for being gay. This unequivocal statement of support for tolerance in hip hop is worthy of note. With this track, and the slow-burning, entirely serious but still clubworthy "Lock And Load" that follows it, Da Backwudz back up their political statements with undeniable fervency.
The last three tracks round out the yin and yang of the rest of the record with a chill vibe, as "Same Song" smoothly segues between the strongest ghetto anthem, "Lock And Load," and the requisite weed anthem, "Smoke N Ride." The record closes with an all-star remix of "You Gonna Luv Me" featuring Nas and Slim Thug, revisiting the song that brought Da Backwudz onto the scene and kicked off the heart of their first record. By the end of this track, the message is clear: Today the Dirty South, tomorrow the world.
