Not as Silly as It Seems: 07/19/2007

Fatlip does the 'Salmon Dance' for the Chemical Brothers

By Dennis Romero

Last week the Chemical Brothers scored their fifth No. 1 album in the U.K., in a genre that's been long written off in the British rock press as past its prime. With We Are the Night, out Stateside this week, the British duo has affirmed the urgency, resilience, and vision of electronic dance music. The Chems even offer a lesson in futuristic hip-hop at a time when more and more rap producers and artists are tapping into e-music tempos, techniques, and sounds.

"The Salmon Dance" isn't the first single off We Are the Night, but it's sure acting like it is. The brisk breakbeat groove featuring Fatlip from late, great Los Angeles hip-hop group the Pharcyde is already getting airplay on KCRW (89.9 FM) and even YouTube, where amateur video stars are interpreting its steps. The track is as remarkable for its sparse percussion and spaced-out synth stabs as it is for Fatlip's ultra-clever rhyme that introduces "a brand new dance." "The Salmon Dance" promises to do for We Are the Night what the Q-Tip-powered "Galvanize" - all over Budweiser Select commercials - did for the Chems' last one, 2005's Push the Button, another U.K. chart-topper.

Not that the album doesn't have other promising tracks. It's solid and sometimes surprises with its progressive ambition and eclectic menu of sounds. Beat poet bill bissett, for example, lends words and inspiration to the Orbital-flavored title track. The first single, "Do It Again," is head-bobbing, body-jacking electro-house reminiscent of the Basement Jaxx. "A Modern Midnight Conversation" is flowing, hydrodynamic e-music. "Battle Scars" featuring Willy Mason's sour, falsetto notes and ominously deep-voiced rapid-speak, is cinematically tuned-in. Jamie and James of "new rave" group Klaxons make an appearance on "All Rights Reversed." We Are the Night is another solid pillar in the duo's genre-defining catalog, even if it's not soaring high above the mainstream like Exit Planet Dust once did. (Mainstream producers have been taking notes and catching up.)

Still, it says something special when a track like "The Salmon Dance" finds life before an album is even released. Fatlip's lyrics give birth to a character he calls Sammy the Salmon, who greets us with a cartoon-voiced "What It Do." Fatlip goes on to rhyme the proper moves: "Put your hands to the side/As silly as it seems/And shake your body like a salmon floating upstream." The rapper admits the song reflects Eddie Murphy's description of how white people danced in the '80s - knees together, hips tight, shoulders shimmying.

"I kind of took a risk in turning in 'The Salmon Dance,' maybe it would be too silly," says the 38-year-old Hollywood rapper, born Derrick Stewart.

The Chems loved it and kept the song as-is. In fact, it follows the irreverent and sometimes goofy Fatlip mold, which also helped shape an all-time-great hip-hop album, the Pharcyde's 1992

debut Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Most interviews with Fatlip inevitably get around to the question of whether the Pharcyde foursome, which imploded in a mid-'90s personality clash, will ever ride again. No, he says, but then drops this bomb: Just this year, celebrated producer and Black Eyed Peas member Will.i.am tried to get the guys back together, even pledging to produce a reunion album. Fatlip says at least one unnamed member held out, and he's cool with that. "I'm just happy that it went as far as it did," he says. "As far as I'm concerned, we're legends in the game. I always respect that, and I have respect for those guys."

Fatlip is happy doing solo work for label Delicious Vinyl, which he says will probably release a new album of his in mid-2008. And he's reenergized by the electronic sounds that the Chemical Brothers and even some fellow hip-hop beat-makers have brought to his ears lately.

"The electronic sound is pretty much where it's at nowadays," he says. "I've taken notice of it, but we're all doing pretty much the same thing - electronic samples and beats, it's the same business. I'm just waiting to see 'The Salmon Dance' on Soul Train."