Tack-Fu
Yen & Slang
Tack-Fu Productions
Tack-Fu! Kiya! The cover art on this CD is very striking and colorful. It features a ninja with a bandanna and a blue jumpsuit. His back is arched as if he’s in pain; the pain that naturally goes along with carrying a sword around with no scabbard while doing acrobatics on roof-tops. Tee-hee! The use of the three primary colors was brilliant. Someone obviously “went to art school.” Not to mention, he used my favorite Yin & Yang symbol (an ancient symbol meaning duality, something I honestly believe in) on the tray insert, which I had tattooed on my lower back last year! The tracks include soundbites from old movies and TV shows which weren’t funny in their original state, but thanks to Mr. Fu’s extensive education in the realm of post-modernist “putting things where they are not supposed to be to make them funny” techniques, we can all sit back and chuckle as if it’s all a big, self-mocking, ironic, inside joke. One point for Mr. Fu!
Upon listening to the disc, “Hip-Hop is Here to Stay” definitely hooked me, as did “True MC (respect or get done)”, a song about people getting what they deserve. “Front’en Like Your Major” has a clever use of the circle of fifths (I’m glad I played flute in marching band), not to mention some phat rhymes by MC Panic. I love that part during the fade out when he says, “Uh! Uh! …awwwww, yeah…” Who wouldn’t? It sounds just like Will Smith (my boyfriend’s favorite!) “Majesty” is a beautifully textured slow-jam mix, where a girl rhymer code-named “Crystal” brings the lights down low and treats us to some toasty pillow-talkish stylings. MC Smoo-D (I wonder if he is any relation to Smoove-B) is really funky, too.
These 18 “beats and bytes sculpted and honed” and concisely presented to us by the apparently legendary Iowan, Tack Fu, are often-times so magical that I get the urge to cut random words out of the dictionary and publish my own deeply-meaningful poetry. In fact, I think I’ll get out my little refrigerator word-magnets right now. Love seeking without hats is true before sunlight or might. Stop killing everyone put tank in church. Children understand inside eyes. I love to be creative! It even brings me to put aside my hatred of technology for a moment, and say: in this rapidly progressing technological culture, we must realize that the average person on the street with a sampler (or some refrigerator magnets), no matter how musically illiterate they may be, can still produce a slick, high-quality product. And as long as we believe and trust in God, we have nothing to fear, because we’re all the same inside! Thumbs up!
Tack Fu Productions, 2427 Bartelt, Apt. 2D, Iowa City, IA 52246; http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/5519
