The Big Chill

Daniel Corrigan

Kill the Vultures: "As long as we keep speaking upon issues that mean something to us, the music will remain urgent and full of fire"

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More About

• Alexei Casselle
• Ingmar Bergman
• Tom Waits
• Berkeley
• Hip-Hop and Rap

Kill the Vultures' origin story plays out a bit like an admission of unhappiness with the ideas of traditional hip-hop structure, and even thrown in among the most left-field joints from the notoriously art-twisted Stones Throw catalogue, the album's a bit difficult to register in a rap context. But in an environment where boxcars roll through the heartland covered with Krylon bomb graf pieces straight out of Style Wars, The Careless Flame clicks in a way that bridges the gap between inner-city rhymes and rural folk art without pandering or pretense to either genre. "As long as we keep speaking up on issues that mean something to us," says Casselle, "be it personal, political, spiritual, et cetera, the music will remain urgent and full of fire." Here's one party-rap verse to live by: We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn. Gotta keep warm somehow.