 By Moses Amadeus |
It’s funny that an album that sounds so much like “Licensed to Ill” is one of the freshest sounding albums that I’ve heard all year. |
Combining rudimentary thrash punk and vintage hip-hop, Beardo makes party music for outcasts. Looking like a young Frank Zappa with his big ass fro and handlebar mustache, it’s not hard to see why.
Almost all of Beardo’s songs are about being broke and getting fucked up on drugs, which somehow manages to sound both awesome and totally depressing at the same time. If you’re at all familiar with his partners in the “Dyslexic Speedreaders” (Dirt Nasty, Andre Legacy, Mickey Avalon), then you probably know what to expect in terms of lyrical content. However, Beardo really stands apart from the rest by seeming to be the most bat-shit crazy dude in the clique by a mile. Which, when you consider that the others have songs about male prostitution and bestiality, is really saying something.
Beardo is also the most political of the Speedreaders, at times dressing up like a terrorist at his shows and rapping about Iraq while some dude walks around with an AK-47. If Beardo is playing live in your area anytime soon, you’ve really got to check him out. He’s totally insane, shredding on a guitar, going through increasingly strange costume changes, putting a gun in his mouth, dry humping the faces in the front row wearing a jock strap. It’s the definition of rad. Next to this, every rapper in the game is totally phoning it in.
I hate to beat the Beastie Boys comparison to death, but there never really have been very many people to even attempt to combine punk rock and rap without sounding like a goateed nu-metal dickweed. Somehow, Beardo resurrects this primitive, garage rock/B-boy sound that died when the Beastie’s started writing songs about Tibet and outer space instead of doing a shit-ton of coke and getting laid. I don’t really know what you’d call this genre of hip-hop that Beardo is doing, but it’s good to hear it again, whatever it is/was/will be.
Dirt Nasty feat. Beardo - "Drugs On My Mind" from Nicholaus Goossen on Vimeo.
Beardo’s album, which is out now on Shoot To Kill Records, collects several years’ worth of content. Some of the songs, like “Girls N Pills” and “24 Hour Party People”, have been popular on MySpace and in Underground LA clubs for a couple of years now. There aren’t really more than one or two that Beardo fans haven’t heard before… But the important thing is that non-Beardo fans hear this too. It’s just too weird to be overlooked. Don’t let Beardo become another MC 900 Ft. Jesus, lost to the passage of time.
