A wonderfully wobbly set of tracks that take the genre of juke -- think house-meets-ghetto-tech-meets-dubstep -- into new territories,
DJ Roc’s The Crack Capone is an amazing headphone album. It’s probably an amazing dancefloor effort, too, but most won’t have the footwork skills to keep up with the Chicago DJ’s creations, which throb with ghetto-tech’s depth and dubstep’s darkness while brittle, familiar samples of folks like
Junior Reid (“One Blood”) and
Kid Cudi (“I Make Her Say”) up the hypnosis. Some tracks come with a healthy sense of humor -- the sample on “I Don’t Like the Look of It” is totally Squaresville, while “Let’s Get it Started” mashes the Twilight Zone and
Soulja Boy -- still others invoke paranoia, like the “Johnny Was”-sampling “Shot Down” which is a draining epic at over three-and-a-half minutes. Most of these rapid shots to the dome barely cross the two-minute mark, but The Crack Capone puts it all in a sensible order, making one feel like they’re listening to a mix album if they don’t mind the gaps. Turn it up and submit. ~ David Jeffries