It's only been four years since the release of Cannibal Ox's
The Cold Vein, so I don't feel too bad about failing to mention it or really listen to it in the two years now that I've owned it. However, it has reached critical mass in my brain, which means that I can't stop thinking about it, which means that this is now the time that I must speak on it to all of you.
Cannibal Ox is, in it's ideal state, a noble gas consisting of MCs Vast Aire and Vordul, and producer El-P. Now, a lot of people don't really count El-P as a member of Cannibal Ox, but these people are all idiots. If Cannibal Ox ever did anything without El-P, it wouldn't be anything remotely important (and, indeed, as the general consensus seems to be about Vast's own
Look Ma...No Hands, I'm right, though I haven't actually listened to that record. I should be White House counsel.)
The Cold Vein is, in addition to one of the most devastatingly titled records of the new millenium (unearthing the layers of meaning in that title would take most of a quarter in a 500-level lit seminar), the aural equivalent of being dunked repeatedly into an icy-cold fishtank filled with razors. While strapped down. To a splintery board.
Criticism: Vordul is not that great a rapper. In fact, his main role in CanOx isn't, it seems, to contribute anything of that great merit within the songs themselves - he pops off some poetry every now and again, but not with any regularity - but to foil Vast Aire. Vordul is your typical MC, the heads tend to like him a lot better, if every post on message boards can be believed. Vast, however, is another story. His flow is the sound of the first robot that can feel. He creates intricate webs of meaning and wordplay. As far as imagism goes, he's a very very close second to Kool Keith in Dr. Octagon mode, which is to say that he drops lines that make my face ache.
So we come to why Vordul is in CanOx. Think of it this way: Vast is T.S. Eliot constructing "The Waste Land". Vordul is Ezra Pound. As Vast constructs labrynthine paths of crumbling concrete and spiders, Vordul is weaving words around them, constricting Vast's metaphors and keeping them from running amok over the record's carefully considered, constructed, and detonated musical tracks, courtesy of El-Producto. Vordul and Vast are intimate as lovers on these raps. El-P makes their bed, lights some candles, catches the sheets on fire, adjusts the ropes. Vordul and Vast have to work together to untie the knots.
And the zero-point of their strengths, everything amazing and unbelieveable about CanOx, is displayed in the track "Iron Galaxy". Originally on a split with Company Flow (if I'm not mistaken), it's clearly the jumping-off point into the frozen darkness of
The Cold Vein. I'm not going to describe it to you, because that would be impossibly worthless, but Vordul begins his most effective verses on the whole album (except maybe "The F-Word"), culminating in the setup "...come home, mad soon...little black girl got shot". Oh oh oh oh oh oh....here it comes!
AND IF THERE'S CRACK IN THE BASEMENT!!!!!
El drops in and you know what's coming next. It's louder than any explosion, it crumbles the very air around my head like a black hole halo. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
"Crackheads stand adjacent."
Oh. My. God. Vordul has put him right out in the open, facing an open court to the basket. There's nothing you can do. He's coming in. He wastes a few lines before beginning his proper introduction, just because he can. El's laughing in the booth as he gears up, not even taking a breath between segue and smackdown.
"You were a stillborn baby;
your mother didn't want you
but you were still born.
Boy meets world, of course his pops is gone.
What you figure?
That chalky outline on the ground
is a father figure?"
A poem in infinite parts courtesy of Vast Aire edited by Vordul layout by El-P thank you goodnight.
"Lets talk in layman's terms,
rotten apples and big worms
early birds and vultures.
New York is evil to it's core
so those that have more than them,
prepare to be victims."
"I rest my head on 115
but miracles only happen on 34th
so I guess life is mean
and death is the median
and purgadory is mode that we settle in."
I could keep going, but you get the idea. And I'm tired of writing. This is the first track; we could keep going, but in a record with two endings, multiple paths, all angles considered, there isn't time right now. Maybe later I'll come back to it. Maybe. For now, I'm exhausted and cut up.
A group of very talented / Cannibals.
