Paper Tiger, Made Like Us

Paper Tiger, Made Like Us [Doomtree]

Reviewed by: Christian Hagen

The story of the hip-hop DJ is roughly parallel to the genre itself: Beginning with just an amalgam of popular songs over which someone could shout rhymes in a specific rhythm, finding the bridges and break beats that made those records exciting and making new songs piecing those together, finding the best way to hit every need of a careful listener, from danceability to emotional release and self-expression, and doing it all in a way that represents a lifestyle, a people, a culture, and a time.

As the means and methods have evolved, the role of the DJ has become in many ways the role of the producer, and the role of the producer has become as much a focus of any given hip-hop song as the rapper, the hype man, the dancer, or anyone else on stage. Hip-hop production is as artful and immediate as a brilliant lyrical diatribe or an elaborate dance.

In this same analogy, Doomtree producer Paper Tiger’s Made Like Us is poetry, is sonic ballet.

Crafter of some of the finest and most profound beats of many Doomtree classics, like the astounding “Low Light/Low Life” off P.O.S.’s stellar Never Better, Paper Tiger, like the best rappers and producers on Doomtree or any rap label worth its vinyl, understands subtlety and the evaporation of genre conventions to form the finest atmospherics. But what’s so striking about Made Like Us is that, for an album of mostly beats with only a few tracks involving guests, the songs never veer into indulgent noise or fade into nothingness. There is a presence to Paper Tiger’s songcraft that is refreshing.

Take “The Ritual.” The beat begins simply, slightly, frills creeping in from the keys, and then, floating in from the ether, comes a lone voice. As the vocal builds, so do the layers, keyboards of many textures, polyrhythms, a few blips and bloops in the background, even strings to enhance the size of the sound. And then, as quickly as it came, it begins to dissolve into nothingness, a lone cymbal and affected vocal loop to mark where the song had come, before the beat drops back onto the head of the whole production and powers to the finish. In a mesmerizing 2:24, Paper Tiger manages to showcase that a hip-hop DJ doesn’t simply excite a rowdy crowd, but can enthrall them, make them move his way. He is in ultimate control of our emotional centers, and while some might use this power only to soundtrack a party or aggrandize a plastic lifestyle of computerized nonsense, Paper Tiger uses his authority to power our minds and bodies in a way that is human, that is true.

The album is mostly dark. Songs like “The Painter’s Arm” and “5360” alternate at various points between sorrowful instrumental balladry and intense backbeats. Each of those tracks also feature surprising vocal samples, one a beautiful sing-song and the other a mumbling British monologue, which, within the context not just of hip-hop or beat production but of great songwriting, add significant weight to their respective pieces of music.

Made Like Us is a tremendous introductory album for those who might never have considered the majesty that is possible in hip-hop production. There are moments of such immaculate beauty that one might almost be heartbroken to hear anyone rap over them. And the realization that a new listener might come to from the opening strains of “First Track,” with its mobile drum sample driving across an open field of strings, is that these flashes of ingenuity are present in many of our favorite hip-hop songs. Remove the rhymes, and underneath one can often find, from the best beatmakers, symphonic productions of a quality that we rarely take enough time to appreciate on their own.

Even when Dessa lends her unique singing and rapping talents to the lead single, “Palace,” it’s Paper Tiger’s flourishes that really set the song on a level of its own. The tarnished, classic quality of the drums becomes almost haunting after they’ve dropped out and returned, their persistence like the endless determination of time as it catches Dessa’s vulnerable vocal quality, until in the end the sound is snuffed out, neither burning out nor fading away, but simply vanishing from life.

Made Like Us, for these reasons, might be too morose for the party, too thoughtful for the dancefloor, though certainly tracks like “The Bully Plank” would definitely get people moving. But even in its moodiness, the music never settles in the background. Paper Tiger captures a listener’s attention from the beginning, and the pall of intellectual sorrow, beauty, or malaise that could kill a similar effort from a lesser artist never forces one to turn off or tune out. In short, Paper Tiger has made confessional DJ music that is never uncomfortably forward, hip-hop beats that are never senseless, and tightly constructed, technically proficient art that is still loose enough to be tangibly real.

In an age where the MC is king and the biggest producers need to rhyme to make people pay attention, it’s a joy to find someone like Paper Tiger, and a treat to listen to an album as brilliantly realized as Made Like Us.

Rating: 94%