About Me
Listen to the entire Searching For Rick Rubin record.
Download free or for a $5 contribution at www.gamerebellion.imeem.com .
NETIC - LEAD VOCALS, CHEIF MED - GUITAR, EMI - KEYS, YOHIMBE - GUITAR, AARON - DRUMS, MALIK - BASS
Click on pictures for individual band member pages.
Searching for Rick Rubin
Rock and roll has been awaiting the coming of Game Rebellion for a long time: An all Black all outta Brooklyn band whose metal, punk and rudeboy skanking licks sound as credible and crunchy as their hiphop lyrics and headnodding bounce. Game makes the difficult sound effortless and the miraculous seem second nature: A hard rock band with a B-boy MC who can actually spit? No problem. A street worthy mixtape of hiphop anthems created by a band that actually rocks and flows? No problem.
Game Rebellion has been making big waves on the New York Afro-punk/Black Rock scene for about three years. In that short time they've ventured out even further out to slam heads rock houses and muddy the lilywhite waters of alt-rock from NYC and Cali to Puerto Rico and the UK. They just may be the best-kept secret in music right now (their vaunted endorsement sealed with a kiss from Sade notwithstanding).
A band of rowdy brothers with higher education pedigrees--Yohimbe and Netic have college paper, Chief Med is a qualified acupuncturist-- they've got nice skills on the mic and book learned brains and aren't afraid if today's dumbered-down hiphop knows it. They're no strangers to the classroom, the rehearsal room, the protest line or one suspects, give their brand of gangsta-militancy, the police.
Up until now there hasn't been a full-length Game Rebellion recording that adequately captured their dual mastery of hiphop's beats and rhymes driven swagger and assault-sonics and rock and roll's action-figure machismo. Up until now you haven't heard anybody dare attempt a project like Game Rebellion's Searching for Rick Rubin--a balls-out-balls-to-the-wall remix/reimagining/re-playing of tunes that bear the stamp of Rubin's studio-magic wand.Because Game got gusto and gumtption they got up up for the challenge of instrumentally replaying and rewriting songs that made hiphop matter in the 80s and 90s.
For Game Rebellion's MC Netic the choice of Rubin as a guiding light was a no-brainer. "He was the first guy to get it right as far as mixing the sounds of hiphop and rock. I also did my thesis on him in college."
Reading is fundamental with Game--especially with respect to the history of culture, politics and hiphop. Game's keyboard, trumpet and hypeman Emi recalls a night spent on Google scavenging for all things Rubin and finding not just Run DMCs "My Adidas", PEs "Public Enemy No.1", The Geto Boys "My Minds Playing Tricks on Me", Jay Z''s "99 Problems" and LL's 'Going Back To Cali'-- reinventions of which did make Searching''s cut (as 'did Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Under The Bridge" and The Dixie Chick's) but Sir Mix A Lot's 'Baby Got Back' which, strangely, did not.
Though hiphop and rock share common ancestors, like Mama Africa and Fats Domino, and though both idioms now share common audiences, bridging the two always requires mad skills and realness to convince true fans that you're not a joke, a wankster, a limp bizkit. For the record, Game Rebellion is that band, yeah, we're talking those kinda Negroes, New Africans, the kind intent on who bringing us a walloping slice of The Other Real Black Experience-- that louder, darker and prouder strain mainstream media loves to ignore, the one responsible for Jimi Hendrix, Public Enemy, Fishbone, Dead prez, among others.
After hearing Searchin' you suspect these Game Rebellion cats would fearlessly paratroop into a stadium full of Wu Tang Clan or Slayer fans, not flinch (or worse beg for peace, love and understanding), do their stompdown thang, and leave waving hardcore Wu or Slayer heads on a stick.
You'll likely want to see them wreck the house for yourself before you'll trust that assessment on faith. Until then check out Searching and just know that everything Game's doing here they can do from the stage even more boom-bip-astically, MC-nastily, hardcore-actively--no little thanks due to Game's bass and drummer combo Black Steel and Mr Pink who never heard a jazz,rock,soul or hiphop groove they couldnt mosh to the floor, poplock into obedience, and harness like a tornado.
If you dug '99 Problems' before you're about dig it some more, (and if you're a radical maybe even more than before) when you hear Netic twist the hook's provocative declaration into "99 Problems and a Bush aint one of them" (and then compare the lame suckaduck in the white house to daddysboy AJ Soprano.) And if you live for the evil chromatics of a punk-prog band like Tool than you'll likely get more live when you hear how guitarists Yohimbe and Chief Med piledrive the riff from hell into this ravenous track. What Game does with "My Adidas" is pure bebop theory in action--lacing one of the biggest and most beloved hooks in hiphop history with their own black-market sneaker-pimp scenario. Netic and Yohimbe both speak of the trepidation that came with this project, the mandate for it "not be corny" looming like a vulture above all else. Corny they've avoided for sure (whew!) but fortunately not at the expense of rampaging angst, militancy, wit and youthful exuberance.
