et me just start by saying that I don’t think hip-hop has been this flagrantly white since Vanilla Ice. Sure, there’s Eminem, but even he preserves the preconceptions about ghetto life that have characterized the genre practically since its early days; the music, for better or worse, has always been inextricably linked with the urban black youth culture that has primarily produced it. That’s part of the reason why the Anticon crew has taken so much flak for being a bunch of white kids from the ‘burbs who, for whatever reason, have felt the need to unleash their fractured hip-hop vision on the world. The reality is that race couldn’t possibly be less important for the MCs and DJs in Anticon, who have been gleefully experimenting with hip-hop’s boundaries on their releases in recent years.


Themselves is the latest project to come out of the Anticon collective, and this time around rapper Dose One pairs with producer Jel, and the results have that same cracked reasoning that has characterized every Anticon-related project. More accessible and much less abstract than cLOUDDEAD or Circle, Dose One’s collaboration with Boom Bip, The No Music is still no conventional rap disc. However, the production does flirt much more closely with traditional hip-hop beats than any of Boom Bip’s bizarre musical backgrounds on Circle.


On songs like “Mouthfull” and “Dark Sky Demo,” the music is catchy, funky, and downright danceable—words which would have been practically sacrilegious on previous Anticon albums. The latter song incorporates upbeat horn samples to punctuate Dose One’s fast-paced, rhythmic riffing, and the track nods to the old school by pasting vocal samples together to create the chorus. Its addictive jungle drums recall some of Boom Bip’s unconventional beats, but much more lively.


Of course, this isn’t to suggest that Themselves sound mainstream, in any sense; though they borrow conventions and inspiration from old-school rap, they are strictly individual throughout the record. “You Devil You” starts with a montage of ambient sound and random chattering, building up into a chaotic, doom-laden death-crawl pierced by weird sound effects and the usual Anticon craziness. On “Live Trap,” Dose One’s rapid-fire delivery turns all listeners to ash; he coats his audience with the smooth flow of verbal gasoline, then lights them ablaze and leaves them in the dust. “Paging Dr. Moon or Gun” is most reminiscent of what we’ve come to expect from Dose One’s albums—slow, languid beats amid a barrage of weird effects and a marked lack of traditional flow in the vocals.


“Good People Check” is a standout, combining accessibility with the duo’s more experimental leanings. Heavy on the bass and driven by a playful melody, the cut culminates as Dose One angrily raps, “shove that gun up your ass/ you’re as good as dead,” skewering the traditional topics of violence and misogyny that have been deemed “acceptable” for hip-hop discourse. Plus, the track ends with Dose whistling the theme from The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly; how often do you hear Morricone namechecked in rap? Most indicative of this approach is the album closer “Hat in the Wind,” which starts with some spoken word over distant beats. The song itself—slightly creepy, a little funky, and a lot of fun—is Anticon at their best, spanning every possible style over its 8-minute course. The jubilant chorus of “I am a drug addict” which gives way to a plaintive, sputtering horn solo is the song’s high point, but the whole thing is great, skipping around from ambient noise to total chaotic breakdowns to pseudo-spiritual uplift.


The No Music encompasses all of these seemingly conflicting styles and makes them seem natural together. More than any other Anticon album so far, Themselves’ debut successfully synthesizes all of the collective’s disparate ideas into a coherent whole, for an album that’s listenable and enjoyable nearly the entire way through. It’s far from perfect, and there are still moments where the experiments fall short, but overall this represents the fulfillment of the substantial promise made by Circle and cLOUDDEAD.