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| | Salon | Sharps and Flats |
 | | The other albums' joyful collage of musical genres -- house cheek-to-jowl with doo-wop on "What 'U' Waitin '4'?" soul with funk, classical and concert LP on "For the Headz at Company Z" -- seems to have been deliberately laid aside in favor of familiar, if efficient, old-school beats. |
 | | Whereas "Straight Out of the Jungle" and "Done by the Forces of Nature" perpetrated multi-channeled visions of fl masculinity -- bawdy, smart, tender, angry, amused -- "Raw Deluxe" for the most part allows only a narrow conduit of aggro, defensiveness and sorrow. |
 | | In 1993, the JBs' "J. Beez Wit the Remedy" set the standard as the first out-rap album with its wild-ass, weed-driven distillation of '60s Sun Ra, '70s funk, '80s jeep beats and '90s sampling wizardry; in comparison, "Raw Deluxe" sounds word-heavy and static. |
| www.salon.com /june97/sharps/sharps970604.html (330 words) |
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