Bisco Smith – The Broadcast

Album Reviews • Friday February 5th, 2010 • 9:57 am

Bisco Smith — a.k.a. Bisc1 — is a prolific artist with talents extending into a variety of arenas. He’s acted as artistic director for several record labels and his graphic designs have been featured in promotional materials, print literature, and studio galleries. As a hip-hop performer of four years, he’s already tucked two studio albums, a U.S. tour, and several major festival performances under his belt. He even expressed his penchant for uniting the optical and aural with The Strange Love Project, a 2008 multimedia release in which a variety of music producers and visual artists reinterpreted songs from Bisco’s critically-acclaimed sophomore album.

Despite this exposure, Bisco’s reputation is that of a thoughtful introvert. His music is dense, intellectual, and niche-oriented, almost as if it exists for personal catharsis rather than popular consumption. Crammed with myriad layers of literal and metaphorical meanings to the point of chaos, Bisco’s creative output has been branded cerebral and weighted with critical expectations of constantly existing at the “cutting edge” of hip-hop.

With his third full-length LP, The Broadcast, Bisco attempts to shed this heavy mantle and do what the title implies: transmit his vision to a larger audience, bolstered by a poppier sound and lighter flow. This ethos is captured in the rapper’s self-designed cover art, which depicts radio waves emanating from a stylized brain. Communication is key, as Bisco seems to be poising himself to express his mind to a broader base of listeners.

Produced entirely by fellow NYC resident J. Vegus, the album has a funky yet accessible downtempo flavor brightly tinged with electronica bursts and structured by dubstep syncopation. Tracks like “Fresh Water” pair bleeping and bubbling soundscapes with a skittering beat and unhurried wordplay. Bisco deftly rhymes over well-placed samples in tracks like “Time Zone,” in which an echoed vocal loop purrs eerily over hypnotic synths. The playful accompaniment is a perfect foil for the rapper, as he lyrically echoes the laid-back pacing of the beats.

Bisco’s mellowness is further reflected in the album’s accessible lyrics. His first single, “Morning Breath,” offers the reassuring maxim that no matter what personal choices one makes on any given day, everyone ends up on the correct life path in life’s grand scheme. “Vibrations” is an ode to escapism that touches on sending out energy and striving towards undiscovered places of peace. This Zen-like attitude serves Bisco well, as The Broadcast finds him at his most lyrically focused. Seemingly unburdened by the need to communicate so much in each song, Bisco’s delivery is noticeably relaxed.

However, at points, The Broadcast shifts from relaxed to sleepy, as the energy level dwindles during some of the more divergent songs. Tracks like “Crooked Hearts” and “Circuit Breaker” become muddy at points and sound like they could use a pick-me-up or some strategic editing. Repeated chants become monotonous in choruses such as those of “Tune In” and “Transmission Live.”

Still, the sense of urgency is regained elsewhere in the album, in which shifting flashes of percussion and samples provide plenty of listening material to maintain aural interest. The Broadcast is a rare example of cohesion in independent hip-hop, as the artist and producer seem to be on the same page at nearly every turn: see the perfectly-tuned “Railroads,” in which sound effects, lyrics, and production combine to paint a picture of toiling on the tracks that works on multiple levels. Despite a few (and far between) missteps in delivery and length, the eclectic album is an extremely strong third studio release that reflects a great deal of maturation.

Tagged as: Hip-hop, NYC