But fret not… De La came to save the day in eight bars as they enter the melancholy town to destroy the regime that’s holding our happiness hostage. It’s a dance song with the perfect dash of insidious intent, illustrating a city held captive in its mediocrity as the world passes them by. On top of being one of the most kick-ass singles the Gorillaz ever dropped, De La Soul’s presence on this record is iller than my teenage mind could comprehend when I first found 2D perched atop the windmill. It’s a deep cut that’s easily missed, but a diverse snapshot of all the best parts of Yasiin at work: relentless narrator, sage songbird, and unsettled commentator. On its best day, it’s a distant relative of the “Mathematics” Mos spoke of over a decade prior, trading boom-bap for an instrumental clash that sputters and melts into itself by the fourth minute. The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble complement his repetition with a bombastic horn section as Mos repeats and remixes the game-show imagery. This record glides along at a locomotive pace with Mos Def (Yasiin Bey) putting his shapeshifting expertise into overdrive. When his verse crescendos into a heavenly interlude for Martina Topley-Bird to call for our hands before setting us back down into the madness, the verse sits as one of the most underrated and satisfying moments on Demon Days. It’s an overwhelming listen that won’t guarantee any clarity even by the fifth rewind, but there’s a grave sense of escapism in Roots’ words, a pressure against the weight of past mistakes met with the strength to push forward no matter what. Over a frantic electro backdrop, Roots Manuva hits a mad-dash through a steady strain of non-sequiturs and self-reflections to paint the picture of a man ready to dive into whatever lies ahead. There’s not much rapping to be found, but Mos’s in-and-out functions to wrap the track in its own uncertainty, praying that a burnout is nowhere near as it appears we’re headed straight for it. But this everlasting journey is the very thing leading us to “overload,” echoed by 2D and Bobby Womack prescribing that love as a cure to the struggle. Fitting in the track’s narrative of navigating love in an overpopulated world, love becomes electric as we seek the perfect source of energy to harness that love. Mos came through with the juxtaposition of heavy imagery in only eight bars, managing to cover our dependency on technology to the point where we believe we can control the weather. Nonetheless, De La Soul’s long found a home on Gorillaz records to mesh their strange charms in matrimony this tale of a radioactive sea and things that taste like chicken fits right at home with this lineage. So much so, the jellyfish/breakfast metaphors get a little too lost in translation. The bars are a bit more relaxed this time around, with some of the imagery leaving almost all of the message to the listener’s imagination. One-part food-industrial complex critique, one-part music industry takedown(?) this record is a Surgeon General’s warning on a microwaveable breakfast box, disguised as the first stage of guilt during an acid trip. There’s a funny reference to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! and an image of Heaven’s VIP section, though the concepts aren’t the most fresh or expansive on typical ideas of an ideological safe haven. The two sync perfectly in articulating the uncertainties beneath their wonder. It’s a testament to the sonic and stylistic collaging found across the Gorillaz catalog: two popular grime artists trading bars about paradise while being backed by The Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music.
In the context of Plastic Beach, Bashy and Kano trade bars about discovering an island utopia to refresh and reframe their lifestyles, leaving the old world behind. But they still work so damn well that forgiveness is inevitable, even if he’s first on the beach and last on this list. He sticks to the grander themes of oceans and pollution metaphors - and it’s an intro, we can’t expect him to run off with the whole concept - but his images of smoking weed with pilgrims and a bubble bath just don’t work that well. While Uncle Snoop’s slick talk makes damn near anything sound good, his appearance in the Gorillaz universe is one of the rare times where he can come off corny to his detriment.
Snoop Dogg)īig Snoop Dogg graced the intro of Plastic Beach on a bed of psychedelic G-funk that ended up much more form than function. "Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach" (feat.
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