It's not that P.M. Dawn – led by Prince Be and his brother J.C. the Eternal – don't operate in the hip-hop arena. Indeed they do. But like the DJs working the fringes of dance music, the… Read More
duo has taken the sound of hip-hop so far beyond rap that it would be simplistic to discuss its music in those terms alone.
From the start, P.M. Dawn's place in hip-hop seemed defiantly ambiguous. The lush, Anglo-pop arrangements, delicate hip-hop tracks and half-sung, half-spoken vocals of their 1991 debut, Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, defied categorization and attracted a largely nonrap audience. The New Jersey pair didn't present aural vérité of the hood, nor did it directly address racial injustice; rather, P.M. Dawn waxed existential about God, love and the desire to transcend this unfathomable world. They veered even further afield of conventional rap on their sophomore LP, The Bliss Album ... ?, from 1993.
Not that Jesus Wept is a fringe album. Its overall milieu actually shares more with the slick New Jack sound of Babyface than with the more experimental tinkerings of Tricky. Prince Be and J.C. (a k a DJ Minutemix) use polished, almost overproduced vocal and instrumental tracks to lure you into a world of subtle chaos – a drum track that wanders slightly off beat, an edgy rock-guitar line, a drop-dead confessional lyric like "I can't stop screamin' 'cause I'm failing to entertain all of myself."
Doubt and confusion run rampant through Jesus Wept, an album whose very title suggests disappointment. Prince Be alludes to life's darker mysteries in his various musical shadings and his frequent use of the word shadows. In the psychedelic "My Own Personal Gravity," he asks, "Why am I always misinterpreting my guilt?" Yet he seems confident that if he can just let go of his worldly doubts, he will be redeemed by higher forces.
When you get beyond the incredible candy-coated surface, P.M. Dawn's songs are hardly soft. Prince Be's intelligent, enigmatic lyrics and J.C.'s deft mixes are almost subversive in the way they undermine the rules of every pop genre the duo mines. The sizzling "9:45 Wake-Up Dream" floats over a dub-bass line charged by a fuzzy rock-guitar hook and interrupted by a tempo change, a treated vocal part and faint, computerized bells. Underneath, the seductive poly-rhythmic currents flow like honey from beginning to end.
As P.M. Dawn move further away from rap, their occasional cosmic excesses fit well into the duo's vaguely religious-existential view of t
