Hip-hop to me – real hip-hop that is – has always been about building something that has definite walls and sides, something that has surfaces, storage cupboards, multi-dimensions and heights – everything but a roof. Listening itself should be a building experience. With a roof, it’s like saying it’s finished, and hip-hop is too transient for that, too fleeting. The closest thing to hip-hop as loose and as free as this is dreaming. The place you inhabit in dreams seems vaguely familiar, vaguely secure, but in every other respect it’s different. There are no rules as such, or what rules there are, are routinely mashed, thrown or broken. It doesn’t necessarily make sense when you wake up, but it makes perfect sense whilst you’re there. You walk from one room to another, from one level to another and on each level and in every room there’s something entirely different going on. But it’s the same one house. The same one dreamer. Not surreal exactly, but impressionistic. And this is why records like ‘Ink Is My Drink’ ostensibly work: Panacea provides the threads, but it’s the listener who’s invited to make the connections. It’s more receptive than rap, more instinctive than pop and more flexible than rock. And it never has to provide an explanation. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the work of Jorge Luis Borges, but many of his most popular stories concern the nature of time, infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality, philosophy, and identity. Take ‘The Library Of Babel’ – the story of a library containing every possible 410-page text, or ‘The Aleph’ – the story of an artefact through which the user can see everything in the universe. What’s psychedelic for some is for others magic realism – a gateway to an inner dimension. All of which explains the spaced-out hippy ecstasy of opening track, ‘Trip Of The Century’ – a slippy sketchpad of broken beats, trippy melodies, sitars, distressed guitars and soulful Emceeing rolled into one big fat jazzy spliff. Cinematic in scope, but with the impact of a Polaroid picture.
The first release on Rawkus records since its break with Geffen and Universal, ‘Ink Is My Drink’ rightfully earns comparisons to The Roots and Outkast without losing anything by way of originality. It’s freewheelin’, fanciful and loaded with tricks but for all its footwork, it’s fluid.
Keepin’ it real, Washington DC’s Panacea. A healing experience with a good recovery time and sound intentions.