Several years ago, with a reputation marked by an all-encompassing spirituality and devotion to God, West Coast rapper Declaime began to blossom into a singer. And in a small way, it’s kind of revolutionary for an MC to make that leap. Declaime is really Dudley Perkins, “the name my mama gave me”.
Expressions may be, for Perkins, as much about antic self-identification as it is about recognizing, in humanity, the things that bind us and the things that destroy us. He alludes to the present as our ‘last days’ and even in his album title, the parenthetical year 2012 a.u. refers to ‘afta us’. His personality is central throughout this record, but it’s a truly unique combination of gravitas and cracked bliss.
“What I go through is what every human being on this planet goes through… Declaime is here for War, a Warrior of the light,” says Perkins in a glazed-over Sun Ra-like documentary clip. But we know that Dudley Perkins is not all gloom and doom. Far from it. The record is playful and loose, and an irresistible head-nodder throughout. Topically, the songs are grounded in the everyday — God, music, weed, money, love, weed and God – but they come from a man with a lot of inner turmoil and exasperation over the state of things, and absolutely nothing to hide. In the opener ‘Funky Dudley”, he conducts a bleary but tight, funky Q & A with himself:
"How’d you get so funky, Dudley?"
"A little bit of weed is all I need"
Expressions arrives not-so-closely on the heels of 2003’s hazy A Lil’ Light. This is his second go-round with the insanely prolific Madlib as producer, handling all musical duties. The sound is quickly identifiable as Madlib’s, with his trademark undulating beats (somehow the beat is both behind and ahead of itself), and a strangely beautiful production. One listen and you know why Madlib is the unofficial veteran figurehead of the Stones Throw roster, and for many, one of the most innovative and revered producers today. The guy lives and breathes music, seemingly permanently holed up in the Stones Throw ‘bomb-shelter’, releasing a record nearly every month under a variety of monikers (Yesterday’s New Quintet, Madvillain, Quasimoto), sometimes with heavyweight collaborators such as MF Doom, and recently deceased kindred spirit, J Dilla.
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