A-Plus comes out with a Pepper Spray: Opens eyes and ears with Chili Peppers

Courtesy - Aplus.bandcamp.com

An underground hip-hop legend, A-Plus of the Oakland based Hieroglyphics, recently played with  his fellow bandmate Del at Cervantes in Denver for an "End of the World" party. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the show, but seeing the entire Hiero crew together at Statebridge this past summer gave me some comfort, and I know we all got some Pepper Spray.

For A-Plus on his great EP adventure, he took various Red Hot Chili Pepper's songs such as "Californiacation" (which features Del), "Can't Stop," and "Hey Oh" moulding them into tracks that are completely his - style, flow, and rhymes. He chopped, cropped, spit, mixed, edited, manipulated, and repeated all of the RHCP's songs to create a unique take on what is considered by some as remix. Pepper Spray is not a remix, but instead it is an artistic cocktail of great beats, hooks, lyricism, and pure art. It is as if he made listeners a part of the stories he tells by becoming fully aware and connected with the listener.

A-Plus explains more on his website,  "'The songs are all topic-oriented, sonically as well as lyrically. It’s a conceptual EP, certainly. I don’t want people to look at this like it’s MY new album, it’s something I worked on but it’s obviously in a different lane,' emphasizes A-Plus. 'I’m stepping outside of my paradigm to do something new, different and artistic.'"

Any person who considers themselves to "know how to DJ" and "remix" songs, probably has no idea what I'm talking about, due to the fact that A-Plus breaks down the walls of genre and the musical stereotypes that go along with music by how he approached the making of Pepper Spray. I feel like he took his time with the RHCP songs and critically listened in order to choose the tracks and what to do with the songs once they were chosen. It sounds like he got into the nitty gritty of each song, yet at the same time didn't over analyze. This let A-Plus' creativity ignite and roll with the flames put onto the record.

Pepper Spray is a great album and not overproduced as I may have made it seem like that was the case. A-Plus killed it up at Statebridge as well as on this record. If you don't like it, you probably listen to country. That is just an assumption though, people shouldn't assume...sometimes.