The 2015 documentary Rubble Kings is one of many pieces of cultural ephemera about New York City in the '70s to emerge recently. It focuses on the chaos of the Boogie Down Bronx at a time when the borough was dealing with turbulence so intense that it was liable to burst into flame, but it avoids lazily conflating the chaos of the city and the beauty of the culture that emerged around the same period. Instead, it points to the Hoe Avenue peace meeting, a truce between gangs in the Bronx, as the catalyst for an artistic explosion that presaged the birth of hip-hop.
The soundtrack was produced by Little Shalimar, who scored the documentary and has worked as a producer with Run the Jewels among others. The music splits its time between rap tracks and instrumental music by Shalimar that take inspiration from various sonic flavors that were percolating through the Bronx in the '70s. Perhaps attempting to imitate the arc of the film, the album stumbles in the early going with the tough-talking track "Savage Habits," which, even though it features Killer Mike and Bun B, doesn’t quite pound in the way you might hope. (Also, it’s bullshit provincial homerism, but honestly: New Yorkers should open a New York album!)
But Little Shalimar makes several clever curatorial choices. Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire hasn’t never quite managed to echo the success of 2011’s Lost in Translation, but he sounds energized on "Warrior Thing," as do indispensable voices like Ka and Ghostface Killah, who show up on later tracks. For the most part, lyrically, the actual bars being spit here are less moving than the voices and vibe. That’s a credit to Shalimar, who has assembled worthwhile soundscapes for at least a couple of rappers who have had a below-average record in the booth in recent years. The Run the Jewels track "Rubble Kings Theme (Dynamite)" is the high point of the rap cuts, Killer Mike spitting steel-toed syllables over a concrete staircase of a beat, El-P gleefully playing with sibilants in the second verse.
The best moments come when Shalimar sticks to instrumentals. His work with the musician Jeremy Wilms (together, they call themselves King Mono) on "Bouncy 3" is a standout. "Partytime" is a tribute to the breaking culture of outdoor block parties, a mix of hard funk rythms and riffs, and snazzy ballpark synths that sound imported from a Dire Straits song.
The narrative arc of the album isn’t quite as arresting as that of the film, but Shalimar does make an effort to say something with the song structure here. That comes into play most notably at the album’s close, with the one-two punch of "The Piano District (Gentrification Boogie)" and "Phoenix." The first is an instrumental track, part lament, part testimonial to the inexorable movement of money into the Bronx. (That a borough with such a venerable nickname should be renamed so casually by developers is the kind of Gotham micro-tragedy to which city-dwellers are consistently subjected.)
"Phoenix" broadcasts its message through its name. The artists featured, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio and the singer/songwriter Roxiny (who sounds a little like early Santigold which is to say, amazing) sing an anthem of rebirth, a hopeful song that corresponds with the message of Rubble Kings. But here, as on the album as a whole, any kind of explicit statement has been wrested from a canvas of evocative sonic ideas. The music comes first every time, ably conjuring up the milieu that served as hip-hop’s cradle.
