The HighLife

The time of thoughtless hiphop is over.  And thank goodness for that.  If this decade has proved anything, it's that the illusion of separation is just that, an illusion.  Whether geographic, cultural, ideological, or musical.  Things that at first seem disparate are really quite similar at the heart of the matter.  East coast, West coast; a president that's both black and white; African, Latino; North America, South America.  I could go on...

Here we have a work that aims to, no, it actually does, show that assertion in motion.  N.A.S.A , which stands for North America South America, is a collaboration by Sam Spiegel (Squeak E. Clean), of Bethesda, MD, and DJ Zedon from Brazil.  They absolutely break the mold of what some would call hiphop.  Yeah, it's been happening for a while, but please tell me when was the last time you heard Tom Waits and Kool Keith on a track together.  Truth is, most people forget that hiphop was created by pulling from every source and genre that was available at the time. Why? It didn't exist before that.  So back to the quote at the top.  It's a Yoruba proverb that simply states, "A river that forgets its source, will run dry."  I could list all the people that they worked with on this album, from the Wu-Tang, to David Byrne, to George Clinton, to Spankrock, but it would take way too long.  N.A.S.A have put together an album which proves that the sun shines on all of us the same.  Truly this is...