It was with a certain amount of relief that Roots Manuva's 'Run Come Save Me' was greeted last year. Slagging off British hip-hop had, after all, become boringly predictable: surely someone in this country could make a decent hash of it?
Undeniably, the amiable Manuva was far more convincing than most of the other British contenders thrust before us in the past decade or so. But in the midst of the overwhelming praise, a few issues were conveniently ignored. New Flesh member Part 2's and Rodney Smith's heavy electro collaborations harboured a few neat tricks, but still sounded pretty rickety compared with maestros like Timbaland. And Manuva's antidote to hip-hop Yankophilia often amounted to nothing more than an annoyingly wacky sense of humour.
From the same Big Dada stable, then, New Flesh's 'Understanding' is already being afforded similar levels of praise. And again, it's not a bad record a massive improvement on the trio's murky, Wu-infatuated 1999 debut, 'Equilibrium', for a start. Part 2's techniques are improving all the time, so that 'Understanding' bobbles along with a dense electronic production style that draws equally and imaginatively from US R&B, Jamaican digital dancehall and old-skool rave. When rappers Toastie Taylor and Juice Aleem move into accelerated chat mode over the whistles, clicks and tweaked car horns of 'More Fire' or the sub-bass aggro of 'Stick And Move', New Flesh produce something so genuinely impressive you're tempted to believe at least some of the hype.
Fair enough. But the fact remains that, for sizeable portions of its 13 tracks, 'Understanding' still isn't quite good enough. Take 'Transition' and 'Do You Understand?', which bravely try to subvert modern R&B forms, but instead end up stuttering and shapeless. The great genius of so much music in this field from America is that it's both thrillingly adventurous and ruthlessly commercial. New Flesh have the ideas and the skills that are needed, but still fall short on the hooks and punches. Halfway there, but hear (from just this week's selection of releases) the new Mystikal album, and much of the acclaim for New Flesh sounds like obligatory flagwaving.
