Like Mark Ronson, the Neptunes or, going a little further back, Adam F, John Harrison is a rap musician determined to show that he can cut the beat-making mustard. His childhood nickname was bestowed upon him because of an allergy, but just one taste of this debut could put the world of rap into anaphylactic shock.
An astoundingly assured soundscaper, Harrison has been given his chance by Faithless's Rollo after working as an engineer on several Faithless projects. He may not have been credited for his engineering - and songwriting - for Rollo's sister Dido and her coffee table-bothering output, but a record deal of his own seems fair recompense.
'Sweet As' belies its worryingly mockney title with a sonic breadth and polished class that immediately sets it apart from the messy morass of much underground rap. 'The Don' is a widescreen Bollywood epic, the chiming, spiky strings and stuttering, tape-on-fast-forward samples making it sound like one of the tracks Jay-Z would have rejected for 'The Blueprint 2', had he been chin-dribblingly, eye-bogglingly insane.
'Captive' is a drug-addled bout of lyrical paranoia that recalls Mobb Deep and Ice Cube's 'Lethal Injection' album in its luxuriantly spacious sonics, where whispered asides, echoing bass, fizzing laser beams of strings and a judiciously chopped soundbite from some old soul record combine to spine-chilling effect. 'Hey Hey Hey' revisits Dawn Penn's 'No No No' and sounds like the 1970s Hi records house band playing reggae, while 'Martha's Interlude' and the intro, 'In The Beginning', both show that P*Nut has beats to burn, great sonic ideas tossed away on brief track links. It's normally only lauded (and loaded) show-offs like DJ Premier or Pete Rock who pull that sort of trick.
However, there is a problem here, one put into stark contrast when comparing 'Sweet As' to 'Here Comes The Fuzz' and 'Neptunes Present Clones'. As an unheralded (not to mention British) newcomer, P*Nut hasn't got the vast numbers of superstar rap mates to call on to guest on his LP, which means some of his masterpiece beats don't always get the vocals they merit.
But you get the feeling that Harrison's problem next time out will be to carry a big enough stick to beat away the hordes of A-list rappers clamouring to ride one of his tracks.
