Us3 – Still Holding The Torch

Most every music fan of a certain age group remembers Us3’s 1993 classic “Cantaloop (Flip Fantastia)” and it’s playful “biddy biddy bop” refrain. A significant amount of time has passed since then and later this month Geoff Wilkinson (pictured center), who is the mastermind behind Us3, is going to be releasing his seventh album, Stop. Think. Run, under the Us3 name. This week I caught up with Wilkinson to find out more the project, which includes a new lineup (Sene and Brook Yung, pictured L to R), and get his thoughts on the aborted jazz-rap movement. Here are some of the highlights:

On Us3’s original deal with Blue Note Records:
“It was a bit of a marketing exercise for them, I must admit. I did get offended by people who said that to me at the start, but looking back on it now, and looking at what they’ve done since with other artists like Madlib and other remix projects, I’ve got mixed feelings about them as a label.”

On the disappearance of Acid Jazz:
“I think the media kind of killed the whole Acid Jazz thing to where Acid Jazz quickly became a dirty word, or a dirty phrase, before the actual music had any chance to really develop.”

On the mediocrity he sees in Hip-Hop today:
“A lot of rappers say that Hip-Hop is a science and it’s a rhythmical art form, but if it’s a rhythmical art form then why do most rappers rap on the most basic beats in the same time signature all the time?”

Check out the full interview at RapReviews.com.