Old school

The quest for good Vegas hip-hop can gear down this week. For now, it's been found. Then again, one man's meat is another man's poison, so let's define our terms, using eight-to-12-member (personnel tends to be fluid in the genre) local outfit Rhyme N Rhythm for illustrative purposes. After a year and a half together and nights spent opening for acts like Ghostface Killah, Snoop Dogg and LL Cool J, hard-working RNR is throwing its Hello Groove debut CD release party at Hard Rock's Wasted Space this Sunday, May 17. A recent visit to its practice space at MDV Entertainment Studios helped clear a few things up with regard to what this rock- and punk-fixated town just might need to get over a lingering hip-hop aversion.

Good Vegas hip-hop is compositionally interesting.

It's Monday night around 11 p.m. during rehearsal time at the fluorescent-lit MDV space, and most of the band (guitarist Ryan Mappala and saxophonist Julian Tanaka couldn't make it) is at full tilt. It's cranking out something new, smooth and vaguely carnivalesque -- not so much that it sounds clownish, but enough to keep you from writing it off as stock R&B backing. True, most of these players are current or former UNLV music students, but don't let that throw you; the band's sound sensibility stays as street as it wants to be, despite the academia underneath.

"The formal training helps us convey the message," says drummer Renaldo Elliott, aka Tadow. "We can play what people without years of study might not be able to do. We can take a progression and think, 'How can we make this more contemporary?' It's about having the knowledge to play what we want."

"I'm a student of hip-hop just like I'm a student of jazz, R&B, funk, reggae, classical, Latin, et cetera," adds keyboardist Zach Porter, aka K-Nyce. "If anything, my musical training strengthens my creativity and expands my musical capabilities ... which helps lead to our specific brand and sound of hip-hop ... "

RNR really does sound like the product of disparate influences at this moment. During a break in the rapped lyrics traded off among four distinctly styled MCs -- Dominick Jackson (aka Bob Cane), Freddy Tiff, Jerry Wayne and Allan Turner (aka A-1ne) -- the vibe changes for an instant, courtesy of a K-Nyce major-minor-7th organ chord (happy and sad at the same time) coupled with a note that bassist Courtney Thomas, aka Coco Jenkins, knows full-well doesn't quite fit the key signature. Like a reset switch that freshens without killing the groove, it works. How many instrument-less local hip-hop DJs even think to pull that off, and with such subtlety?

Good Vegas hip-hop is truly collaborative.

If you've ever cringed at a local stage full of MCs chomping at the bit for their respective turns without really acknowledging the one who's up, know that RNR won't do that to you. Four guys with mics is an ego-fueled train wreck waiting to happen, and yet they don't let it. While Jackson flows with a kind of barked, hard-enunciated KRS-One style -- quick, then almost stuttered, then quick again -- the other three watch, featuring him with their own bouncy body language rather than pulling attention toward themselves. The same thing happens when higher-registered Turner does his more languid thing, then twice more when Tiff and Wayne are up. At times, all four MCs sync up their waving arms during blow-ups and even in this featureless practice room, the intended hypno-effect is there.

"They're getting some help from a choreographer friend with some of that," says RNR manager Shawn Denard.

Musically, the same collective mind is on display, each player (including trombonist Mike Evans, who's just joined in with a long, swelling "I'm here" note) watching the others patiently, looking to offer complementary juice to the jam rather than steal someone else's. If you listen closely you can hear a bit of Elliott's reggae leanings mesh together with a bit of straight psychedelia from Porter, a "big Mars Volta fan."

"We have diverse tastes," grins Thomas.

"Verrry diverse," adds Porter, and both chuckle at the simple truth of it.

Good Vegas hip-hop is energizing, not enervating.

Watching this group rehearse tonight is entertainment in its own right, but also comes with a sense of big, happy potential. You get the feeling that the increased floor space, better lighting, higher wattage and far larger crowd they'll find Sunday at Wasted Space (RNR is opening for Street Sweeper, featuring Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine) will fit this sprawling band perfectly -- maybe even better than a nearby and somewhat cramped Body English environment fit The Roots during their secret show there in 2007.

All this gesturing, twisting and weaving around each other while rapping and playing needs a proper space if its going to properly infect an audience. And it's not just the ease of physical movement that's at stake here. From the looks of this practice session, it's just as much the positive emotional vigor RNR can't help but impart to what they do. They don't just express a wussy, come-on-y'all-we're-all-as-one-deep-down sentiment, by the way. Lyrical content blends gettin' high with the need for a college degree, runnin' from Metro with the need to take responsibility for one's own future and let go of the past.

In other words, whether it's created by RNR at this upcoming CD release party, or any other aspiring local hip-hop artist or group:

Good Vegas hip-hop does not simply fall back on the well-worn and excruciatingly dull beats, plodding raps, bling inventories and violence-inspiring, you-can't-handle-this death threat bullshit that's already given the genre the bad name it still fights to overcome in Vegas.

"We want to show people this can be done," says manager Denard about the Wasted Space gig. "That people can come together and groove without all the violence and everything else."

Allow them to demonstrate.

For more info, visit www.myspace.com/rhymenrhythm

Dave Surratt, dsurratt@lvcitylife.com