‘Get up out your seat’ and get the Slang Angus album

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By Madeline Brown

“Are you alive today, or are you just breathing?” emcee “CO” (Craig Oubre) asks with the authority of a drill sergeant in the first line of Slang Angus’s self-titled album.

Slang Angus from New Orleans cooks a deep pot of gumbo with hip-hop, reggae, blues and funk with a kick and a message.

David Latino (guitar, vocals and keyboard), John Crabtree (bass) and Neilson Bernard (drums, percussion, vocals and samples) embrace being a New Orleanian band, taking different sounds of the city to forge an original groove.

Guitars radiating soul, drums tapping the jazz rhythms and just enough electronic mixing tickles the ears with a funky, non-controversial sound.

The music is an unusual but stimulating contrast to CO’s hard-hitting, no-holds-barred lyrics. Slang Angus fans probably wish Louisiana politicians spoke with more eloquence or that CO would just run for office with this kind of insight.

He gives every corner of the establishment a big verbal middle finger. In the popular song “Radio” he preaches “It teaches how to get paid without being creative.” Class stratification in “Aint’ Got Your Money”: “You see the rich get more rich and the poor get more pissed, well it leads to violence and it leads to sirens.”

Possibly the most stirring song is their comment on hurricane Katrina, “Rooftops.” It packages the city’s frustrations dealing with the government, their hardships and media distortion with a reggae sound.

“Crucify Michael Brown,” the band cries.

“Seems the birth place of the jazz caught the blues like a Mississippi Delta groove, now ain’t that the truth, live and direct from the vocal booth cause the voting booth ain’t yet open,” he raps in “Rooftops.”

But these tiny bits don’t give Slang Angus’s message and CO’s novel-sized streams of consciousness justice.

The wealth of soul, lyrics and vibrancy weaved into this album is remarkable. Get your copy at www.myspace.com/slangangus or www.cdbaby.com.

E-mail the author at Madeline@tigerweekly.com

Originally Published: Issue 604 - April 16, 2008

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