Song Review-Bad Man by Anthony Flammia

by Dan-O

I want everyone to check out The Looper by Anthony Flammia but it’s going to sound silly when I explain what it is. The Looper is a live r&b beatboxing mixtape and that might sound like something gimmicky that would wear out its welcome after three songs, but it doesn’t. The songs are heartfelt and well-constructed with a lot of African rhythms (this is my wife’s description I never use that term cause I don’t feel like I know jack spit about African rhythms I would just call The Looper bass and drum dependent in a Tito Puente kind of way. I know Tito Puente.) He has an interlude where he makes a beat live mixing crowd noise into the loop. A lot of it is vibe dependent and sometimes its two minutes into the song before the words come but Bad Man isn’t like that.

Bad man is awesome from seventeen seconds on. Flammia has a great voice and while his lyrics are always attempting to be personally evocative in a positive way, I prefer that to the weird dark sex genre of r&b. The hook of this song is so damn dope that it wouldn’t really matter if the format was unique or not. It is though and you haven’t heard seven songs like this, maybe ever. The simplicity of the elements ,so properly used, hooks into you and never releases so that even on those songs where you are essentially listening to beatboxing and bassline for two minutes you won’t mind. You know that when he does start to speak it’s going to be profoundly interesting.

download or stream The Looper below:

http://www.djbooth.net/index/albums/review/2015-05-01-anthony-flammia-the-looper