The two emcees in the Perceptionists are hip-hop’s answer to Mutt and Jeff, the towering, linebacker-sized Akrobatik flipping rhymes with the diminutive, dreadlocked Mr. Lif. They trade lines at dazzling speed, finish each other’s phrases, and pounce together on certain words like ravenous pitbulls.
Their telepathic interplay has been honed by one of the most relentless touring schedules in hip-hop; they’ve already become favorites in this Texas town, where a capacity audience of mostly college-age hip-hop heads is barking back lyrics from an album that, on this spring day at the South By Southwest Music Conference, still hasn’t been released.
For Akrobatik, a.k.a. Jared Bridgeman, the enthusiasm is bittersweet. The Perceptionists’ debut album, “Black Dialogue” (Definitive Jux), had been widely circulated on the Internet before its release last month, and he’s concerned that may cut into sales. The perception that indie rappers aren’t concerned about commercial success is a myth, he says: “I may be an `underground’ rapper, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to eat.”
If quality dictated sales, “Black Dialogue” would be riding high on the charts. The high-minded lyricism that Lif and Akrobatik have forged over several solo releases is very much in evidence on politically combustive tracks such as “People 4 Prez” and the Iraqi war commentary “Memorial Day,” but there’s also an unexpected flair for introspection in “Love Letters” and playfulness in the hilarious “Career Finders,” with a guest vocal by Humpty Hump of West Coast funk-rap tricksters Digital Underground.
“We did `Love Letters’ because people wouldn’t expect that from us,” Akrobatik says. “We want to keep throwing curve balls. As you get older, you realize you can’t just be battling all the time. That’s cool, to show you got skills, to rip up [other emcees], but at the same time, it’s important to experience life, and relate to it, and put that into your music. We don’t think about just politics all day long.”
At the same time, the Willie Evans Jr. beat that inspired “Love Letters”–an alluring twist on what sounds like a brief, nearly unrecognizable sample from an early ’70s track by wimp-pop band Bread–nearly got lost in the shuffle. “Willie sent us a CD of his beats, and we were so excited by the first one, which became the title song of the album, that it wasn’t until more than a week later that we heard the one that became `Love Letters,'” Akrobatik says. “It was so different from the kind of beat we’d normally write to, which is why we had to do it. It took us half an hour, true spontaneous combustion.”
That creative juice began flowing nearly a decade ago, when Akrobatik, Lif and deejay Facts One were all finding a niche in the then-thriving Boston indie hip-hop scene. They were part of the generation of hip-hop kids inspired by the consciousness-raising rap of the late ’80s and early ’90s (A Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, De La Soul).
Lif’s career rose quickest. He owned 2002 with the devastating political commentary “Home of the Brave” and a brilliant album about the 9-to-5 working grind, “I Phantom.” Akrobatik’s 2003 release, “Balance,” was nearly as strong, though neither rapper got rich selling records.
“I’ve seen a lot of cats on the indie underground level that try to make music that sounds like what the radio stations and video channels are playing all the time,” Akrobatik says. “But it ends up being a foolish mistake, because they’re not gonna play an indie record anyway. You’re trying to bring a knife to the gunfight. You don’t have the payola money to get your record into that rotation. So why try to sound like something you’re not?
“We wrote a song like `Black Dialogue’ [which indicts rappers for `shucking and jiving to keep their bank accounts thriving’] knowing that a radio station couldn’t play it, because it debunks nearly everything else on their play list. How do you go back to your regularly scheduled programming after playing that?”
It’s why the Perceptionists must build their audience one city at a time, with a stage show as strong as any in hip-hop.
“We don’t practice or rehearse,” Akrobatik says. “We’re fans of each other’s music. I know all the words to Lif’s songs, he knows all the words to mine. When Lif is doing `Home of the Brave,’ I know at what point in each verse he might start to get low on oxygen. I know when to come in and give him that one second he needs to take a nice deep breath to finish the verse. He knows when I need his help, and I can play off that, and do something cool when I know he’s going to jump in.
“It’s weird, man. I may not see Lif for 10 weeks and then get up with him and perform a set like I’ve been hanging with him every day.”
Perceptionists
When: 10 p.m. Saturday
Where: Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.
Price: $12; 773-276-3600
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Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 10 p.m. Tuesdays on WXRT-FM 93.1.
gregkot@aol.com
