Any musical genre is built on two forces. One playing by the rules, coalescing the genres traditional sounds and accepting its place in the pact, the other pushing the boundaries, testing new waters, beating fresh paths through previously uncharted territory. Twelve is defiantly in the latter category. Put You In Ner is built around a hip-hop vibe but not like any you have heard before, this is hip-hop deconstructed to its basic building blocks, the beats and the lyrics, and then put back together using a musical mortar built of distant synth washes, strange electronic motifs and sounds which seem to have been harvested from way outside the genre.
It steals pop infectiousness and grafts it on to a hip-hop groove, it weaves edgy rap vocals through hypnotic electronica and it crashes avant-garde thought processes into skittering beats. As always it isn’t what sounds you use it is what you do with them and it is never about where you start from it is about where you are going. I’m not sure where Twelve is going but it is going to be worth tagging along for the ride.
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