Crib Notes

They’ve been called the black Eurythmics. They even ate pancakes with Prince.

And all of that before dropping their first official release, last year’s double EP The Beauty in Distortion/Land of the Lost.

Yep, the genre-mashing, L.A.-based duo J*Davey is kind of a big deal. Which is why we lept at the chance to e-mail Jack Davey (the female singer with the dude’s name) and Brook D’Leau (the male producer with the chick’s name) some questions in advance of their Sat., March 14 Atlanta concert at Sugarhill (see show info below).

The first couple of electro-pop/future-soul/fill-in-the-blank-fusion explains how the right mixture of testosterone and vomit can create a beautiful love child.

Jack, on top of rocking a dude’s name, your lyrics and stage show drip with feminine sexuality, yet you convey a strength that’s almost masculine. Ever feel like you’re walking a tightrope between the two?

Jack: Not really. The music forces certain things out of me that I wasn’t previously aware of, so I just go with it without really thinking about it. I’m simply a vessel at the whim of the genius. I feel as though I embody a little bit of everything a lover wants his/her girl to be: strong, confident, sexy, yet vulnerable. The boy’s name is really just a moniker for the adventurous spirit, the little gypsy pirate who comes along to shake things up a bit. It’s funny … my nutritionist recently told me that I have high levels of testosterone, which explains why the music and the stage show are so sexually charged. I have the hormones of a 16-year-old boy. Lucky me!
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NEW DISCLAIMER!!!!!
Remember in my first blog when I said I’d try to express my opinions without getting beat up by some gangster rapper I might run into someday? Well now I’m gonna try and do that without getting beat up by some Hipster rapper that I def will, and HAVE, run into. I know some of y’all are waaaay more hood than hipster and are just trying to get paid, but if any of you all have a problem with my words it’s not Creative Loafing, crib notes, Godney Starmichael, RAD BADFORD, Supreeme, or any of them. It’s me and my rants again. And white people, I know you’re really sensitive about race these days…so this one’s not about race or gender or sex….Its just about music!!!

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: HIPSTER HOP, THE SUB-GENRE THAT I’M NOT SURE EXISTS
Being a skinny rapper who isn’t “socially conscious” or dealing coke on record (in real life I’m a Huey P. Newton idolizing Tony Montana), I had a deep seated fear of being lumped into what is now called Hipster Hop. It seems as if anyone whose clothing fits and doesn’t rap about the struggle or the hustle gets lumped into that scategory. For those of you who don’t know, the term hipster no longer only applies to white kids who did psychedelic drugs and listened to Miles Davis. Now it applies to Filipino dudes in exclusive Japanese tees and sneakers, cokehead art student chix who only like “dance music” (cocaine robot remixes), gender ambiguous dudes with fancy haircuts and American Apparel shirts, weird black guys with messy perms who AREN’T hairdressers, and pretty much most people @ DSC, Sloppy blah, Cinespace (LA), Silent Barn (NYC), Sway (NYC), Broke n…Bang Bang blah blah blah.

The term is used almost haphazardly to describe people who often don’t have that much in common. A wave of rappers are coming out of this 238 BPM fashion-cocaine-Macbook-Japan-MySpace-based miniverse who are being called Hipster Hop. My friends and I debate if this subgenre has any signifying sonic markers. I am going to attempt to pinpoint what separates hipster hop from the rest of rap.

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