Expansion Team

Dilated Peoples

Capitol, 2001

Buy it online

Reviewed by Andrew Arora

Today's pop music charts are cluttered with second hand tunes and overproduced sounds that claim to be hip hop but can be better described as pop music with some bounce. Strip hip hop of the recycled bits, expensive cars and pool parties and you'll find yourself listening to Dilated Peoples' sophomore full length album, Expansion Team. The trio of Rakaa (also known as Iriscience), Evidence and Babu have solidified its roots by snapping together fresh turntable sounds with abstemious lyrics covering traditional rap themes.

While Peoples may refer to themselves as a hip hop group, Expansion Team makes them much more quantifiable as a freestyle rap group with hip hop sounds. This L.A.-based freestyle group with a DJ (Babu) and two emcees (Rakaa and Evidence) have recently toured with Jurassic 5 and The Roots, supplying them with enough influence to draw countless comparisons to their underground counterparts. Peoples had no problem finding some major names, like Black Thought, Tha Liks, DJ Premier and the renowned east coast hip hop producer The Alchemist, to contribute to Expansion Team. Similar to many freestyle-first rap acts, this album contains much self promotion and covers a surplus of subjects ranging from unity, war and retaliation.

Expansion Team can be a little narcotic at times, even with original beats and rhymes, and as a whole takes a little more time to warm up to then normal. Many of the tracks have a sound that can make sections of the album feel monotonous, in a way similar to early A Tribe Called Quest recordings. Also analogous to their earlier rap equivalents, Peoples uses their messages and rhyming diversity to distinguish each track. On "Trade Money," Peoples backdrops a bluesy trumpet with a rap directed at how materialism and making money can turn into "more headaches and more pain in my stomach." The interlude "War" also portrays Peoples' political colloquium by taking strikes at racism and domestic violence.

Rap and hip hop artists are notorious for well produced songs that can never find the same kind of juice when performed in a live concert. Expansion Team's opening song "Live On Stage" showcases the importance of a hip hop group's live performance. This is a sharp choice for the initial track on the album because of its high energy and ample beats. The group's first single, "Worst Comes to Worst," follows and doesn't let up with its wicked bass line. "Worst," is a song about unity and the music that brings it all together. And of course they find time for some boastful image management:

Definitely Dilated Peoples comes first
Cross-trainin spar, we raise the bar
And we put it in your ear no matter who you are

This track is the only true step on Expansion Team to more of a mainstream hip hop sound, but it still maintains the sought after conventional rhythmic pulse that the band amplifies.

In the first half of Expansion Team, Peoples allows you to discover and listen to the assorted sounds, beats and rhymes they can create. The second half mixes the previous tastes to create consummate tracks and are a little more amiable to the casual ear. "Panic," produced by The Alchemist, may just be the prize of the album. It introduces a Hawaii-Five-O-type theme behind a superior ensemble rap. The rap opens with some impetus words:

The difference between a hero and a coward? There
is no difference. One time or another everyone's felt
fear. It's what one person does that the other person
doesn't do that makes him a hero. But I'm about to
step the fuck up.

This track continues to convey three and a half minutes of motivational madcap hip hop. The lyrics are not only personally inspiring but also, and once again, self-promoting. This time the endorsement settles with the listener effortlessly due to the relative importance of serving as a catapult for retort.

Dilated Peoples has the type of sound that reverberates with you and calls for a rebirth of an old school scratch sound with liberal avant-garde beats. Emcee's Evidence and Irisicience's dexterous vocals along with DJ Babu's canny knack for mixing and scratching put Dilated Peoples' Expansion Team in a class previously proverbial but currently abandoned by today's hip hop and rap artists. | August 2002


Andrew Arora is a freelance music writer based in Dallas, Texas.

Tracks
1: Live On Stage
2: Worst Comes To Worst
3: Clockwork
4: Trade Money
5: Heavy Rotation
6: Self Defense
7: Phil Da Agony Interlude
8: Proper Propaganda
9: Dilated Junkies
10: Panic
11: Pay Attention
12: Night Life
13: War
14: Hard Hitters
15: Defari Institute
16: Expansion Team Theme