When The Machines Pop And Lock

When Basement Jaxx copped the riff from a 1979 deep cut named "M.E." for their bouncier-than-a-SuperBall and just as irritating 2001 club-smash "Where's Your Head At?", mainstream clubgoers were exposed to a truism that electro nerds and hip hop heads had been meditating on for decades: Gary Numan delivers fat beats.

The Numan renaissance is a much discussed phenomenon that's been addressed from several angles: his return from critical and commercial exile, the use of his beats in records like "Where's Your Head At?" and Armand Van Helden's slightly less ubiquitous, but just as gratingly cloying "Koochy" in 2000, how he's borrowed motifs from the generation of artists who were inspired by his absolutely crucial first four albums in order to forge a set of modern and moody industrial rock outings.

But the impact Numan's had on hip hop has gone largely unmentioned, perhaps owing to the lack of crossover between hip hop and vintage synth-pop fans. But savvy hip hop producers have lent a keen ear to Numan's discography and have found a plethora of beats ripe for sampling. The spacey, often nervous ambiance that Numan's synths create are buffered around simple but often hypnotically compelling rhythm parts, making for head-nodding loops that can't help but draw the listener in. Here's a sampling of tracks from the past decade:

Underdog, "Films"
A 2-CD Numan tribute album, "Random", was peppered with all manner of Brit-pop stars and alt-rock also-rans (a second tribute, "Random 2", anticipated the success of "Koochy" and "Where's Your Head At?" by offering up house interpretations of Numan's work), and closed with a grimy and snarling Bristol-influenced take on "Films".

Afrika Bambaataa, "Metal"
Bambaataa's never made any secret of the influence of Kraftwerk on foundational hip-hop jams like "Planet Rock", so it was no surprise to see him turn to "Metal" on his 2004 release, "Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light".


GZA, "Life Is A Movie"
The RZA's selection of the beat from "Films" to finish off his cousin the GZA's excellent "Pro Tools" disc was one of the more pleasant surprises I got from this year's crop of records, although after RZA rehabilitated Zamfir by deftly dropping "The Lonely Shepherd" into "Kill Bill", I suppose I shouldn't have ever underestimated Bob Digi's crate-digging skills. The icy synth sheens are perfectly suited to the rain which is perpetually falling in the RZA and GZA's contemplative verses.


Esoteric, "General Zod"
Boston's Esoteric takes some time off of waging war in some of underground hip hop's most legendary battles to wax hella nerdy overtop of "We Have A Technical", one of a clutch of fantastic B-sides from Numan's "Replicas" album.