Darc Mind
BIOGRAPHY
Hailing from Long Island, New York, Darc Mind were originally signed to Loud Records, for whom they recorded their groundbreaking debut Symptomatic of a Greater Ill between '95 and '97. Comprised of MC Kevroc and DJ/producer Webb D (aka X-Ray), Darc Mind were set to alter the course of rap's evolution with this cacophonous treasure chest of horns, vibes, and piano, ruggedly married to chunky basslines, chopped drum breaks and biblical vocal rumblings, when Loud folded in '97. Symptomatic was never released, and hip-hop culture was deprived of a record that, along with Saafir's Boxcar Sessions, Organized's Extinction Agenda, and Ultra's Four Horseman, pointed towards an alternative direction for the genre, already groaning under the pressure of narcissistic commercialism in the mid-90s. Things could perhaps have been different, and the long- awaited release of the album on Anticon records on August 28 2006 will finally reveal to the listening public the imagination, fertility and integrity that Darc Mind possessed, despite - or perhaps because of - their disillusion at much that was taking place in the scene around them.
Webb released his first rap record in '89, and even at that time the fractured, unsettling tone of "I'm Ill" and the horn stab and drum machine-driven "Fever Pitch" anticipate the innovation of his work in the 90's. In these tracks, one can almost hear rap's history and future being wilfully crosscut and interlaced. Similarly, at that time Kevroc's powerfully unique sense of timing, his nearly instrumental phrasing, and the density of his lyrics - the strange phrases he cobbles together and lets off in a throaty baritione - was already evident in his MCing. On Symptomatic Kevroc's acidic social commentary and observations on the decline of mainstream hip-hop come of age, in protests like "suckers are suffering from drinking off the same 40 bottle," and his statement that "I do work on the circuit, preach in the city / rap like I'm standing before the Senate Ethics Committee."
Coming from Long Island, Darc Mind inevitably had a different perspective on the developments in hip-hop to that of NYC artists. Kevroc cites early 80's neighborhood MC KK Rockwell of Funky 4 as "the first MC whose lyrical fund and novelty stood out to me," and adds that, "metaphorically, I was basically a shorty sitting on the front stoop of my house, on my block, as hip-hop happened right in front of me." Asked whether being based in Long Island gave Darc Mind a creative distance from the trends circulating through the New York itself, as it apparently did for artists from Rakim, P.E., and JVC Force to De La Soul, Kevroc replies "I wouldn't call it a distance, but rather a hunger from the peripheral vantage."
Hunger, maybe - but also surely a valuable critical distance. One need merely skim the surface of the record to see the scars of cynicism about the sea change just then occurring in hip-hop: the transition from Nas' Illmatic to It Was Written, the ascendancy of Biggie and Jigga, the rising trend of making couplets from the raw material of brand names, and the R&B hooks that swaggered out from Mary J.'s shadow into pop-rap ubiquity. Asked to describe this period in retrospect, Kevroc quotes the Wilford Brimley character from the film The Firm, finding in the era's developments "the death of love and trust"; Kevroc admits that he "was disenchanted with the industry long before the Loud deal." Nonetheless, the loss of Symptomatic for so many years is as powerful an indictment of the commercialisation of hip-hop as you will encounter. As Rock Sound noted in a recent review, the record is "an alt-hip-hop classic strangled at birth... who knows what impact it might have made, but full marks to Anticon for giving it a second chance."
