Down 2 Earth

The late Ras G was kind of Afrofuturist, but the future he conjured is dusty, rusty, held together with rivets and tape — though also sublime with it. His music crackles with radioactivity and dimensional portals. Ras was (and in memoriam still is) a crucial part of the spaced-out Californian hip hop scene led by Flying Lotus, and makes “ghetto sci-fi”: some of the most brilliantly, infuriatingly stoned beats imaginable. If Lee “Scratch” Perry in his demented pomp had tried to invent hip hop armed with a bag of Gil Scott-Heron records and blaxploitation films, a gallon of rum and a klaxon, it might have gone along these lines. This album is a glorious mess of broken and barmy sketches, sirens, and “Oh Ras!” hollers, and has as much of dub’s true wayward spirit as you could ever possibly want.