Return of the DJ, Vol. 1

The first big multi-artist showcase of the turntablism era starts on a sour note: Kool DJ E.Q.’s “Death of Hip-Hop” features a diatribe about how “selfishness and greed has forced some to neglect those on the wheels of steel; MCs engaging in this type of behavior see themselves as gettin’ over, but in reality, they’re contributing to the death of true hip-hop.” But if that opening salvo seems a bit defensive, this comp shows off a lot worth defending, with that first track’s combo of exclamatory DJ Premier-style rapper-soundbite scratches and no-bullshit-all-boom-bap drums providing just one of many routes towards recentering the scratch routine in hip-hop. Invisibl Skratch Piklz earn nods both as a crew (the dubby burble of “Invasion of the Octopus People,” where their scratches mutilate Minimoogs and wah-wah guitars into hot melted gunk) and solo (Mix Master Mike adding some wild popcult pastiche — Bruce Lee and NFL kicker Tom Dempsey, together at last — to the manic culture-jamming “Terrorwrist (Beneath the Under)”). Beat Junkies’ “Scratch Monopoly II” can’t sit still, careening between downtempo MoWax acid-jazz atmosphere and old-school uptempo body-rock breaks while immolating the restless beat with some of the most frantic, fast-paced scratching imaginable; the crew’s own DJ Babu somehow tops it for the crossfader-throttling mania of closer “Suckas (Sucka DJ Dis),” 20 beats’ worth of showmanship crammed into three bewildering minutes. Further highlights include Rob Swift’s disruptive rhythm rearrangements turning the b-boy canon into coleslaw (“Rob Get’s Busy”), Cut Chemist following up on the promise of Steinski’s tape-splicing proto-sampling break studies and doing it all on wax, in real time (“Lesson 4: The Radio”), and Peanut Butter Wolf drawing seismographic lines from the old school to the last years of the Golden Era by compressing a mixtape’s worth of history into a single concentrated dose (“The Chronicles (I Will Always Love H.E.R.)”).