Eyedea & Abilities: What Happened?

When I was twenty, I drove roughly an hour to see Eyedea & Abilities perform in Columbus alongside the Living Legends crew. At this late date, there are only two significant occurrences from said evening that I readily recall. Firstly, Living Legends were as bland live as their albums are/were coming out of one’s stereo. Second, Eyedea battled some poor schlub from the crowd and wrecked him. It was something that should have been expected – and no, there’s no reason for that guy to have gotten on stage, but that’s how you learn. It was a decent show despite the two hour transportation to and from the venue.

That show was part of a tour for E&A’s initial full length release entitled First Born, released via Rhymesayers. That album somehow didn’t wind up being rote regurgitation of a style then being popularized by Minneapolis’ Atmosphere. What did happen, though, was that E&A got through that tour and took a break for three years, during which time the fervor mounting around Rhymesayers and Atmosphere seemed to dissipate. Upon the duo’s return to recording for the 2004 E&A, the potential of regaining the momentum lost during its hiatus became unlikely.

Another five years on E&A have again returned from the hinterlands to grace shelves with By the Throat, again released by the Rhymesayers folks. Immediately upon tossing this sucker into the old cd player, listeners should be confused. Beginning the album is “Hay Fever” and what sounds like a tough Fugazi bass line repeating itself into oblivion as Eyedea recites some downer couplets about losing face, faith and things that are actually tangible. But as he moves into the chorus – which he unfortunately sings – the validity of this entire album can be heard whirling clockwise around your toilet. Down it goes…

Coming in towards the end of the disc is the perfectly horrendous bookend “Factory.” Again, it’s some rock stuffs getting plundered here by deejay Abilities, which could actually work well if not for the troublesome rhyming over top of it all. Any lyric at this late date in 2009 that deals with poseurs (in general), poseur punk rockers (specifically) or hip hop fan boys is just not going to be well received – and it shouldn’t be especially considering the fact that some of the folks lampooned herein are probably fans of this duo. In a sad reprise of that first track, here, Eyedea again thinks that singing the hook is the best way to go -  somehow winding up sounding like a poor, latter day Nirvana knock-off.

All of this should aptly explicate the meteoric fall from grace that Rhymesayers and its affiliates have undergone over time – and no, P.O.S. isn’t really all that great. It’d be easy to let By the Throat slip past as another alt.rap record spit up from suburbia. But it’s really close to shameful and lacks anything akin to imagination even if at times the production does get a few of these tracks over. I’ll pass.