All Hands Off Beck

With Midnite Vultures, Beck Hansen embarked on a fantastic voyage to explore the very origins of the hip-hop grooves that made Odelay the breakout album of 1996. But his slacker fans have jumped ship. Why?

In 1996, it appeared that Beck was onto something, at least in terms of alternative pop. With a pastiche of turntable beats, ramshackle rhythms, blues-folk guitars and lazy, half-spoken vocals, Odelay fused the two musical genres that had separately but congruently dominated the gentler elements of white suburban culture for almost a decade: alternative pop and rap. It didn't matter that nobody knew what the hell he was singing about. His videos were hilarious, his look reeked of slacker, and he simply didn't seem like he was trying. The whole album sounded like a hip accident.

But most of all, Beck seemed to be smiling slyly through it all. In a style reminiscent of Morrissey at his height, Beck was mocking the very people that he thought would buy his music: Generation W (as in 'whatever'). The evidence is unmistakable: the perfect marring of songs with anarchic blasts of feedback and sonic chaos, the scatterbrained, free-associated raps that were just perfectly pathetic, the dense minefields of GenW references throughout. Beck was simultaneously selling and panning an ethic (what slacker-hippie from the wealthy white suburbs wouldn't want to be the most popular guy at the recreation center?) It was ingenious. And it made you think: Is this guy fucking serious?

Nobody knew the answer, but nobody seemed to care. Because everybody bought it.

It's no wonder that his self-proclaimed follow-up, Midnite Vultures, was one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of 1999. (1998's Mutations, a shockingly introspective and beautiful record in its own right, was billed as merely a side-project by both Beck and his label). Far from Odelay Part II, Vultures is nothing short of a reinvention. Beck goes from sample heavy to sample worthy, laying down funk grooves and kinky rhythms worthy of the best early Prince. He isn't rummaging through old genres looking for bits to steal (at least not as much); he is going back to the source of Odelay's deepest driving force (hip-hop) to actually create new grooves - updating 80s funk for the millennium. And why not? Prince certainly wasn't getting the job done. In a sense, it was almost a prequel, rather than a follow-up.

Of course the album is littered with the usual litany of lyrical head scratchers - it is Beck, after all. But the dominant theme is decadence, not dissonance and disaffection. The result is a gutsy white funk album that finally makes good on the promise of the Tom Tom Club's masterpiece "Genius of Love." And although the best tracks on Odelay still may have the slight edge in terms of great singles, Vultures is the better album song for song. There just isn't a weak link on it.

But a funny thing happened to Midnite Vultures on the way to its own party: nobody bought it. Critics loved it. Radio stations tried to play it. Even MTV tried its best. The buzz was nowhere to be found.

Why? Because he tried. Beck tried to make a good album, and you as the listener were supposed to enjoy it. From its simple and catchy melodies to its complex and immaculate production, Midnite Vultures is no joke. Beck is fucking serious.

Some critics will dispute this, citing the almost laughable libido which pervades the record and the mix-and-match song-styling that still persists in his best work. But Beck is serious. He explained time and again in press interviews that he admired late '70s and early '80s funk because it was sincere. When the Commodores sing "She knows she's built and knows how to please/Sure enough to knock a man to his knees" in Brick House, they mean it. When Prince sings "In my daddy's car/It's U I really wanna drive" in Dirty Mind, he means it. And when Rick James sings "She's a very kinky girl/The kind you don't take home to mother" in Superfreak, he means it. So, Beck would also mean it when he sings "Girl, step into my Hyundai" and "I wanna get with you/and your sister, too" in Debra. He has to be serious, because with no in-joke qualities to cover for it, the album has to stand on its own musical merit.

Unfortunately for Geffen Records, sincerity and slackers do not mix. In fact, sincerity is synonymous with sell-out, and Generation W can smell a non-fake from a mile away. So when their hero served them with a straight-faced funk album - one that literally pays homage to the roots of their smirking, mongrel masterpiece - Beck's slacker fans countered with indifference (the cruelest cut in slacker terms).

This isn't the first time that a betrayal of this sort, or of this magnitude, has occurred. I'm referring, of course, to the Beastie Boys, and their trials and tribulations with Paul's Boutique. The B-Boys set the world on fire in 1986 with the release of Licensed to Ill, which basically sold over 5 million copies on the strength of one song: Fight for Your Right to Party. With its thumping drums, heavy guitar riff and obnoxious chorus, Fight for Your Right captured the imagination of all the elements of white suburbia (but particularly the black metal T-shirt crowd) like nothing before it, and became the instant party anthem of the 80s. It also became a novelty of the highest order, and the Beasties, with tongues firmly in cheek, set out to exploit it with aplomb. They hit the road with a hard rock-style stage show complete with pyrotechnics, inflatable Spanish Fly bottles and half-naked women dancing in cages – making a thorough mockery of the entire hard rock concert-going experience in the process.

Like Beck, they were simultaneously selling and mocking an ethic. Hard rock fans assumed they were making fun of rap, while rap fans assumed the opposite. And like with Beck, it didn't really matter, because everybody was buying it. Are these guys fucking serious? Again, "who cares?" was the reply.

But also like Beck, the Beastie Boys answered that question quite definitively with their expertly crafted follow-up, Paul's Boutique. With its clever and rambunctious rhymes and its layered samples, Paul's is still regarded as one of the finest hip-hop albums ever recorded. Artistically, it simply dwarfed Ill. And it stated in no uncertain terms that the Beastie Boys were a rap group - not a trio of hard rocking clowns having a go at black music. They were fucking serious.

Consequently, Paul's Boutique was a commercial flop (relative to Ill). Although it has gone subsequently platinum, Paul's died on the charts - left for dead by the legions of rock fans looking for Fight for Your Right Part 2. The group didn't even tour to support it. To this day, it remains the Beastie Boys' poorest selling full-length studio recording.

Sure, some people bought it when it came out - the people that saw the sly wink and heard the solid cuts on Ill and looked forward to more of that "same." Just like Beck's more clued-in fans are still discovering the joys of Midnite Vultures. But the Beastie Boys were able to start over with the Paul's fanatics and carve out a true niche for themselves. Three years later they were the kings of the college dorms and the early 90s MTV generation with Check Your Head. Two years after that, they were back on top of the charts with Ill Communication. But it was a hard road that saw them change cities, record companies and friends.

Does Beck have what it takes to duplicate the feat? I guess it depends on how fucking serious he really is...