A few years ago someone posted a comment under busdrivers song “sun shower” on youtube. It said: »Busdriver + Singing = Best«. Perhaps Regan John Farquhar (the Drivers real name) read this comment himself – that would explain the kind of music he makes today. Back in the days it wasn’t really normal to hear the crazy guy from California sing. But on his new album »Beaus $ Eros« he keeps shifting his focus from rapping to singing until there is almost no raps left. And if you think of it: It is a smart move of him to enlarge his niche. As you know, there is many rappers with distinctive voices out there, but there is only one singing rapper guy who sounds like the 34 year old Busdriver. So what you might miss, if you still know him from the good old Project Blowed times (when he used to collaborate with german rapper Taktlo$$), is his incredibly fast rap-style – that is almost gone. Nowadays Busdriver likes feature appearances on tracks of Modeselektor, a german dubstep/techno collective. Considering that, it only seems fair that the instrumentals on Beaus $ Eros also sound much more electronic and not really like Hip Hop anymore. Still, while you are listening to the Euro-Pop influenced productions or the 80s synthesizer bangers, you will notice that most of it is damn fresh! Of course it might take you some time to accept that there is not much rapping left and it might take you time to process the instrumentals which are chocked full of influences, but: Get involved with it. If you don’t, you are missing out on an almost endless diversity within the beats and a lot of really smart lines deilvered by the man who might have the largest vocabulary in the entire hip hop world.
Beaus$eros
