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Live Review: Phony PPL 'Why iii Love The Moon'

14 February 2015 | 12:00 am | Katie Rowley

Phony PPL, a Brooklyn six piece, have been around for a few years, touring with other experimental hip hop artists like The Roots and Erykah Badu

PHONY PPL aren't exactly the new kids on the block, and their latest album sees them sticking with what they know - soulful funk-laden grooves.

The Brooklyn six piece have been around for a few years, touring with other experimental hip hop artists like The Roots and Erykah Badu, and last month saw the release of their excellently tasteful album Yesterday’s Tomorrow.

The most recent track off the album, ‘Why iii Love The Moon’, opens with a soft male voice which croons ‘why is love so hard to find?’, before an assured and funked up drum beat kicks in. You could call their sound NY art-rap, a smooth sonic collage of melodic hip hop, funky percussion, jazzy arrangements and lazy r’n’b beats that echo back to the likes of J Dilla and Madlib.

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‘Why iii Love The Moon’ is a lament about the illusions of love and the bittersweet realisation that humans are unreliable and fickle. Vocalist Elbee Thrie says that he loves the moon ‘because it’s always there for me, every night above my window’. This imagery isn’t exactly inline with traditional Shakespearean metaphors of the very changeable and inconstant nature of the moon’s cycle, but since when did hip hop care for Elizabethan drama. The point is that Phony PPL ensure that a song’s musical composition is as strong, poetic and thoughtful as its lyrics – something that many hip hop acts of recent years have neglected.

A jangly piano chiming keeps this lunar love song shuffling along, reminiscent of the sounds of Seattle stalwarts Common Market and Blue Scholars. The message may be sorrowful but the sound is uplifting and intelligent. Check out Phony PPL’s soundcloud for more summertime jams.

Words by Katie Rowley

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