Close bio

HEIR OF THE CREEP DOG THAT BIT YOUR ASS- by Dave Tompkins Some folks make beats. Others make beats chuzzle a fifth of Knob Tweak and stutter like torquey pig. Scott Herren does both at the same time and can still drive home on point, East Point, Decatur. In 85, the year Buff of the Fat Boys made speakers blow like fuzack, Scott was in 4th Grade watching his friend beatbox Inspector Gadget, turning bathroom into Echoplex. Nice-nice acoustics. Oh what gadget, fidget and "Bllll-stick ’em" have done for blipsters and every jiggabit sub genre this side of a side effect. One sound repeated, chunked, rolled and punctuated with a stab. Just like a reflux drill after a bowl of Burt s Chili at the Waffle House, if not a Prefuse 73 song. With his Prefuse 73 debut Uprock Narratives, Scott Herren sort of became, as Nick Cage once said on an escalator in Las Vegas, the kling klang king of the rim ram room. ROM RAM boom? Nonetheless Herren made rhythmic sense of Divine Styler, got close to the edit and chopped beats with a chip-toothed woodchuckle. He also played all the instruments, so it wasn’t like he was just sitting there frying his jock with a laptop. Rap guys liked it because the skinny boy from ATL had caught Mikah 9 in a zone and MF Doom at his farm. People-who-don’t-like-rap-but-think-Dirty-Southis- cool liked it as well. Meanwhile, fans of Glitchass & Lapdog hoed a Herren garden in their Ipods. All of this went swimmingly. Herren made boom bap go zit-zat-zotz, but, and this is a big Oldsmobile but, didn’t put on airs. Rather Air Force Ones. Rough as a Velcro rip and smoother than Lacey Lace’s butter boat. And much smoother than those "big ass posse cuts" Scott had produced back yonder for a crew out of Clarkston, GA, who, unlike most blinguists, would rather not be known. This early lesson in loc fi involved ten scowls, one mic and a 350 pound "adlib guy" full of more hot air than the S.O.S. Band’s blimp. Their song title could be ziplocked as state s evidence but rather-not-be-known did commend Scott on the pimpness of his tinted glasses. Scott said he wore window dimmers so he could see his MPC and computer screen. Either way they clicked curb detector meet gadget inspector, a mad programmer with a heart of crunk. Herren has since left Stankonia for his roots in Barcelona, where he started his own label Eastern Developments and still listens to Cool Breeze. Traded his Plymouth Valiant for a scooter and is going Catalan folk for the next Savath & Savalas album. Yet Prefuse 73 is still the franchise project and he s calling this one One Word Extinguisher. "It’s the one word that would sum up everything," says Scott, who used to jack jelly bracelets from Woolworth s and sell them to girls. "So you could make another person shut up or at least understand. Expect lots of cut-up, R&B ghosts and of course, beatboxing. For The One Word Extinguisher hangs in the hallway outside that school bathroom in Decatur. Ready to go off when the bell goes, "Bllllllllll!!"

Close bio