J Swamp is a legendary figure in turntable circles, as famous for looking like a member of Slayer and for being a DJ in Beck’s band as he is for winning the 1996 DMC World Championships as a rookie to the competition. He’s more than six feet tall, has long hair, paints his nails black, and isn’t afraid to drop a metal riff or horror movie sample in the middle of his dark electro-influenced hip hop beats. All of this, to say the least, is somewhat of an anamoly in the world of hip-hop and DJ culture; yet Swamp gets universal respect for doing things like scratching so hard as to break his records in half, only to continue to cut on a piece of the broken record. That’s not all he does with broken vinyl, however; Swamp is equally renowned for intentionally cutting himself with the shattered pieces of his records, and has also gone above and beyond “elementary” beat juggling in other ways, such as breathing fire on stage and slicing his tongue with a diamond-tipped needle. So what should you expect when you listen to an album from a DMC champion who looks and acts like a masochist serial killer?


The answer should be obvious: a sinister and innovative album. Swamp proves to be something of a renaissance man on Never is Now, providing all of the vocals in addition to creating the beats and cuts. He’s not shy about his rapping, either; on the first track of the album, “Ring of Fire,” he refers to himself as a “lyrical psycho,” and says “when I write lyrics I shred the page.” Swamp, and this shouldn’t be too hard to imagine when considering the lyrics, actually sounds incredibly similar to Ice-T, but with a fascination for apocalyptic imagery. “I spit lyrics at night / like they’re drenched in gasoline / somebody give me a light / so I can melt the mic / and blow up the stage / and slay the crowd in the smoke filled cave of flames” is a pretty typical example of Swamp on the mic.


When not rapping about death and explosions, Swamp’s lyrics tend to stray towards the old-school style, semi-autobigraphical boasting of icons like, well, Ice-T and Run DMC. To his credit, Swamp pulls this off ably enough, never sounding forced or insincere. The prime example of this kind of lyricism is on the nine-minute epic “Malakai,” a tale that begins with a call from a promoter that turns into Swamp getting abducted and forced to DJ at gunpoint. He has to rock the show or he will be killed, and you can guess how the story ends with lyrics like “...got on the wheels and began to move feet / had ‘em buggin when I started juggling breakbeats / then they put the guns down / Malakai stood still / they were all off the wall to my mixing skills / started shouting out ‘what’ / and yelling out for more / everybody shaking ass all over the dance floor / with hands in the air / all up out they chairs / screaming out oh yeah / blowing weed in the air...”


As nice as it is to hear this type of rhyming in today’s day and age of verbal complexity, there can be no doubt that Swamp’s skills behind the wheels and the boards are the real highlights of Never is Now. It goes without saying that Swamp can wreck a turntable with ease, as he displays on pretty much every track, but most notably on “Feed The Hand That Bites You,” “My Peaceful Hell,” and “Worship the Robots” (which also features rapping from the same robotic voice found on OK Computer’s “Fitter Happier” and promo copies of the RJD2 album. Cool.) It’s Swamps production work, though, that is most impressive on this album. He demonstrates a wide variety of beats, from the El Stew-like madness of “Wheatgrass And Razorblades” to the badass bouncing synth line and metal guitar riffs of “Ring Of Fire” to the robotic bass of “Spirits Are Gone.” The thing that ties the beats together most is that they all have a certain dark, ominous feel to them, which makes perfect sense when you consider who’s making them.


All in all, Never is Now is a piece of hip-hop that stands pretty far apart from the rest of the crowd. In spite of Swamp's fondness for dark imagery and beats, it is an album that seems to be more in the mode of mindless fun than anything else, due mostly to the old school nature of the lyrics and the warm electro elements present in the beats. It doesn’t have the soul-crushing atmosphere found on other recent hip-hop albums that have been called “dark,” (see: Dalek, Cannibal Ox, Rubber Room) but that was hardly the point and I doubt Swamp would want anyone to take him that seriously anyway. Think of it this way: Never is Now has more in common with a good cheesy horror movie than it does with a movie about real life horrors like war and murder.