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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Portnoy’s complaint… Edan Portnoy is on a mission. He wants to demonstrate to hip-hop fans that their beloved beats and rhymes don’t exist in isolation to the rest of the musical universe, that a knowledge of The Kinks might be as relevant as a copy of Paid In Full, that though Run DMC’s Sucker MCs packed a powerful punch, it wasn’t the big bang. Or, as he indelicately puts it: “I just wanna prove to motherf**kers that it’s all related.”He would. He’s got a new album, Beauty And The Beat, to flog. And rather than tapping into the old school hip-hop vibe and griming it up with a stack of noise, as he did on 2002’s Primitive Plus, Edan (pronounced “e-don”) is rifling through obscure 60s/70s psychedelia to create a kaleidoscopic blend of rap, rock and whimsy. “I was already starting to get jaded,” he admits of the formula that brought him instant cult status. “Before, I needed something abrasive to slap me up, that heavy pounding to get me stimulated. This time it’s more melodic, more mature. I was a little more ambitious overall.”  The sheer effrontery won’t shock those who know him. This is a man who does all his own artwork and has braved hip-hop crowds with just a mic and an acoustic guitar, playing folk tunes (he plans to do something similar again, with a friend from prog-metallers Dead Meadow). “If someone plays an acoustic guitar and then comes up and raps for four songs, yells through an echo machine, all that can be looked at under one umbrella,” insists the 26 year-old Bostonian. “I want people to start whittling away at those boundaries.” Edan first appeared with shaved head and shirt-and-tie, billing himself as the “hip-hop professor” and the “Quincy Jones of bad sound quality”. Now he looks like he’s auditioning for The Strokes, with his grown-out, tousled jet black hair. He doesn’t mind the comparison, so long as he’s not likened to symbolic enemy Lenny Kravitz, who gets a dissing on Rock And Roll and embodies everything Edan hated about the music college he dropped out of (“most people did”). “Kravitz represents a Sheryl Crow type. His music never cuts, and I guess maybe he’s smart enough to know that’s what works in this mainstream world. Who cares if they’ve paid dues and they can hold a note?” Not Edan. “I’ve always been into shit that was vivid, psychedelic or not. Things that had a lot of colour, whether it be a painting or a song.”
Steve Yates
Edan – Beauty And The Beat, released 14 March 05 on Lewis Recordings.
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