“If you dig wordplay, read James Joyce,” recommends Breeze Brewin, the lead MC of The Juggaknots. This trio of siblings from the Bronx (Breeze, producer Buddy Slim and MC Queen Herawin) has been hovering beneath the surface of mainstream hip-hop for over a decade, driven by rich, Native Tongues grooves and remarkable lyricism. The Juggaknots take the “Teacher” moniker of hometown hero KRS-One to a different level – all three of the members are teachers in the New York public school system.
Unsurprisingly, Breeze teaches 7th grade English. “Read a paragraph [from Joyce], and it’ll fuck your head up so much,” the MC continues. “He’s trying to milk every joint for as many meanings as possible, and there’s still a rhythmic flow to his prose. If cats could get tuned into him, it would help them step up their game.”
Judging by the new Juggaknots EP, The Love Deluxe Movement, the family is stepping up its game with poise and confidence. The disc is a collection of recent Juggaknots singles, along with playful send-ups of hits from Q-Tip, Outkast and Eminem. The opening cut, “She Loves Me Not,” is a typical example of Breeze’s effortless-sounding mastery of the art form. His autobiographical tale of a relationship gone awry is utterly infectious, possessing an elusive symmetry of beats and rhymes on the level of true greats like Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest. The incredible emotions Breeze exhibited as “Tariq” on Prince Paul’s A Prince Among Thieves are even more immediate when he’s rapping about his own life.
From beginning to end, Love Deluxe… is a promising sign of things to come – Breeze predicts the new Juggaknots full-length will hit the streets in January 2005. In a way, it will be the group’s first proper LP (the closest is 2002’s Re-release, which was a compilation of hard-to-find ‘90s material). The lessons the group has learned in the classroom are sure to crop up on the recording.
“Looking at teaching in reference to hip-hop, it’s about starting out with a target and hitting it,” Breeze explains. “Music provides a different level of clarity, but there’s similarities, like when you say ‘I’m gonna get this’ and you get it and you do it, and you talk to people after they’ve heard it – it’s all about getting the desired effect.”
It’s tough to really pinpoint the effect of a Juggaknots record pumping through your headphones. The subtly crafted loops, layered rhythms and metaphorical fireworks add up to more than the ample sum of their parts. It’s not cut and dry like spelling and sentence structure, but it’s a learning experience nonetheless, one that embodies the real capabilities of great hip-hop -– it’s a wake-up call for the soul.
Appeared in Rockpile.