ike their fellow Jew Krusty the Klown, DJ Yoda and Dan Greenpeace kid. They kid because they love. The two Hebric hip-hop funsters have their fingers in a veritable Morrison’s [cheapo UK supermarket – delicatessen] pastry counter of pies, magazines, club nights, record labels, radio shows, mixtapes, the whole nine yards. And each and every single venture is tackled with that great bogeyman of modern day rapping, a sense of humour. Remember that? And I’m not talking about Eminem’s quasi-Jon Culshaw Michael Jackson impression here, either.


And so, after the success of Yoda’s solo efforts, How to Cut and Paste Volume 1 and its sequel (guess the sequel’s name and win Jon Culshaw), he’s brought along his less rich, but also less weird looking, accomplice to hit us up with what is, at a standard level, your common or garden mixtape. And it’s a mixtape that starts us off on completely the wrong foot by giving us Ugly Duckling.


The Duckling tune, “Meat Shake”, doesn’t really belong on this album. As with most of UD’s songs, there’s nothing wrong with it, as Dizzy Dustin and Andy Cat manage to spit four minutes worth of rhymes on the topic of milkshakes containing meat (and you thought concept rapping was dead), but when the album gives us a later deliverance of, say, “Gangsta Lean” by The Clipse, the Duckling trio stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.


This confusion is probably deliberate, though. To be frank, wrong-footedly is almost certainly the only way to take you through an album that delivers such high points as “Gangsta Emmerdale”, the Emmerdale [shagadelic rural UK soap – television] tune cut the fuck up and with a few sampled mid-90s “shit, dog” style rhymes laid over the top of it. Or the obligatory “DJ Yoda” meets tracks, where the pork-shunning turntablist cuts and scratches a load of TV theme tunes (here, Mr Men and The New Adventures of Robin Hood) for us. So far, so ker-rayzee.


When the guys stop making with the laugh laugh, though, the album really comes into its own. There’s more choice cuts here than at a meat market. “Pre-Style” by Vinyl Dialect is a bitter piece of Dead Prez-esque agenda setting, name checking Hornby trains and a woman called Bernadette. Black Twang accomplice Mystro also turns out for the British first XI with his offbeat, southeast flow of “Open Mic Pt 2”


Late in the day, matters really go classic on us, though. Critically Acclaimed (no, me neither) has his “Wallflower” cut (fuck all to do with Jakob Dylan) delivered, a horizontal piece of soul-funk-hop, dealing with CA’s frustrations at a woman’s refusal to fuck him within five minutes of them meeting. “Ms Fat Booty”’s teenage cousin.


And then, just after that, mein got, we get the greatest ever track to adorn a DJ Yoda album (better than Next Men featuring Kerosene’s “Global Warming”, and trust me, you want to get your backside on Soulseek ASAP so you can allocate that particular tune to your play list.


The track in question is “The Demigodz” by The Demigodz. I like that spelling for a start. Rappers nowadays are far too concerned with “clever” misspellings, swapping “ph” for “f” and ramming the letter x all over the shop. I wanna be taken back to “z” for “s”. Simple. And it’s that kind of retro simplistic brilliant idiocy that make this tune the choooon it is. Every damn rapper in the top 40 at the moment wants to be an idiot savant, except they fall down on the second part of the equation. The Demigodz are the fucking Rainmen of the equation. “I’ll take your girl / get her in the shower / molest her with a shampoo bottle / for half an hour” we’re told. And I want to be told that. Rappers need to get back to a 30 bitches a minute ratio, and nearly as many faggots if you ask me. Too much thinking and not enough thought, that’s what’s wrong with rap nowadays.


And Yoda and Greenpeace are part of what’s right with rap nowadays. A Sense of intelligence, a sense of taste, and, most importantly, a sense of fun. Let us hope they quit before DJ Yoda Meets The Muskahounds, huh?