He might reference Marx and decry mainstream rap, but MC Dalek says he's 100-percent hip-hop.
"People are convinced that what we do isn't hip-hop because of what's conveyed through mainstream radio," the 30-year-old artist said. "I feel what I do is strictly hip-hop because of what hip-hop was to me [growing up]. You have to be the most open-minded and the most open to new sounds-that's hip-hop."
On Dalek's discs, being open to new sounds means incorporating everything from electronic howls to trashcan clangs. North Carolina will get a taste of Dalek's unique brand of industrial hip-hop when Dalek and his band-mate Oktopus open for Meat Beat Manifesto at the Cat's Cradle Friday.
Dalek said the ability to sample unusual sounds with the click of a mouse has widened his artistic horizons. "It's the same process, just the palate is a little different."
The MC has recorded three full-length albums with fellow musician and producer Oktopus. Their latest album, Absence, was released on Ipecac records last February, and Dalek said they have another disc set to drop in October.
"Their music is really bizarre, but that's what appeals to us as a label," said Greg Werckman, co-founder of Ipecac records. "Hip-hop fans can't deal with them-they say they're too noisy-but the noise fans say they're too hip hop."
Werckman said he, too, sees Dalek as staying true to the original legacy of hip-hop, which started out in the same anti-establishment vein as punk music. "Hip-hop turned into a caricature of itself. It changed into being just degrading women and bling bling."
Not only is Dalek's sound far from that of mainstream music, the subjects of his songs are also not your typical hook-up/hang-up/break-up anthems.
"They're actually quite a political band in what they have to say, but they deliver it in a way that's different than anyone I've ever seen," said Werckman. The messages are cloaked so heavily in noise that even people who disagree with Dalek's politics can listen to an album and love it, he said.
In the title song, "Absence," Dalek raps about the ills of everything from slave ships to tax breaks. And while a sample lyric is "If freedom is what we are fighting for, then why'd they swindle Gore?" Dalek said he wasn't trying to promote a single set of beliefs.
"It's not about shoving my ideology down people's throats," he said. "I'm more about people just being socially conscious and just opening their eyes and seeing what's going on around them. Even if someone's for the National Rifle Association, I would rather someone have their own mind and their own opinions rather than follow one set ideology."
On the Marxian-titled "Opiate the Masses," Dalek raps against organized religion: "Beliefs and ideas can't stand congruent/Morality myths kept the common mind ruined." Later on the same track he makes the insinuation explicit: "The role of religion in the domination and the destruction/Of African civilization/Is so shameful."
Lyrics like that are a form of therapy, Dalek said. "I think it's better for me to express my concerns and my anger and my angst through music. I can almost exorcise that through music rather than it coming out through other channels."
So while death metal artists may think of their music as music to get angry to, Dalek said he prefers to consider his work music to spark conversation.
"It's never really been about genre and to be frank, it's not about starting an industrial hip-hop movement," he said. "I think kids get it twisted nowadays, like if you're into hip-hop you have to wear this uniform or if you're a Goth you have to go to Hot Topic to get a uniform there. It's one thing if it's like a 14-year-old kid trying to figure out who they are, but you've got 35-year-old artists still doing that. That to me is a bigger problem."
Dalek, who has been rapping and DJ-ing since he was a teenager, added that he has seen artists who fit neatly into one box or another come and go over his long musical career. "We're still here, so I think we're doing something right," he said.
Nonetheless, gigs like the Cat's Cradle on the U.S. music scene have been slow to come, said Dalek. "When we first started, we would clear rooms."
He instead found success on European stages, where he said he tours three to four times a year. According to Dalek, the European scene is easier to infiltrate because new ideas spread faster.
"America's too big to change overnight," he said.
Even retail outlets aren't sure what to make of Dalek's music, said Werckman. "Some record stores pile it in the rock section, some in the hip-hop section, some in the electronic section. I describe it as Public Enemy meets My Bloody Valentine."
Dalek said he sees himself simply as an advocate for silenced voices in his community and elsewhere.
"The history of the world is written by the conqueror, so people's histories are just pushed under the carpet and completely forgotten about," he said. "I tell the tales and I convey the feelings and the concerns of the people that don't get to speak."
Dalek's first album on Ipecac was titled From Filthy Tongues of Gods and Griots, and the term griot has been repeatedly used to describe his style. Urbandictionary.com defines the word as a "West African witch doctor, storyteller, historian and musician."
There might be a classification for the defiant MC after all.
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