Scott Herren is many things to many people. To some, he is Delarosa & Asora, the purveyor of jagged, techno dissonance. To others, he is Savath & Savalas, a mutating musical project that navigates electronica, postrock and Spanish folk with equal ease. At the moment, however, Herren's hip-hop outlet, Prefuse 73, is getting most of the attention. Melding the breaks and beats of rap with the clicks, blips and drone of avant-electronica, Herren's album, "One Word Extinguisher," has made him a darling of the indie press.
Prefuse 73's 1999 debut, "Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives," however, received quite a different reaction. By whittling down and reconfiguring vocal samples from MCs and R&B vixens, Herren's phonetic collages were more percussive than comprehensible, causing several pugnacious hip-hop critics to cry foul. Herren -- who is white -- was once accused of "repressing the ontological and political will of the socially marginalized black rapper for the sake of aesthetic value."
Speaking via cell phone from Chicago, Herren still sounds exasperated about it. He never saw it coming, he says, but he definitely knew where it came from.
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