The Right Track(s): Caspa and Rusko’s “Power Shower” and Jay-Z’s “Ghetto Techno”

Caspa and Rusko – Power Shower

The only reason Fader called this track “quasi-misogynist” is that the combination of a sampled woman’s voice talking about a “proper shower” and a grinding bass noise that sounds like crickets being tortured can’t help but summon up some pretty scary ideas about what exactly a “power shower” is. Caspa and Rusko could technically be called dubsteppers, but this track seems to borrow more from industrial music or doom metal than anything else. I imagine tracks like these stem from the juvenile (in the best sense) impulse to create the gnarliest sound possible, attaching it to a beat almost as an afterthought, like “Well, we still have to make sure people can dance to this.” Like an ugly-awesome metal riff that makes you screw up your face as a salute, “Power Shower” is the fuckin’ truth.

Jay-Z – Ghetto Techno

Or, Jay-Z does Rod Lee’s “Dance My Pain Away.” Are we seriously, in 2009, still bristling at the word “techno”? If the song title was different, this song would easily be 50% more popular. Why do so many listeners need to hear techno or rave or house music filtered through another genre before they’ll accept it?  Because G-Side spit some gangsta talk over “Speed of Sound” or “Run Thingz,” that makes it OK to enjoy those crazy great rave synths, but subtract the rapping and it’s “gay” or cheesy. Talk about the love that dare not speak its name.

Anyway, “Ghetto Techno” is clearly supposed to be a Baltimore Club homage, and besides the fact that an ex-CEO multi-millionaire is trying to play the party-hungry working stiff, it equips itself pretty well. The bouncy synths on the verse have that roller rink sheen that Timbaland used on “The Way I Am” (was that on Pitchfork’s top 500? If not, it should have been) and the “throw a shot back” part has a random guy yelling “hey” embedded in the beat that could be Lil Jon yelling “Yeah!”  on a club song. What’s not to like? There’s nothing here that hasn’t been used in countless incredibly successful R & B songs, but the spectre of techno and “cheesy” dance music looms overhead, scaring everyone off.