Blueprint for success

Blueprint might be the hardest working fixture of underground hip-hop. After nearly a decade in the rap game, it’s way past due for the Columbus, Ohio, rapper/producer to make a Clipse-like crossover from the darling of hip-hop heads to powerhouse indie outfit.

Since creating Weightless Records in 1999, ’Print has produced albums for Greenhouse Effect, fellow Columbus native Illogic and a couple of instrumental albums. In 2001, he teamed up with RJD2 for the side project Soul Position that has two albums on Rhymesayers Entertainment. On top of Soul Position’s success, Blueprint also released 1988, an album on which he handles both the rhymes and production. The Best of Blueprint is a wholly listenable 13-track crash course of all things ’Print.

Blueprint’s production is acid rap with an emphasis on drums and loops. He’s not afraid to go out on a limb with sounds that can only be classified as “alien experimental.” The MC is at his best, though, as a lyricist. The self-styled “poet being himself” breathes life into stale rap cliches like drug dealing, cheating lovers, big women and gangsta culture. And he does it all with confident flair, intelligence and warped humor.

“Boombox,” from Blueprint’s solo effort, is a brooding, organ-infused ode to the days of Radio Raheem and oversized boom boxes, using Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind” sample for the brilliant hook. Blueprint also uses the song to reminisce about battles involving rapping, not guns (“My boombox fully equipped with a microphone jack whenever cats wanna spit”).

The ’70s soul dance track “Big Girls Need Love Too” is a tribute to “plus-sized princesses” everywhere. Smooth production and rhymes like “built like Jabba the Hutt with two butts” will have you laughing out loud and dancing simultaneously.

The RJD2-produced track “Hand Me Down” is Blueprint at his lyrical best as he calls out the gangsta culture of hip-hop (“Rap nowadays is by a bunch of ignorant cats / no young, gifted and black, just guns, bitches and crack”).

Blueprint’s latest album Blueprint vs. Funkadelic doesn’t hit the streets until April 25, but eager Culture Shock concertgoers should download this free best-of compilation to whet their appetites until Blueprint’s Dunn Meadow invasion.