If at first you don’t succeed, then take the last track. For initiates, the Majesticons’ Beauty Party is bound to elicit some confusion. But the album’s finale, “San Trope Party” lets listeners in to the conceptual party hosted by Mike Ladd, the Bronx-based, Cambridge, Massachussetts native known among the cognoscenti for his maverick brand of broadly imaginative and ambitious work.

Beauty Party is the 2nd of the trilogy of the Infesticons versus the Majesticons for Big Dada, a la The Empire Strikes Back. Conceived at the end of the millenium, the trilogy is the tale of the clash - a battle for the heart and soul of black music and culture, a conflict between glimmer and substance, as well as an investigation into notions of beauty in African-American society. The first installment, Gun Hill Road (2000), introduced the Majesticons: jiggy robots, invented by the smart friend of evil genius Poof NaNa, that were accidentally reactivated by his mom and whose mission was to take over New York. The Infesticons, regular men and women living on the fringes of the 5 boroughs, rally to repel them. The battle symbollically ensues on the aforementioned Gun Hill Road in the North Bronx where hip-hop took root. The Majesticons retreat to where the second installment Beauty Party ensues.

The album finds the Majesticons regrouping after their defeat and coming to terms with a world in economic downturn where conspicuous consumption is frowned upon. Their answer arrives in the form of the Trusticons to school them in the ways of the truly wealthy and powerful. From the outset, the fully loaded cyborg tribe of emcees and Nu-Neo-soul divas Cheeta Chincilla, Disasterous, Ivy Leage, Hampton Jitney, Kim Shimmer, Chubzee C, Sprinkle, Jimmies and Cherri, hijack the party, espousing their method of madness: the modern aesthetic of deconstruction and reconfiguration formerly known as hip-hop. The intro is a dead giveaway with a call sans response exhortation for the Alan Greenspans, Billy Gates, Forbes, Fairchilds, Hearts and Rockefellers of the world to collectively get their hands up. Shades of Marshall McLuhan rock the mic on “Piranha Party,” masquerading as Trusticon with “We’re gonna bite you/Then eat you alive.” A white collar, deep freeze cold war characterizes the hyperalliterative, revved-up imaginative and vaguely recognizable beat-jacking that ensues over the first five tracks epitomized by the sapphic ode “Prom Night Party” and the twisted turn of phrase entitled “Brain Party” that waxes poetic on one of the oldest professions known to man: “I got the brains/You got the look/Let’s make lots of money/We are the game/We are the crooks/Let’s take all their money” and buzzing bassline trebling sober and melodic.

While Beauty Party may sound like the ultimate black bacchanal on the surface, its sweeping undertow is decidedly overwelming in its determinately critical parody of popular and mythical black boughy materialism. The Isley-hued “Luv Thief Party,” “Platinum BlaQue Party” and “Helicopter Party” serve as a brief interlude to the aural assault before going postal on several tracks featuring El-P, Vast Aire (Cannibal Ox) and Murs (Living Legends), consistently delivering a rewindable highlight reel of resounding moneyshots on “MajestWest Party,” “Dwarf Star Party,” “Suburb Party” and “Game Star Party,” to name a few.

They may have traded in their Explorers for Rovers, their Cristal for Uzo, FUBU for reconstructed Sergio Valente, and their glocks and Desert Eagles for lawyers and real estate brokers, but the Majesticons (with help from the Trusticons) blaze from borough to bourough thoroughly thorough, even if they’re not really real.
MONTEZUMA

Montezuma