A student’s life is often a difficult one. You stagger home on Monday afternoon after 65 consecutive hours partying. You’re drenched in party foam, you have an 11 o’ clock shadow. Into the kitchen. Remove the crusty kitchen utensils from the murky, stagnant water in the battered sink and drop a rusty pot on your antiquated gas cooker. Need food. Need food. Search the cupboards. A packet of pasta, three pods of Babybel, a couple of dirty potatoes, a stick of celery, and a lemon. You know there’s some kind of new dish just waiting to be invented with the dregs of your last remaining foodstuffs, so you throw them all in the pot for twenty minutes. The resulting concoction is a mulch as attractive as smushed leaves on a rainy roadside, and about as edible.
N.A.S.A., the hipster-hop collaboration between well-connected L.A. producers Squeek E. Clean and DJ Zegon, can associate with this student life all too easily – they’ve stumbled home after three nights partying and tried to rustle up something edible for our ears with some rather disparate ingredients and a seriously wonky stove too. The project’s aim is definitely not to make as much money as possible by throwing over 40 superstar musicians onto one record. No. It’s all about connecting music of all genres and culture and seemlessly blend them into one universal sound. On this count, the N.A.S.A. project succeeds. It just happens that the ‘universal sound’ is the aural equivalent of the aforementioned leafy mulch.
Let’s be fair though. Potatoes, pasta, and Babybel pods are all nutritious and tasty within the correct context. Even if you mash the crap out of them, some remnants of the wholesomeness remains. As such, guest appearances from David Byrne, Chuck D, Tom Waits, Kanye West and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien are all excellent in isolation. N.A.S.A.’s gelatinous conglomerate is toxic when taken as a full meal. Pick the best bits out with your fingers and have a nibble every now and then, however, and you can find something at least vaguely identifiable and memorable amongst the mass confusion.
