Music

Weird Hop

hip-hop duo releases Dream Feast album

Daniel Johnson |

After an hour of improv comedy at the Grand Little Theatre, rappers Wealthy Relative and Sayth wasted no time jumping up on a stage set up like a living room, complete with a raggedy couch, reclining chair and an old TV playing Fievel Goes West. The fact that they have been doing music together since high school showed from the start, as they traded modest anecdotes about their songs and a dry wit. Throughout their set they were in constant motion, lying down on the couch for a moment in the middle of their breathless verses only to kick right back up, switching between duets and solo songs while the other hopped into the crowd to recite lyrics right along with them. The show was just one of the eight stops in the Breakfast For Dinner Tour that they completed through Minnesota and Wisconsin with local comedy team Glassworks Improv.

The comradery extends beyond their stage presence. In their recent six-track release titled Dream Feast, which is available as pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp as well as on cassette tape, the two Eau Claire natives handled every bit of the process from producing the sounds to rapping, mixing and artwork which was done by Dan Forke, aka Wealthy Relative.

The tape starts off with Wealthy Relative detailing Internet activities in a style that almost mimics the randomness of Web surfing and from there the two jump from one topic to the next in a blur. When asked about this almost stream-of-conscious method of piecing together songs, Forke said, “they’re not about any specific thing, they’re more like a big collection of what I feel and what I think about everyday.” He likened it to artists in the surrealist movement who would create without a completely conscious hold on what was expressed.

And that ends up being half the fun of their records, the breakneck speed in which it switches in seamless transition from topic to topic, vocals to instrumental in a big spacey collage of thought and sound. Eric Wells, aka Sayth, spoke on their sound, saying it has been described as art rap, experimental hip-hop, and “weird hop.” Both Wealthy Relative and Sayth plan on releasing solo projects in 2014, but for now, Dream Feast should whet the appetite.

Dream Feast is available at DreamFeast.bandcamp.com. You can find more information on Wealthy Relative and Sayth on Facebook or Bandcamp.