The Craft
Blackalicious
(Anti)
***1/2

Blackalicious is downright tangy. Say it: “Blackalicous.” It’s like “licorice” and “delicious;” it’s something so tasty, so lip-smackingly good that you can’t help wanting a piece.

“The Craft,” the Sacramento duo’s third album, somewhat surprisingly released on the self-styled “Indie Punk and Hardcore” label Epitaph’s Anti imprint, has Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel poised for widespread success.

Since 1999’s “A2G” EP launched the group into the ranks of underground stardom with the anti-mainstream anthem “Deception,” Blackalicious has gone on a solidly successful run. They dropped the afro-centric opus “Nia” in 2000, followed by their genre-bending breakthrough “Blazing Arrow” in 2002.

On “The Craft,” the two have branched out even further, leaving the straightforward hip-hop vibes of earlier work for the marshy turf somewhere between hip-hop, jazz, electronica, and funk, where Outkast’s Andre 3000 has built his secret lab. “The Craft” is laced with swirling atmospheric washes, funkified melodic loops, ethereal crooning, snappy drumlines, and even P-Funk sensei George Clinton, who lends an extra punch to “Lotus Flower.”

With careful melding, distilling, layering and relayering of sound, the album is packed with flashy, infectious tracks. Each song crackles with energy, underscored by Gab’s distinctly dense machine-gun flow. But there is something lacking; an album, especially today, can’t get by on sonic perfection alone.

Well-produced albums abound, bedroom productions snap with digital precision, and even “mix-tapes” (now almost exclusively on CD) don’t have that basement low-fi growl anymore. The talent honed in dozens of dimly-lit teenage bedrooms is spilling out into independent labels, with amateur recordings that have all polish of their big-label counterparts. Even with rising production standards, “The Craft” still sounds positively sculpted. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it has taken their style in a different, colder direction.

The album is the soundtrack to brushed aluminum lounges and suede benches: smooth, lush and sensual, but ultimately vacuous. “Automatique” is a dull electronic romp, and the opening track “World of Vibrations” is dragged down by a whining euro-pop hook. It seems like Gab and Xcel have forgotten exactly why they are making music, or rather, they’ve discovered a new reason.

Blackalicious is eyeing the Black Eyed Peas’ comfortable main-stream niche and doing their damndest to squeeze alongside. In fact, they’re even sharing a stage at a Honda Civic promotional event in San Francisco later this month. What’s more, MTV’s TRL hotline number is helpfully printed across the bottom of Blackalicious’ website; it kindly suggests “Request Now!”

The group has yet to break into the mainstream outright, and tap into the money pots that follow, but it appears on “The Craft” that’s where they’ve set their sights. Gab’s still-magnetic flow and the all-around high-quality production should do the job. But as Gab himself put it back in ’99: “Don’t let money change ya….”

Full disclosure: I phoned them in to TRL anyway.

—Staff wrier Sam D. G. Jacoby can be reached at sjacoby@fas.harvard.edu.