Norman Sann’s delivery occupies the same limnal space as a crazy person on a packed subway train, coasting somewhere between freestyling unwanted sermons and actually accosting some strangers. This beat is too loud, the vocals are too low, the video is rough, and all of it works because this man is dope.
It made sense to find out he’d been a musical prodigy early on, this is basically treating rap like a horn solo over a killer funk pocket. Thankfully, it’s way filthier stuff than Buckshot LeFonque. I really enjoyed taking a dive through Sann’s recent catalog. As far as the two LPs I heard (Problematic and The Audition), it was uniformly excellent work. He has a lot of fire in his belly but it’s a controlled burn. I have seen his style compared to Outkast, but past the funk and the accent, I am not sold. I think what people are hearing is the loose, musical nature of his chopping game, an uncommon asset.
No matter what region rappers are from, most of those chumps can only fast rap on two settings: triplets or sixteenth notes. Exceptions were exceptional. That whole Dungeon Family crew were swinging like Freestyle Fellowship from the jump, a syncopated, melodic attack. Like them, Sann reaches for it effortlessly but never lets it substitute for getting off actual bars.
Appropriately for a joint named “OVERLOOKED,” this video is as good an introduction to Norman Sann as any. The most important element of taking long, Sir Menelik style Coltrane runs for ten bars at a stretch is not breath control, but enunciation. Sann makes every twist and turn easy to follow. He could just as easily tone it down twenty percent and be reading the morning news on your local FM station.
He also understands the importance of performing his bars, veering from caveman feral to winking at the camera, sometimes in the same line. This is a low-budget video for sure but they made the most of it and, crucially, his performance is what really sells the video. There’s a whole vocabulary of ways to fix boring rappers in post, using nothing but time and money. This is not that.
Norman Sann has got the goods. He is distinctive, as both a producer and a rapper, and his catalog proves he intends to keep experimenting and pushing the envelope. So while I’m feeling pretty old & soft this week handing out tropies all over the damn field, once again, the only fair verdict here is Five Dickies. It was dumb weird but it still sold me.
