Lifestyle Marketing

Inspired by the Music That Works records released by pianist and keyboardist Herb Pilhofer in the 1970s, People Under the Stairs producer/MC Thes One set about making an album of beats that maintained the purpose of the original tracks (they were used as advertising jingles) while also adding his own MPC beats to give the songs a completely new, and very contemporary, feel. The tracks on Lifestyle Marketing are definitely the kind of thing that Thes or Double K could rap over, and in fact, have a similar feel to the warm, California sun-infused beats that pervade PUTS' catalog, crunchy yet smooth, melodic yet strongly percussion-based. The sampled voice tracks speak of cheetahs and phones and wives and grain-belt beer, abstractly but also absolutely to the point. It's not, at least in these doctored versions (the second disc is a collection of some of Pilhofer's best commercials from that time period), trying to sell you anything in particular, but it is trying to draw you in, seduce you with its scratches, the guitar that fuzzes in and out, the bass, the filtered vocals, the omnipresent snare. Because Lifestyle Marketing is more than just a beat album, it's advertisement for the hip-hop generation, something you can dance to or rhyme with, quirky and pulling from the past while still completely grounded in the present, reflecting the current state of the genre and those that propel it forward, who are willing to try new things, explore new techniques. And if Thes One and Lifestyle Marketing are any indication of the direction it's heading, there's nothing to worry about at all.