DJ Lord and Obeah ‘Eat the Rat’

Some may call it divine intervention, but it was the beauty of chance that put Obeah and DJ Lord in the same sound booth. It was late, and Chuck D, leader of rap outfit Public Enemy, had flown Atlanta’s DJ Lord (born Lord Aswod) to Ventura, Calif., to record an album the two had planned out for years. Obeah (born Adam Venable), a native Atlanta MC, called up Lord as he passed through Ventura on a spontaneous road trip. Moments later the three were in the throes of a record laced with urgency, cut with mindfulness, and forged by necessity. Thus, Eat the Rat was born.

“It was the most random, fateful thing,” Obeah says under the cover of a bleak Atlanta day. “As Chuck was telling me about the concepts behind Eat the Rat, I realized I already had verses that aligned with those ideals.”

Defying the dark skies overhead, Lord’s face lights up as he remembers that night. “I checked my phone and I was like, ‘Holy shit, Chuck, Obeah’s in town!’ And Chuck immediately says, ‘Well tell him to come through!’”

At first glance, Lord and Obeah don’t seem like an obvious match. Lord rose through the DJ ranks during hip-hop’s gilded age. He moved from Savannah to Atlanta in 1996, selling mixtapes at the mall before his reputation caught the attention of Chuck, in need of a DJ after Terminator X’s departure from Public Enemy. Since 1999, Lord has backed up the legendary group, touring the world and perfecting his technique.

Obeah was 9-years-old when he heard his first Public Enemy album, the ferocious Apocalypse 91 ... The Enemy Strikes Back. From that day, hip-hop never left his mind. Obeah cut his teeth in the fertile underground of Atlanta’s psychedelic hip-hop scene. He first refined his emceeing abilities for six years with the group ContraVerse before landing his current gig as a DJ for local psych-rap outfit, the Difference Machine. Befriending Public Enemy’s DJ wasn’t the catalyst for his entry into rap, but it certainly helped.

“Lord believing in me for the past few years was a huge sustenance for my motivation. Getting to do Eat the Rat was a culmination of a lot of time and effort,” he says. Despite coming of age at different times, in different music circles, mastering different skills, it’s easy to see the electricity bounce off Lord and Obeah as they delve into the album’s recording and concepts.

Eat the Rat is a hip-hop record steeped in the present, yet born of a dying process: collaboration between friends. Lord and Obeah’s alliance gives the record a playfulness lost among the glut of star-studded collabs meant to be tossed aside with last week’s Billboard charts.

“It’s the difference between working with your homie versus someone you’re just collaborating with and feeling like you’re at a dentist’s office ... pulling teeth to make songs,” Lord says. “I love my team.”

The album engages with today’s political and musical climate, defying the new signposts for success in the rap game. “Everyone is on this ‘get rich or die trying’ blueprint, but that blueprint is bullshit,” Lord says. “What happens when there’s a disaster in your city or country? Are you still talking about the club? You still want to turn up?”

Even when it’s not political, the record is an exercise in awareness. Tracks such as “Massdistractionville” ruminate on the dangers of distraction, while using the bite of Obeah and Chuck’s verses to guide listeners into their world. If Lord and Obeah were to give the ‘rat’ a name, it would be apathy.

“People are complacent. The whole ‘Eat the Rat’ mentality is, don’t get consumed by that bullshit, consume that bullshit,” Obeah explains. If that sounds vague, it’s on purpose. The rat is like a wicked fog, taking the shape of whatever the listener sees as their version of villainy.

For Lord, the rat could be anything from a passerby snapping pictures of someone getting mugged to children wanting to seem cooler by staying silent when they know the answer to a teacher’s question. “To me, the rat is the system, but I don’t want to make it sound like the Illuminati. Basically, it’s the dumbed-down mentality of today,” he says.

Let it be known that Eat the Rat doesn’t fall into the tired battle between ‘conscious’ hip-hop and radio-ready club anthems. For Lord and Obeah, the two factions don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

“Rap doesn’t have to be politically conscious, it just has to be real,” Obeah says. “What’s really intrigued me about artists is those who walk the fine line between saying something that means something, and being successful.”

The record plays with this balance from the eponymous first track, a dubstep-inspired flurry of club-crushing electronics infused with Atlanta’s favorite wonky, crunk pulse.

It’s no coincidence that Public Enemy epitomizes the synthesis of message and movement, but don’t call Eat the Rat a Public Enemy record. Yes, Chuck’s fingerprints are undeniable, but Lord and Obeah are their own force, welded together by Atlanta’s embrace of classic and psychedelic hip-hop. Even the album’s production credits reflect the fusion of the established and the experimental. Local producer Threepeeoh, a staple of Atlanta’s left-field hip-hop scene, pens many of the tracks with assistance from famed Public Enemy alums such as Gary G-Wiz.

“We’re not trying to recreate ‘Fight the Power,’” Obeah says. “We want to bring a flawless performance that a lot of people can’t provide.”

Whether it happened by divine intervention or dumb luck, Eat the Rat provides a crucial case for the present moment in a culture hellbent on distraction.