Willie Isz escape to Georgiavania - 7/7/2009

Khujo Goodie and Jneiro Jarel break out with off-the-map collabo

“My real name is Willie, my daddy’s name is Willie, and I know that Jneiro’s definitely got a Willie name in the family,” begins the rapper Khujo (born Willie Knighton Jr.), slouched back in a plastic chair in the kitchen of a photo studio 20 minutes outside of downtown Atlanta.

He’s speaking about the Willie Isz album released via Lex Records on June 30 that pairs the one member of Atlanta’s influential Goodie Mob crew — which pioneered Southern hip-hop’s path to national acceptance in the ’90s, along with fellow Dungeon Family members OutKast — with the broken-beat, future soul production of one-time Atlantan Omar “Jneiro Jarel” Gilyard.

If their shared family name adds an earthly grounding to the bond between the two, Jarel’s imagination brings the fantasy. “The Iszes were from this old cartoon comic book series I used to watch on TV called ‘The Maxx’ that was all about good versus evil,” Jarel explains. Together, the duo’s disparate ingredients fuel their off-the-map quest. They even created their own imaginary 51st state to host the joint venture. The locale? Georgiavania.

“It’s where all the funky thangs come together,” Khujo says, laughing.

The jet-setting Jarel, who joins by phone from L.A., adds, “I’m living in Philadelphia at the moment, but I wanted to make my Southern album. So it’s kinda like a Ga. to Pa. vibe.”

If the terra firma of one of 2009’s most adventurous collaborations seems nebulous at the moment, a quick skip through the opening half of the album does little to help listeners neatly file it in one genre. There’s an intro that vibrates like a mass of cicadas caught inside a spaceship, followed by thumping guitar-thrash rap (“Blast Off”), new wave crooning (“Loner”), shoegaze-inspired whining (“I Didn’t Mean”), a song crafted around a “Rah!” ad-lib sampled from an old De La Soul track that reveals Willie Isz’s gothic, vampire tendencies (title track “Georgiavania”), and a cowbell-propelled ditty that features the talents of TV On the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe (“Gwan Jet”).

In a move sure to raise the hipster quotient, TVOTR’s Jaleel Bunton and David Sitek, along with Brit trip-hop icons Massive Attack, are also slated to plow through Georgiavania to provide remixes, while cult illustrator/plastic toy designer James Jarvis sketched the artwork in a style that’s “like ‘Yellow Submarine’ meets the Jackson 5 cartoon,” says Khujo.

It’s just the sort of conceptual concoction destined to land Willie Isz atop music critics’ year-end best albums lists. But with a molecular makeup that reads one part Goodie Mob member and one part genre-mashing, below-the-radar producer, the Gnarls Barkley jape featuring Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse is impossible to ignore.

“I don’t mind the comparison between the two projects because, honestly, we don’t sound anything the same,” Jarel says before adding, “Khujo was always one of my favorite rappers — he’s from the group that basically put the words ‘Dirty South’ on the map. So I always wanted to work with him, which I know was the same for Danger Mouse with Cee-Lo. But with Gnarls Barkley, they didn’t set out to make a pop record — it just so happened to go pop. So if that happens to us, I definitely won’t mind the comparisons!”

The absence of profanity on the album, however, is sure to set Georgiavania apart from rap’s mainstream releases. At Jarel’s behest, no curse words are uttered throughout the album’s 13 tracks. “I really wanted to show that while I love most of what hip-hop does in general, what I don’t love about hip-hop is that a lot of MCs feel that they have to curse to get street credit,” he says. “I wanted a collaborator who would reach out and try new things and test himself. If you can do that and get down, then that’s dope, and if not I can respect that.”

Khujo laughs at the vocab restriction placed upon him. “It’s a straight-up record you can sell in Best Buy,” he says. “I don’t think I’d done a record like that before, but I was up to the challenge.”

Then, in his down-to-earth demeanor, he says, “I don’t know if Willie Isz is going to change your life, but it can most definitely be thought-provoking and make you see things in a whole different perspective.” A contented smile stretches across his face. “We’ve still got that freedom of speech and that freedom of creativity,” he adds. “That’s what Willie Isz is.”