PDA

PDA disc shows Tulsa rapper has the right stuff

PDA

By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
3/20/2007



Tulsa rapper PDA -- Anthony Jenkins -- feted this album in a February release party at the Other Side that was attended by about 350 people, said Matt Stevens with Fat Lip Entertainment.

Almost everyone bought the album, which has become Jenkins' cry in the hip-hop wilderness, blasting the drudgery of modern rap and his relationship with his father.

Jenkins, originally from Cleveland, spends most of the album showing the listener the line he walks, trying to do the right thing even while he's beset by his weaknesses and strengths.

He's got his poisons -- conniving women and alcohol -- and his estranged relationship with his father, but in the end, he's trying to turn that into a career.

Jenkins has got some real skills as a rapper, boasting crisp, nimble and rapid rhymes on "Dollar Bill" while dropping rhymes with bombast on "Prologue."

His musical rap style and layered songs show his own background in other forms of music. He has sung in a stage musical and operas, and this album shows him alternating between bouncy club anthems and funky everyday-travails raps while covering Madonna's "Human Nature."

He veers between rap's usual braggadacio in such songs as "Prologue" to humility

on "The Beautiful People," when he raps about an awkward social life growing up. The powerful song, reminiscent of Marilyn Manson's number of the same name, details a kid enduring abuse from school bullies and ends with the song's subject shooting his aggressor before taking his own life.

"Addicted," featuring help from Philippian and Alex C, is another gem with an infectious chorus about a girl he can't quit, even though he knows the relationship is poisonous.

And while he says he's not a singer, he shows on "Epilogue" that he clearly is. It's evident when he sings softly over a piano and orchestration about protecting the song's sleeping subject from the world's ills.

The only down sides to "A Different Victim" are the tracks "Inside" and "Next." Both are about empty drunken relationships with women.

But that's fine. PDA has the skill to drop bombs when he needs to, showing urgency and emotion where it's appropriate. That savvy is what sets him apart from the pack. He's not all about the bass beats and treble. This album shows that he knows how to write songs with melody as well as hooks.

He rounds that off with a creativity that draws comparisons to the rap supergroup Outkast (see the mariachi-like song "Something Right").

If PDA wrote, recorded and produced all this himself, then imagine what he could do if he had a slick producer and big-label dollars backing him.

Also performing on the album are Coco Jones, Big Hank, JaQuay, Infamous, Trauma, Tristan and Kawnar.

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PDA
"Act II: A Different Victim"
Fat Lip Entertainment
* * * stars (out of four)

By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer