Album Notes

Ibid’s this guy that lives in the Valley. One day he decided that he wanted to rap, so he did.

Now by rap, he meant the tight proliferation of phonetically similar sounds in a rhythmically consistent manner. This, he felt, was a matter that desperately needed to be clarified.

With the help of Destructo Bunny the two made an album. Buddha-like Rhyme State is that which was born of the process.

Born in Portugal and raised in various parts of Europe and the United States, Ibid has spent most of his adulthood trolling the West Coast for inspiration. The rapper retraced his steps back to his hometown of Merced, Calif. to collaborate with individuals dedicated to similar pursuits — namely that of language as art, truth as poetry, rap as life.

Buddha-like Rhyme State is a testament to the resiliency of the English language. Parts general and world reaching interspersed with parts specific and introspective, the words blend into a poetic expression of the tension between man and God, man and woman, man and death and man and himself.

It blends the essentially plastic manifestations of bravado with self-deprecation, candor and doubt. Songs like “Pesticides” and “Sublime Funk” emphasize Ibid’s sense of wordplay while “Tuesday” and “All this too… ” illustrate the rapper’s preoccupation with love and death, respectively. In “Pesticides,” Ibid blurs words together in a hypnotic manner, “But that’s just the bastard bust the moustache words blast from the past rim crash the fantastic stash into castor, capture me some Casper, it’s ghosts that I’m after … .” In “All this too… ” his concern is with the transient and fragile condition of human life, “I’ve got eyes but you see I can’t see beyond what happened last we believe what matters casts its spell, but that’s a better aspect of the wreck that I made of myself … .”

The driving force behind the overall soundscape of the album was Destructo Bunny, who was responsible for beats, instrumentation and digital arrangement. The Jabronski’s Joey No-Knows offered vocals, organ and overall know-how, while Jabronski’s drummer Tim Williams provides the sole instrumental cut on the album, “Step 3.” El Olio Wolof’s Radioactive Cauliflower is featured on both organ and bass guitar. Los Angeles-based guest vocalist Jenna Davi brings her soulful insights to several tracks. Adam Ariana and Justin Roth provide electric guitars as well.