(Big Dada/Inertia)

Baltimore-based electro / hiphop duo Spank Rock have already made a major impression with the N.E.R.D. meets Anti Pop Consortium fusion of unpredictable electronics, raw beats and goofy, hyperstacked rhymes evinced on their recent debut album ‘YoYoYo’, and this second single to be lifted from that album follows swiftly on the heels of well-received predecessor ‘Rick Rubin’.

In its original radio edited form, ‘Sweet Talk’ actually comes across as not one but two different tunes fused together, opening with a lowdown dirty hiphop-funk section, jagged James Brown-esque guitar riffs curving their way around deep live bass grooves while angular cut-up beats and sampled crowd noise careen back and forth, frontman Naeem Juwan spitting that he’d like to “F*ck you up like a Percocet’, before the bass and guitars drop out and things roll into part two, a gloriously sugar-sweet retro funk-soul breakdown driven by backing singers the Typical Girls that takes things way out on a Sly-meets Curtis Mayfield tip. Whilst it might sound unwieldy in the telling, in practice, Spank Rock pull things off beautifully, resulting in a single that’s easily as immediately arresting as ‘Rick Rubin’ was on first listening.

London-based producer Kalbata takes things on a dark grimy electro excursion with his reworking, scattering the original vocals over a stripped-down backing of distorted sub-bass plunges and dry-sounding 808 rhythms as repeated samples exhorting “tap that ass” cycle through the mix, before Spank Rock producer Armani XXXChange drafts in the capable abilities of Anthony Barba to colour the expansive spaces of his laidback re-edit with swirling retro-funk saxophones and flutes, making the comparisons to ‘Superfly’-period Curtis even more apparent. Finally, there’s also a previously unreleased original demo track included here, ‘Primetime’ that reintroduces the APC-style bleeps and noise burst attack present throughout much of ‘YoYoYo’, distorted MPC beats crashing their way beneath cycling analogue synth tones as Juwan lays down hard syllables in a moment that’s easily the equal of anything on the album.

Another excellent single from Spank Rock, complete with fab reworkings and a new track – what more incentive do you need?

Check out http://www.spankrock.net and http://www.bigdada.com.