Rico Tubbs is one of those artists that has a penchant for all things funk, albeit white boy turbo-funk. Like Malente, it probably has something to do with being eastern European. With only a few breaks releases under his belt, Tubbs has since moved on to bigger and better things, and gone are the crisp, preened sounds of his Flashlighter 12”, or the bass-heavy funk-ladden style of the Ghetto Blast Ya! remix and in their places is a Baltimore-esque brew composed of tight, wobbly basslines, odd rave-synth-style breakdowns, repetitious, choppy vocals and cowbells served on a bed of the famous ‘Think’ break. Gangsters cooks up a really funky, groovy little ditty but ultimately ends up being besmirched by these horrible breakdowns, composed of the previously mentioned rave-synth sounds. Blech. But nonetheless, the song is groovy.

On the flipside is Hot Girls Dope Boys, which sounds like it yanks the vocals from some really sleazy RnB song, thrashes them around then throws them down on the familiar tight simple beats for which we know Rico Tubbs. Throwing in a lot of one bar change ups and stretchy/squelchy basslines makes this song the more memorable of the three, so adding some cowbell only makes a great song better, and where is any good song without cowbell? We need more cowbell!

The title track really doesn’t do this release justice, proving once again that the B-sides is where it’s at, with the final track Born to Bounce following with the similar Baltimore-cross-Switch sound, but in more of a dubby-steppy-hoppy-kind of thing. It’s hard to describe, but really easy to listen to (and half as pretentious as actual dubstep) which proves that even if Tubbs wasn’t going for a ‘throw-it-all-in-the-pot-and-let-it-stew’ music production style it still works. Look out for the upcoming album releases, because if he throws as many odd tuba/siren/baby/goat samples as on these three songs it will be one to look out for.