Artist: Travis Barker

Album: Give the Drummer Some

Record Label: Interscope

Soundwaves: 3/5

Sounds Like: Hardcore hip-hop remixes

Travis Barker is one of a select handful of elite drummers who needs no introduction. The heavily tattooed force behind the drums of pop-punk juggernaut Blink-182, Barker made a name for himself by remixing hip-hop tracks with his own furious drum beats while Blink-182 took a break from writing new material.

Maybe Barker fell out of the loop when his bandmates focused on their own side projects during the band’s hiatus, but the notorious drummer finally decided to prove his furious dexterity on the kit by releasing a solo project of his own, ‘Give the Drummer Some.’

A departure from Barker’s pop-punk leanings, ‘Give the Drummer Some’ has a heavy-handed hip-hop mentality, featuring an all-star ensemble of rap’s biggest names spitting game on the album.

‘Give the Drummer Some’ opens with the nearly eponymous ‘Can a Drummer Get Some?’ with the vocals handled by the star-studded cast of Lil Wayne, Swizz Beats, Rick Ross and The Game. Barker’s beats are inventive and imaginative, but they play second fiddle to the rhymes laid down by his so-called guest stars.

And there lies the rub with the album. Like Rebecca Black and her awkwardly dancing friends from ‘Friday,’ Barker’s blistering drumming kicks it in the backseat as the hip-hop vocalists pile into the driver’s seat of the album. Barker had creative control over the album, but it plays out like a collection of unreleased tracks from some of rap’s most notable wordsmiths rather than a defining opus of his own talents.

‘Carry It’ jams with some nifty drum fills, but even Barker’s most creative playing is overshadowed by Raekwon’s smooth verses and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine wheedling away on guitar riff after guitar riff. ‘Knocking’ opens with a furiously paced drum solo, but it drifts into a lazily written dance song with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg rapping dull lyrics and hackneyed pop culture references.

Barker falls into the same formulaic trap on each and every track, stumbling into more pratfalls than Wile E. Coyote. Songs like ‘Jump Down’ and ‘Cool Head’ kick off with slick drumming, but they eventually pass the spotlight like a torch to the likes of mainstream rap acts The Cool Kids and Kid Cudi, respectively. The rappers on the album steal the show from Barker, especially the riotous flows of Yelawolf, Lil Jon and Busta Rhymes on ‘Let’s Go’ and the aforementioned ‘Carry It.’

Each rapper brings his own unique flavor to the tracks, giving the album a distinctly eclectic feel. Kid Cudi adds his signature relaxed vibe to ‘Cool Head,’ a slower-paced jam that showcases Cudi’s laid-back vocal delivery. ‘Let’s Go,’ a track seemingly tailored for stardom as a single, sends the listener into recoil with a blast of high-octane energy and emphatic rhymes. Even ‘If U Want To’ seems destined to hit the airwaves with a sing-song, synthesizer-laced performance by Lupe Fiasco that wouldn’t sound out of place on his latest effort, ‘Lasers.’

What doesn’t work so well for Barker is when he casually mixes tracks that recall his hardcore roots into a predominantly rap-oriented album. ‘Saturday Night’ is a bouncy punk tune with Latino-tinged guitar licks, courtesy of Slash. ‘On My Own’ shows off Barker’s chops on an angry hard rock song with Corey Taylor of metal band Slipknot. The two songs are highlights on the album, but they stand out like a sore thumb from the rap tracks and fail to give the entire 12-track effort a cohesive feel.

Although Barker’s name is plastered on the album cover, the album is more of a Justice League of rappers than a drum-centric release. Most of the mainstream hip-hop heavyweights Barker recruited for ‘Give the Drummer Some’ are showcased at the top of their game, but the album loses its focus.

Even though Barker implores his listeners to give the drummer some respect, it’s hard to give him much at all when he can’t take center stage among a varied collection of all-star vocalists and guitarists.

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on March 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm