Robbie's gone hip-hop happy

Quoted from: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/

'By David Smyth, Evening Standard 05.09.06
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Every track on Robbie Williams' new album is refreshingly different

Being the king of pop is clearly not enough. Midway through his huge world tour, which will reach two million fans by the time it comes to an end in December, Robbie Williams is publicly questioning whether he wants "to be part of the machine any more".
What can the chart-dominating showman be thinking? His success has been built on a mastery of uncomplicated crowd-pleasers. Earlier this year he smashed a Guinness World Record by selling more than 1.6 million tickets for the tour in one day. But it seems that's not enough.
The same old stadium routine is failing to satisfy, and, album-wise, the 32-year-old has been steadfastly trudging the middle of the road; last November's Intensive Care found him treading water, failing to come up with a memorable hit single, though the album did reach the top spot.
Now, in what looks like a bid to find some sort of personal or musical integrity, he's made a radical decision: to ditch the popster material and start experimenting. Rudebox, the name of both this week's new single and an album to be released in late October, sounds unlike anything he has recorded before. Career suicide? Or stroke of genius? A sneak preview of 10 of the album's 17 tracks, arriving in my inbox under the codename "Ether", makes an interesting case for his new direction.
It includes five surprisingly leftfield cover versions, as well as collaborations with the Pet Shop Boys, the charts' hottest newcomer Lily Allen, and the ambient guru William Orbit. Guy Chambers, who co-wrote most of the big anthems (including Angels) with Robbie, is nowhere to be heard, nor is there much sign of his more recent collaborator, Stephen Duffy.
But Robbie's usual songwriting method - working intensively with a single collaborator - is rare in pop. Albums by Beyoncé, Britney and Christina Aguilera are given multiple personalities by armies of songwriters; Rudebox is equally schizophrenic.
Every track is refreshingly different, from the synth-laden cover of the Human League's minor 1984 hit, Louise, to the sparkling house interpretation of Lovelight by an obscure Barnet soul singer named Lewis Taylor, on which Robbie sings entirely in falsetto. Keep On is a collision of hefty dance beats and funk in the style of Fatboy Slim, while The Actor is an uneasy ballad dominated by heavy electronic bass. It's all masterminded by a selection of hip producers, including Soul Mekanik, DJ Joey Negro and Lily Allen's mentor, Mark Ronson.
There is whistling, techno, country guitar and, strangest of all, Robbie rapping. He recently revealed an obsession with the music of The Streets and The Mitchell Brothers, and after his much-derided attempts at rhyming on the single Rock DJ, now feels once again that being a white man from Stoke is no barrier to hip-hop success.
"I want to be a rapper," he proclaims in the copious promo material, "but the world won't let me." The stream of consciousness nonsense he comes out with on the Rudebox single may not convince the world to change its mind. "A-D-I-D-A-S/Old school, this is the best/TK Maxx costs less/Jackson looks a mess" is a typical example of his lyrical style.
There's more, most strikingly and effectively on the pair of songs called The Eighties and The Nineties. These track the story of his early years in painfully honest detail, including his arrival and departure from Take That. "Boys I don't believe it, I'm gonna be famous/Pick you up in a Porsche and buy you lots of trainers/I met the other guys, one seemed like a cock/I think it's gonna be like New Kids on the Block."
It's witty and rather poignant, despite the gags. Admittedly, he's not very good at rapping, but the zeal with which he tries is infectious. The enthusiastic approach has worked in the past: he wasn't very good at singing like Frank Sinatra, but that didn't stop his Swing When You're Winning album from soaring to number one in 2001.
In fact, the more songs that rush by in a colourful blur of experimentation, the more it becomes clear that this isn't his attempt to get out of the game. The overriding feeling is that he's letting his hair down and doing something fun. There's his effortlessly groovy duet with Allen, a cover of King of the Bongo by French superstar Manu Chao, and Viva Life on Mars, a hiphop hoedown that sounds like Beck.
On She's Madonna, the Pet Shop Boys use pulsing synths to help him tell the story of someone who leaves his fairly average girlfriend for the Queen of Pop: "I love you baby/But face it, she's Madonna." He even covers a track by New York art rockers My Robot Friend called We're the Pet Shop Boys - with the help of the Pet Shop Boys. It's all so cunningly referential that it's dizzying; this is a far cry from Freedom, the George Michael cover that was his first solo single in 1996.
The scattergun approach to musical style may well result in lower sales figures, but Robbie's not interested. He finally wants to please himself rather than his record label's shareholders.
"It's reignited how I think about what I can do with music myself. I've always been scared to try out different things, and on this album I think I've lost the fear of where I should be in my head as a populist artist." he wants us to know. "It means I can just go and do wonky pop now, which is all I really wanted to do anyway."
After his hugely successful Knebworth gigs in August 2003, he said to 125,000 people: "This is the point where my career dips, probably - but I don't care because this has made my life complete." Where do you go when you're at the pinnacle of your stardom? He could have disappeared to his LA bolthole and counted his money, but as an easily bored multi-millionaire with an addictive personality (see new song Good Doctor, a humorous dig at his own pill popping) this would never have been a wise move.
Instead, he's made the extraordinary decision to risk all the teenybopper fame and adoration and take a punt on the music. Robbie the family-friendly entertainer has finally acquired the mentality of a proper musician.
"It started off as a busman's holiday this time around," he declares, "but it's something on which I've found myself." Robbie's next chapter starts here, and it's going to be an interesting one.
• The single Rudebox is out on EMI this week. The album of the same name is released on 23 October. '