Funkmatized

IF ANYTHING can be termed the "next big thing" in 1983, it must be Black rap music, or funk, or whatever the cognoscente now choose to call it Clearly rap is the most original hybrid of Black music to emerge out of the inner city in many years, and probably the most interesting pop happening nowadays in the U.S. and England.

Although--as rap godfather Grandmaster Flash pointed out in a recent adulatory Phoenix feature, the genre may have already passed its peak--the unwashed masses getting funkmatized. It seems inevitable that rap music will be sucked into the mainstream, just as have fringe musical elements in the past.

That process is already underway, prompted in part by the pathbreaking funk-electropop fusion of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock," which combined chants with a purloined Kraftwerk riff and computer pyrotechnics by Arthur Baker

One reason is that unlike the milquetoast trash being turned out by British trendies, electronic funk is intensive, even more so than its less sophisticated predecessors. That's because rappers have used synthesized instruments to augment and vary the beat, rather than circumvent it.

Bambaataa's follow-up. "Looking for the Perfect Beat," was an exercise in just that, a deep mix of layers upon layers of rhythms and sounds which overwhelmed the listener because of its seeming impenetrability and newness.

Local hip-hoppers the Jonzun Crew follow Bambaataa's lead with the first album put out by the independent company Tommy Boy, which has fostered electro-funk in Bambaataa and reggae-influenced Pressure Drop ("Rock the House") and Latin Special Request ("Salsa Smurph" believe it or not).

"Lost in Space" is a veritable orgy of chants, raps, layered electronic drum rhythms and bass lines, and the now cliche but totally appropriate get-down-get-funky mentality. Buy this disk for the mindblowing radio single "Space Cowboy" and keep repeating it for a surprisingly consistent album of electro-funk workouts.

About "Space Cowboy" It is the catchiest and most exciting dance music on the air and in the discos--forget about the Flash and Safety Dances--because it is an unabashedly silly song that just feels right, sort of like the Jacksons "ABC"

He's bad, he's mean

He's the space cowboy in the space machine

He's bad, he's number one

He's the space cowboy with the laser gun

Michael "Spaceman" Jonzun, who is probably the Space Cowboy, boasts "I'm bad I can do it better than you What ya gonna do?" You also get a healthy dose of call-and response chants and a few cowboy yodels.

The "Pack Jam" remix lifts a synth riff from who knows where, and backs it with electronically altered vocals and a variety of funk sounds, which recall everything from Caribbean metal drums to a fart. Spaceman Jonzun, himself, is credited with the following: lead vocals, computer programming, electro drums, space bass, space-vocals, sound effects, synthesized keyboards, background vocals, string and brass synthesizers. And the three other band members do stuff as well.

The Jonzun Crew are obviously as commited to futurism as they are to the beat. And though their chants ("We are from the Jonzun Crew/We are from your planet too") take on a cartoonish quality, they appear determined to try something new. Their Latin-infused "We are the Jonzun Crew," with its opening "Who are we?" draw obvious parallels to new wave weirdos Devo, who sacrificed quality to novelty early in their career.

Whether "space" rock is just a one-album joke or a pathbreaking funk mutant will have to await the future actions of Afrika Bambaataa, Spaceman Jonzun, and their cohorts. But regardless, the Jonzuns have a good thing going, good enough to fill a first album with exciting and completely electronic music.

LITTLE SUCH PRAISE can be heaped on New York's "Fearless 4," whose new song "Something New" perhaps shows the hazards of taking rap into the corporate swamp. (They were signed by Elektra/Asylum.) "Just Rock," which uses the music of Gary Numan's "Cars"--a song that should have never seen plastic the first time around--reaches for the same partydown atmosphere of the Jonzun Crew, but comes up empty.

The ridiculously baaaaad Fearless 4 rap comes off as nothing more than stupid and mindless, and should have been made obsolete in the wake of Grandmaster Flash's shock classics. "The Message" and "New York New York" In any case, this sort of rap has been handled much more effectively and with much less hoopla by the Sugarhill Gang and Trouble Funk a couple of years back.

The B-side. "Got to Turn Out," is more of the same, except for a catchy bass line which, predictably, is burned in the mix.