Tim Fite
7:45pm, Stage 2No artist since Beck has melded genres as provocatively and effortlessly as Tim Fite.
“I think that, techniquewise and ideologywise, a lot of what I’m trying to do is coming out of the hip-hop realm, but I’ve never felt that you have to conform to a sound or style in order to be that style,” he says. “I can make this twangy song written on an acoustic guitar, and to me, I still think it’s rap music. Or I can make a song with just a snare and bass drum and a bunch of talking, and I think it’s country music.”
The New Jersey native’s 2005 Anti- debut, Gone Ain’t Gone, cut through categorization and dollar-bin samples with impressive fluidity, but last year’s prescient indictment of rabid consumerism on Over the Counter Culture finally brought him critical praise. A free download, the album seared the boundaries of hip-hop as much as the cultural consciousness. Fite’s latest, Fair Ain’t Fair (Anti-), follows Gone‘s eclectic flow through moments of pop, folk, jagged rhythms, and melodic choruses, all shifting across his staccato delivery. Though ostensibly more accessible and personal, the album still unleashes larger social concerns.
“I wanted to think about how apocalypse and apology work hand in hand and how they fight against each other, as well,” Fite opines. “Can you ask for forgiveness in the face of ultimate demise? We’re very much aware that we’ve done wrong, as humans. We’re aware that because of that, we’re headed toward all different forms of endings. The economy is fucked up; the planet’s going to shit; you know, we’re all gonna die. A record is kind of a cop-out in addressing those things, but this is the best way I know how to talk.”
This article appears in November 7 • 2008.
