I've got no idea about Power Bar Ernie's background, so I went out and hit up Google to see if they could tell me anything so I'd sound like the hip-to-everything reviewer I know you want me to be. "What the fuck is this guy? Thank you for saying this.. I feel the same way.. that stuff is not worth the money.." This is what the good folks of rec.music.hip-hop had to say of the enigmatic artist known only as Power Bar Ernie. Over on hiphopsite.com, he's described as "outrageous, offensive, nonsensical rap that only can be comparable to Kool Keith. [...] Is Power Bar Ernie serious � or is this simply an awful parody of rap itself, performed under a secret alias by one of hip-hop�s hottest up and coming emcees?" Since it's been almost six months (some kind of record in recent years?) since Kool Keith dropped Spankmaster, I had to snatch it up to see who was right about this one. I've listened to it dozens of times and I still don't completely know what to make of this album. All the influences are up front and in your face, and most notably, Ernie's tearing pages out of the Kool Keith playbook. The hooks are sung, reaching for and more often than not missing, in Keith's distinctive off-tune semi-falsetto style. "Intro" is ripped straight from the Dr. Octagon track of the same name. It's surreal snippets of dialogue from what must be the most bizarre porn ever made (I'm guessing it's a sugar daddy wooing a cheerleader type, but I'm really not sure), minus the orchestral backing and wicked scratching of the Octagon original. Later in "492-9248", he's caught stealing from Sex Style's "Stuck on Pussy Drive" in a hilariously go-nowhere skit; you can almost see the pitying look on the face of the girl on the other end of the phone as she does her best not to laugh in Ernie's face, failing a few times. In the most blatant tribute to Kool Keith of the album, Keith saying "Hee hee hee! Come and battle me clown" from the Ultramagnetic MC's "Dont Be Scared" is sampled for "The Bar-B-Que Song." The comparisons to Kool Keith come because of the off-kilter humor and the bizarre sex fascinations, but where Keith seems genuine about it, it's pretty obvious that Power Bar Ernie's just out to make you laugh about it... how else can you explain away lines like "I admit/ I jerked off in a bathroom/ And used my piss as lubricant" and "Power Bar's a really good guy/ I was just accidentally convicted of child molesting/ Twice!"? Where Keith's lyrical subject matter travels from the abstract to the concrete and back again at dizzying speeds, Power Bar sometimes struggles to connect one rhyme to the next, coming off sounding like he's freestyling half the time and never really straying from purely concrete thoughts. It's single-minded through and through. If you're intent on making the comparison to Keith, also absent are the fierce battle rhymes. At most, he intermittently makes fun of Freddie Foxx, although he does seem to have an unnatural obsession with golden-voiced Don Pardo that I'm at a complete loss to explain. His delivery is more Pimp Daddy Welfare than anything else, not that this is a bad thing. It really sounds like a bunch of drunken morons sitting around a room with a loop going just freestyling to see who can make each other laugh first. The production on the album ("No records or breaks/ Nigga this is loops and dragnet") can generously be described as warts 'n all: more than a few times on the albums he flubs lines and just keeps on trucking. Every now and then his loops (and just as he brags, that's about all there is to the album is 4 bar loops) skip behind him, but it doesn't seem to bother Ernie one bit. Furthermore, who else would be so ballsy as to sample the "hit" song from the soundtrack to Transformers: The Movie, "The Touch"? And what to make of lyrics like "Power Bar's been digging up his ass for days/Now my fingers itch"? What do you make of an album with more fart sound effects than the campfire scene of Blazin' Saddles (not to ruin one of the more genius moments of the album, but there's a hidden track on the album... that's a fart!)? Demonstrating the absurd lengths he'll go to piss someone, anyone, off, although he's responsible for all the rapping, production and recording duties, he gives credits for overseeing the album... to Scott LaRock. Unless Mr. LaRock has risen from the grave just to lend his support to this album or there's another Scott LaRock out there, it's just another example of Power Bar Ernie flipping the entire hip-hop scene off. The entire album is a roller-coaster ride where he says one gross thing and then goes out of his way to try to one-up himself just to piss someone off or gross them out. So I presented two different views of the album, but who's right? It's a push: neither are right but neither are wrong. I won't dispute the rec.music.hip-hop assertion that he's not a traditionally good rapper, but he's far from wack, which is to say that if you're the type that sits around debating the "realness" of hip-hop artists on message boards from your parent's basement until the horse is long-dead, you're going to hate him. If you listen to hiphopsite.com and come to the album looking for the genuine dementia, off-kilter humor, bizarre lyrical genius and spacy bragadoccio that Kool Keith consistently delivers, you're going to be disappointed. I also don't expect to see PBE blowing up the Scribble Jam or showing up on MTV or BET anytime soon. That said, hiphopsite.com is right about this much: if you're looking for an album that's the hip-hop analog to Tenacious D or Spinal Tap (both genre mockeries that at the same time are fine examples of the genre they're obviously making fun of), if you can laugh at fart jokes or if you can appreciate outsider music one bit, you're going to love it. - jesus x. lovejones