Can hip-hop still cut it? Does sample-heavy music still have the same impact that it did back in the day of DJ Shadow et al?

Judging by this, it is an unreserved yes. And judging by social media and YouTube comments out there, the love for the dynamic duo is very strong. For Abdominal's easy-to-listen yet complex rhymes, both amusing and serious, and for DJ Format's varacious appetite for music, and his ability to construct smile-inducing beats and rhythms out of the history of rock'n'roll. It's 100% sampled.

They've been making uncluttered and bouncy hip-hop for going on 14 years, initially brought together when Format stumbled upon an early Abdominal 12 inch back in the late 90s. And although they've been working together on and off since then, this is the first album that co-bills the pair of them. The seeds for this album were planted following a 2015 tour, their first together for ten years in this country. It inspired them enough to get in the studio to create their first full-length album together, and Still Hungry is strewn with references and thoughts about their passion for what they do, both musically and generally.

As Abdominal tells us on the title track, “Time to see what you got,” in detailing the fight against the odds. And 'We're Back', which rides a terrifically tight, wired and funky guitar line, resplendent with scratching, spoken word samples, is a veritable statement of fact. Moreover, the first single to be drawn from the album, 'Behind the Scenes' is a poetic matter-of-fact analysis of the daily life of being a rapper, underpinned by a typically infectious funky groove. It's not all about the adulation of a live show. There's mountains of emails to get through, administrative and business-related issues that come with the territory of being independently minded artists.

Meanwhile, 'Dirt' is founded on a wickedly deep and funky double bass, accompanied by some vibes and scratching, as Abdominal gets all amusingly pissed with modern notions of cleanliness and a dirt-free world. Rather, he wants to embrace it, to enjoy the naturalness of it, in all its manifestations. And 'Reflective Medition Rhymes' is a purposeful antidote to the angrier and younger sounding Abdominal of 2003 when he wrote the words to 'Vicious Battle Raps', which contained some digs at not-so-good MCs, although he's still claiming (rightfully) that, "Hey, I've made some meaningful hip-hop." It's no idle boast.

For music anoraks there is always a deluge of musical information to get your teeth into. Where does that riff come from? That beat? That horn parp? Those piano stabs? But the best thing to do is to sit back and enjoy the fantastically fluid construction of music by the Brighton-based DJ, and the magnificently articulate words of the Toronto-based rapper, one who seemingly can rap for ages without breathing.

Sound-wise, Still Hungry harks back to the golden age of so-called 'conscious hip-hop', or 'alternative hip-hop' when acts such as The Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul provided much needed counterpoints to gangsta rap. But Format and Abdominal have in no way gone soft on us. Their music remains vibrant, urgent, and damn funky.
Jeff Hemmings

Website: mcabdominal.com
Facebook: facebook.com/DJFormatUK