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Everyone has become accustomed to artists boasting about how they never sleep, but for Tah Phrum Duh Bush his sleeplessness has never been a point of pride, it’s been a serious condition. For the majority of theBrooklyn, NY, native’s life insomnia has taken his nights away from him. Instead of turning to modern medicine to attempt to cure his sleeplessness, however, Tah worked to turn his pain into art, and created Luminous Dark Alleys: The Insomniac Works.
Luminous Dark Alleys: The Insomniac Works is a 15 track album (14 original songs and one remix) based on his experiences with insomnia and the ideas that have run through his head as a result of not being able to sleep. Tah describes the album as “a dark ride through the mind of an insomniac.” It’s a ride that comes with an accompanying 100+ page book that has a chapter for each song and gives listeners a deeper, fuller experience, that Tah says is “super personal.”
The project is the long awaited follow up to Tah’s 2005 release Sunshine or Pure Shade. During the five years in-between albums Tah experienced a number of extreme highs and lows. There was the triumph of touringEurope a number of times, including a three month stay there in 2009, but also the tragedy of losing his home to a fire. Thankfully, one very important item in his home was saved by a firefighter with a keen eye who noticed one of Tah’s backup hard drives on the floor and managed to kick it under a table before they finished spraying the place down, saving some of Tah’s work. The rest of his drives were lost in the fire.
For most artists, not having a new album out, and touring overseas, results in anonymity at home, but Tah kept his name alive and well through his unique guerilla marketing techniques. His giant “Tah Phrum Duh Bush” sign that he takes to shows, and the “missions” he sets up for his fans that have them promoting his name throughout the city in large groups, have become nothing short of legendary in NYC’s underground hip-hop community.
One of the reasons Tah has so much support in that community is because of all the support he continues to give. Having been involved in the scene since the days when he could be found rhyming alongside Mos Def and Black Moon in park cyphers, Tah is a regular at shows, and is more than willing to answer his phone at any hour of the day or night to give advice to those who seek it.
Tah also packs the house for his performances. Not content with having a typical hip-hop show, Tah enlivens the crowd, getting them involved in more than just the traditional call-and-response way. When he performs “Micro-PH-One-01,” a song off of Sunshine or Pure Shade in which he explains the proper way to use a microphone, he has a volunteer holding cue cards for people to read and gives everyone a diploma at the end of the song for graduating from the course.
There’s a graduation of another kind Tah is also concerned with, and it involves the kids in his community. This is why in 2005, with schoolteacher Rosaleen Knoepfel and fellow emcee Bisco Smith, he helped launch Urban Art Beat, an after-school program where local emcees, in a safe environment, mentor inner city kids in the art of crafting rhymes. After seeing initial success in the South Bronx, Urban Art Beat has expanded to other areas ofNew York and sees numerous emcees volunteering their time each semester.
Sleeplessness keeps Tah working when even the artists who claim to be up all night have gone to bed. As he continues to put those long nights to good use for both himself and his community, the latest result of his sleeplessness, Luminous Dark Alleys: The Insomniac Works, will wake up anyone who isn’t already familiar with Tah Phrum Duh Bush.
Tah Phrum Duh Bush is an oddball amongst artists. Dude is so askew from the norm he is often labeled a weirdo-nonconformist-freak. Hey man this cat just aint right! Yet somehow, strangely, its actually quite cool! Tah has been seen on stage doing wide ranges of craziness. Tah can be found in the bowels of New York City on a stage dropping science and knowledge in one instant and in the next he's on the floor grinding against an imaginary lover with the fury of a sex starved bison while prompting the crowd to Lay that Pipe! Consequently, Tah Phrum Duh Bush has chosen to represent himself as the antithesis of all; the positive to every negative and the negative to every positive; an oxymoron live in the flesh! To be succinct hes the epitome of "Filthy-Clean!" There is neither good nor bad. There only is what is.
Straying away from the cliché of todays generic musical formats, Tah Phrum Duh Bush gives birth to themes of life that 99% of earth's population can relate to in one way or another. From the pinnacles of mania to the deep fathoms of depression, Tah's artistry represents both ends of the Chi, both sides of the Yin-Yang and all shades of the spectrum in between. No holy person is without sin and no sinner is without sanctity. Tah finds mid-ground without ever being at a polar extreme for an extended period of time.
Tah's Lyrical wizardry entrances the listener to frequently indulge in usage of the rewind function on his/her listening device to catch metaphors of great magnitude that manage to elude the weak of thought.
Tah's debut album is entitled "Sunshine or Pure Shade?!?!" The title of this collective of witty and bewitchingly cunning selections is, in itself, a question of Tah's introspection of life. This question is most clearly exemplified in the closing masterpiece "Life and Death Dichotomy". Tah ponders the contrasts between the themes of life and death and challenges the common ideas that most are programmed and conditioned to follow and believe in.
Phlatbush is another selection that represents the very essence of the "Sunshine or Pure Shade?!?!" theme. Tah is a native of Phlatbush (Flatbush). Phlatbush is geographically the center of Brooklyn, "the most culturally rich city in the world." Just about every race, religion and social class is represented there. In Tah's "Phlatbush" all the pros and cons, ups and downs and diversity of this urban land are brought to life. It is truly awe-inspiring how much information about a city of demographically indefinable people is brought to the soul through the ear of the listener.
Tah lets the partaker know that it's OK to be the oddball. It's alright to think your own thoughts, it's cool not to do things just to fit in and that without the self, there is only mindless wandering in the herd.
Tah welcomes you to the reality of."Sunshine or Pure Shade?!?!"
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