The first time I heard Alexander Ebert’s “Truth,” I explicitly remember thinking that it sounded like Ebert – otherwise known as Edward Sharpe – was subtly trying his hand at hip-hop. It was a weird thing to fully comprehend because, frankly, Ebert has always been the kind of guy I imagine traveling through the desert in Oregon Trail wagons, killing his own food with his hands, drinking the juice from coconuts (how coconuts came about in my imaginary desert, I couldn’t tell you) and spending nights at campfires with other estranged gypsy people tripping on mushrooms. And that’s just not a scene that hip-hop seems like it’d be a part of.
Now that RZA has jumped on a new “remix” of the track, that whole image in my head has been totally skewered. Of all the crazy collaborations out there, it’s difficult not to feel like this is one of the more abstract ones. But surprisingly, it works. For all intents and purposes, the original version of “Truth” remains fully intact with this supposed remix. The instrumentation, the whistling, and Ebert’s vocals are all exactly as they were on Alexander. The difference comes around the song’s mid-section, as the track’s atmosphere balloons and bridges toward a conclusion.
Here, Ebert’s chants are removed, and in their place RZA contributes a verse that isn’t particularly astonishing but still manages to capture the essence of the song’s vibe. He raps about truth, reality, and God, which seems like a perfect fit for a guy like Ebert, who we can all only imagine spends a lot of time pondering these things. Ultimately though, it doesn’t add a whole lot to the original. In fact, while it doesn’t feel like a burden, it does feel like a mostly unnecessary novelty; like some DJ just threw down an acapella over an instrumental. The combination is intriguing and certainly ignites some potential for more of these types of unions from Ebert, but it just doesn’t have the same charm as the initial recording.
