Yea Big and Kid Static

Hip-hop duos don’t always work this well. Two egos, two styles, two money situations; no doubt it can be more combustible than three, let alone four or eight egos. So rather than bending over backward to meet each other’s ideas, local hip-hop duo Yea Big and Kid Static let each of their outsized personalities clash and jibe proudly.

When not working as a stuntman (for real!), South Side native Kid Static adopts a geeky voice as an MC, making him more of a stylist on the mike than a poet. As it stands, this old-school approach of hip-hop-as-party-music suits the kaleidoscopic production of Yea Big just fine.

Not content to merely sample old soul 45s, Yea Big rifles through every futuristic keyboard patch he can find, as well as (what sounds like) gamelan, string harmonics and street noise on the duo’s eponymous debut on JIB Records. For a recent tour by the experimental L.A. rock band Mae Shi, Yea Big hacked up the band’s tracks, and overlaid Kid Static’s old-school vocals in a Z-Trip–esque moment of virtuosity and then put it on his group’s MySpace page. But it’s not Yea Big’s palette so much as the way he paints: Tracks evolve and morph constantly, creating bright soundscapes rather than the typical beat plus minor-variation-on-the-beat. And on “Why the Fuck Does This Keep Happening?” eerie string harmonics give way to ominous white noise, while Static screams the title on repeat.

After a brief tour, the group returns home tonight to open for the dormant Rhymefest, who rocked Lollapalooza this year with a live band, and the hardworking, backpacking MC Verbal Kent. Big things poppin’, indeed.