Broadway & 52nd - Us3 (Capitol - Blue Note) It took a pair of British studio mavens to give pioneering jazz label Blue Note its biggest chart success when Us3 married jazz and hip-hop and hit paydirt with 1993's Hand On The Torch. Featuring the top-10 single Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) - an irresistible debunking of Herbie Hancock's 1964 classic Cantaloupe Island - the album went platinum and made superstars out of underground DJs Geoff Wilkinson and Mel Simpson. But that success drove a creative wedge between the pair and Wilkinson strikes out on his own - with the help of New York rappers Shabaam Sahdeeq and KCB - for another plunder-fest of the Blue Note vaults. Although there is nothing to match the pop clout of Cantaloop, Broadway & 52nd is more coherent and takes more risks than its predecessor. This time Wilkinson gives more rein to the rhythmic possibilities. Snakes, driven by a sample of Wayne Shorter's Indian Song, is a good example with KCB's Beat-poet delivery over a 5/4 time. However, it's the piano flourishes of funk innovator Horace Silver that imbue real colour - the reworking of his Sayonara Blues, retitled Caught Up In A Struggle, is the album's high point. Not for the purists, but another worthy effort at opening a window on an awesome storehouse.
