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Rootbeer

Unless you’re an accomplished chef or alchemist, chances are you would not be able to walk into your home kitchen, take out some basic ingredients and create (re-create?) many of the processed foods we often eat. Like, I defy you to name one ingredient in a bag of Sour Patch Kids or a can of Mountain Dew Voltage (hint: calcium disodium EDTA ). And while I’m sure plenty of you do all your shopping at the local farmer’s market and only use sustainably raised grass fed beef in your cheeseburgers, most of the country doesn’t eat like that. On the contrary, most of the country eats fast food and processed snacks that are so far removed from conventional farm products they came from that people from a few hundred years ago wouldn’t even recognize them as food.

Actually, this could be be a funny Saturday Night Live skit. Somebody from, say, 1709 is transported via the magic of sketch comedy to the year 2009. Once here, they are presented with things like a pile of chicken nuggets or a can of Full Throttle Frozen Fury energy drink and then they have to figure out what to do with them. Of course, they might recognize the chicken-esque smell of the nuggets, but they would have never seen a perfectly formed, breaded and deep fried piece of all white “meat” like that before. They would probably assume that you could do any number of things with it - except eat it. Maybe they would take the can of Full Throttle and use it like a weapon, bludgeoning their futuristic hosts and stealing their mysterious chicken-scented nuggets. Seriously SNL, I know you’re struggling these days. Tell Lorne Michaels he can call me any time.

Oddly enough, one old-timey libation that has made it through the centuries relatively unscathed is root beer. Pour some into a frosty mug and it would appear exactly has it was back in the cowboy days. Even now you could easily make root beer in your backyard. All you need is some tree bark and a little yeast. What’s more, you can add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and just like that you have a root beer float, one of the most delicious desserts known to man. Or, if you want to take the whole thing into the 20th century, just throw it all in a blender and bam! - root beer freeze.

I would imagine that the idea of root beer as a symbol of versatility and lasting quality was not lost on Pigeon John and Flyn Adam. The LA emcee and producer have come together to create a new super group, er, duo in the vein of Gnarls Barkley or The Neptunes. They’ve squeezed the words together and are calling themselves Rootbeer. Rocking this tasty moniker, John and Adam have kicked their way into a decidedly modern hybrid genre that incorporates the ear candy of Brooklyn electro-pop, the laid back funk of West Coast hip hop and the corrupt revivalist disco of the so-called French bloghouse movement.

Like many elements of our futuristic diet, the Rootbeer sound would not be identifiable to anybody who happened to be magically transplanted from a pre-internet time period. But like their delicious namesake beverage, Rootbeer works with some pretty simple ingredients. The lyrics are ebullient and catchy, the bass lines roll out of the speakers like warm syrup and the drums cannot be denied. All that’s left to do is throw a scoop of vanilla ice cream in there and make that shit float.

MP3: ‘Pink Limousine’