Amazon.co.uk Review
On
A Better Tomorrow, his first solo outing, Automator (aka. Dan Nakamura) extended the realms of hip-hop. Well, mostly--if he's wasn't creating new sonic universes, he was at least exploring them more deftly than those before him. On the re-worked, expanded version,
A Much Better Tomorrow, Nakamura nearly doubles the amount of music on offer (talk about value for money), and while there's nothing mind-shattering in the expanded offering, it's still a welcome addition.
Nakamura's taste involves using everything from jazz breaks to hit-you-over-the-head hooks, repeated till your brain fries; the tempo is relaxed, but the attitude isn't. In less talented hands, this stuff would be mush, but Automator pulls it off (though it is tough to imagine an MC patient enough to rhyme over some of the more languid tracks here). The title track has appeared elsewhere (and features the inspired wackiness of Kool Keith, here as his Sinister 6000 alter ego), but the instrumental tracks are what point the listener to Nakamura's better tomorrow: a world in which hip-hop is free to expand on the myriad sonic possibilities he touches on. Four years after Nakamura recorded these tracks, hip-hop was only beginning to catch up with him. --Randy Silver