Black Milk

Producers who rap, and rappers who produce, are a bit like two-sport athletes. Most wish they could do both. Few can. Fewer still are those in the ticket-holding audience who profit from the effort. Bo Jackson's hip injury and subsquent retirement left the the Oakland Raiders reeling for the better part of the 1990s. Kanye West, the Deion Sanders of hip-hop, is the obvious outlier, but adulation for the producer's rap skills has always belonged more to dorm rooms — next to Che Guevara posters and dirty bong water — than to the streets. Tronic, the October album from producer Curtis Cross, better known as Black Milk, carries the two-sport torch. As a middling rapper, the native of Detroit fares slightly better than Michael Jordan did as a Birmingham Baron. But as a producer, Cross' excellence quiets any lyrical missteps. The beats from Tronic retell electronic music in hip-hop's terms, creating head-bobbing odes to outerspace that are, for the most part, free of the dead weight of samples. Cross visits the Record Bar this week and is sure to impress with his athletic prowess.