Members of the hip-hop supergroup Deltron 3030 (left to right) Kid Koala, Del the Funky Homosapien and Dan the Automator are shown in a handout photo. It's been 13 years since Deltron 3030's otherworldly debut beamed down, seemingly out of nowhere - a stardust-encrusted piece of alien tech, its space boots gleefully out of step with anything happening in mainstream music at the time - and don't think Del the Funky Homosapien has forgotten exactly how long ago it was. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Michael Donovan

TORONTO - It's been 13 years since Deltron 3030's otherworldly debut beamed down, seemingly out of nowhere — a stardust-encrusted piece of alien tech, its space boots gleefully out of step with anything happening in mainstream music at the time — and don't think Del the Funky Homosapien has forgotten exactly how long ago it was.

The deviously clever Bay Area rapper fronted that hip-hop supergroup with Canadian turntable maestro Kid Koala and famed production mad scientist Dan the Automator. Together, the trio assembled an alt-hip-hop space opera distinguished by ornate classical-informed soundscapes, a rich Afrofuturistic setting in a dystopian 3030 and the inimitable talents of Del, an underground legend whose rhyming vocabulary could stymy a National Spelling Bee whiz.

While not a significant commercial success, the record was an influential critical favourite that set the table for similarly boundary-busting pop experiments that dropped with increasing frequency over the following decade. Over time, the record's legend only grew.

In fact, perhaps too much so for the deft MC who helped give the project life, especially as he laboured pondering a follow-up.

"A lot of people, they're looking for (stuff) in the first record," said Del in a telephone interview from his Oakland, Calif., home. "Really, with the first one, I was just styling but did it with futuristic vocabulary and imagery. But I was still just like, rapping, basically, and Dan kind of filled in the pockets with skits and stuff.

"But people took it to be way more. I mean, of course I was saying some stuff too — I've always got something to say — but people were taking it to the Nth level. And then other people were looking at it like, 'All he's doing is just freestyling using big words. It ain't that deep!'

"So for both of them, I said, OK. With this one, let me make it something that's a bit fatter. So if you're looking for something like that, it'll be there. And if you're looking to try to like, discombobulate the situation — like deconstruct me or something — you ain't going to be able to do it."

The long, long-awaited result is the appropriately titled "Deltron 3030: Event II," and it's actually — really! — out this week after more than a decade of false starts and delays that simultaneously frustrated and intrigued the group's cultish fanbase.

And certainly, the trio's reunion doesn't lack for ambition. Just shy of an hour, the disc features gorgeous string-heavy production, typically unassailable turntable wizardry and a bizarre guestlist that includes musicians (Blur's Damon Albarn, Faith No More's Mike Patton, Rage Against the Machine's Zach de la Rocha), comedians (David Cross, hip-hop pranksters the Lonely Island) and even an array of actors (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Amber Tamblyn and Mary Elizabeth Winstead).

But each member of the trio agrees that the most taxing task in this sky-reaching project fell to Del, who took it upon himself to imbue this record with the thematic depth that fans interpreted in its predecessor.

The 41-year-old Hieroglyphics founder delved into classic science fiction for inspiration, trying to sketch a storyline that stretches across the entire record and comments on the ubiquity of technology and government control.

The central theme, he says, is that those in power tend to abuse power — but Dan the Automator points out that several of the social calamities of the past decade-plus were woven into the record's fabric, pointing specifically to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. housing collapse, the bank crisis, various wars and the rise of social media.

"The idea wasn't just for us to show up and act futuristic to the point where it doesn't really make sense in the context of today," says Kid Koala, nee Eric San, who has roots in both Vancouver and Montreal.

"I think a lot of what Del's lyrical content is really addressing is everything that's happening now: politically, economically, environmentally, technologically... The stuff Del's talking about, even though he's setting it in 3030 and making it very bleak and desolate, you can see a lot of it already happening now.

"If he were just talking about it in today, it would probably come off way too preachy."

It was a lot of work, and the forthright Del doesn't necessarily claim to have enjoyed the process.

"It was a little too ambitious," he says with a laugh. "It was tough. And that's the reason why I'm saying I probably would think first before I created something of this magnitude again. I want to do some stuff that's adventurous, but I don't have to shoot myself in the foot. It could be fun to do, you know what I'm saying?

"Like, doing Deltron was like I gotta do homework or something."

Much as he struggled, Del's collaborators are insistent that no one else could have pulled the record off quite this way.

Through his two-decade-plus career — which began with 1991's proto-G-funk gem "I Wish My Brother George Was Here" and careened through several artistically gratifying, mainstream-defying left turns — he has established a unique gift as a rapper, one who's able to somehow spit multisyllabic mouthfuls and juggle vivid imagery at warp speed while flowing as effortlessly and consistently as a country river.

(After all, this is the guy who bragged on the previous Deltron record that he would "enthuse your phalanx with (his) literary talents.")

"Del's like a genius, man — really, really a genius," said Dan the Automator, whose real name is Daniel Nakamura. "His brain works on some wave that we don't really question."

That respect is mutual.

Beyond its pretzel-shaped rhymes, the first record was notable largely for its lushly luxuriant production. Dan the Automator had already authored a left-field hip-hop classic in Dr. Octagon's "Dr. Octagonecologyst," a project he said began with the specific intention to "blow out all the boundaries in hip-hop."

Deltron began with less directly transformational objectives, but carried no less an influence. Some of the projects that clearly traced back to Deltron also featured Dan the Automator's fingerprints — especially the work of cross-genre supergroup Gorillaz, whose first smash single "Clint Eastwood" was produced by the San Francisco native and prominently featured Del's rapping. Musically, Kid Koala and Dan the Automator agree that the record's unique sound was informed by their shared backgrounds in classical music.

And looking back, it's not hard for the group to puzzle out why Deltron connected the way it did.

"I think the bar is pretty low in rap," Dan the Automator said. "It's not that there's not great rappers, it's not that there's not great songs, but there's not many great albums. And I feel like the first Deltron record is a great album.

"When you listen to the rap landscape now, I'm hard-pressed to say there's been a really great quality album in the last several years," he adds. "Now, if you're a hot rapper, you've got eight different producers on your record. Even Eminem will have many different producers on his album now and you lose the continuity that was once existing.

"I think as far as work goes," he continues, "there's a bit of a disjointed nature to it."

Del agrees.

"It was larger than the average rap record," he says. "A lot of rappers, they don't really stretch the limits of what can be done, especially nowadays. People just do, like, basic records."

He also thinks the project's space-placed setting was perfect for a cult audience.

"It's just the sci-fi lean," he adds. "Sci-fi got a real fanbase that ain't never going to die out. Them fools are dedicated as hell. (They) be coming to conventions dressed as Darth Vader ... and they so serious! They be really serious about it.

"Now you've got a sci-fi rap record, it's like a rap opera ... so I see a lot of the fans, they like that. Then a lot of other fans, they might be high or something. They just trip out on it. You got them type of fans too, that's just stoners or whatever, zoning out on that record like: 'Wow, it's really trippy here.'"

For all its influence and cult status, the first Deltron record didn't really set the charts aflame; it topped out near the bottom of the Billboard top 200 chart. (Kid Koala points out that if sales had been the goal, they might not have started the record with a bleak seven-and-a-half minute opus).

Still, they wonder if the years of myth-making will help boost the group's commercial fortunes this time around.

"The first one didn't sell (for crap), really," says Del, using a slightly harsher profanity. "Any time you do something new, people gotta catch on first. So it took a while, and when people start catching on, they really start catching on. Now it's primed to do this and it could probably turn into something."

In its initial incarnation, Deltron 3030 performed only a dozen shows before disappearing. Now, they're launching a tour in which they'll be accompanied on most nights by a 16-piece orchestra (it winds through Toronto on Oct. 16).

Which means Del will have to unravel his knotty rhymes in a live setting, something he admits to not thinking about when crafting the record's sometimes-inscrutable words.

It's another challenge the rapper is tackling with some reticence. And as a result, it's easy to see this much-anticipated sequel as a finale. Hoisting this record into space, while not quite rocket science, has left Del unenthused at the prospect of doing it again.

"At this point, next time I work on a project, I know that I'm going to think about: Is this sustainable over an amount of time? I think this is going to be the last Deltron record, 'cause this just can't be sustained.

"It was just a lot of work," he added later. "Say I come out with another one, and it's part three. People are already going to have expectations through the roof — they had expectations through the roof for this one. Some people might not ever be satisfied no matter what you do. But the bar is so sky high, how am I supposed to reach that? It took 13 years to do this one!"

Though Kid Koala jokes that he'll be 56 by the time a hypothetical third record comes out, he's nonetheless a bit more optimistic.

"I'm down to do (more)," he said. "I love working with these cats. Whatever permutation of this lineup it's going to turn into, I'm down.

"If those dudes want to say, 'You know what? We need to do like a neo-polka record.' I'll be like, I'm down. I'll start digging for tuba scratches."

News from © The Canadian Press, 2013