“I told John Lennon he should lead The Beatles/And I was with Theodore when he scratched the needle/I was with Too $hort when he met them freaks/And I was down in Tennessee with my homeboy Speech/Man I was there, I swear, everything ain’t fair/This is just part one, Jack Splash outta here.”
At that moment when introductory title track “Time Traveler” ends, a portal to a vibrant and lucid musical world opens. The sky is a light a purple, the birds sing like a horn section in harmony, endorphins spill out of every last element and the vibrations of the coldest funk fill the atmosphere. Its creator, Plantlife’s mysterious genius Jack Splash, is hospitable, providing a steady groove and electric energy to hold onto during the wild excursion of Time Traveler’s music.
“Plantlife, when we perform, is an 11-piece band with horns, percussion—basically the whole nine. The live show, we’re somewhere between Earth, Wind and Fire and Daft Punk, but in the studio it’s me behind the boards; I play piano and drums, and sing, and then various musicians. I’m a big fan of real old-school producers like Phil Spector, Steely Dan and Brian Wilson—folks like that, but on some hip-hop shit, I don’t like give the exact science of how I make my shit,” says the cool and soft-spoken Splash.
His influences run deep and wide, and the music is all-encompassing. However, there are two consistencies that are embedded in the Plantlife vibe which he describes abstractly as the beautiful heart of humanity, and secondly and more simply stated as the prevalence of women. “Unfortunately, and I’m a little better now, but I had some real wild relationships. I think because I’m so sensitive on that side that I remember all these details. It might be a detail that comes back to haunt me like how I fucked up so bad with this girl. Or maybe a bugged-out tale, like on the song “Take It Off,” where I’m trying to holler at this girl and get her to leave with me, but she’s saying she’s got five friends with her and can’t leave, and I say fuck it, bring all of ’em. That’s some of the wild shit that actually happened. Just to be stupid enough to have the balls to say some shit like that will have you wind up in some wild situations.”
While their music is grounded in a rich musical lineage, Plantlife’s creativity is boundless. It’s as if they are everything at once, and therein lays the unique and inherent beauty of Time Traveler. “At the end of the day we are all basically the same thing; it’s all the same energy. We’re different people, we grew up differently, but all the people I love musically, that goes from 2Pac to John Lennon, what was behind their music is almost the exact same thing as what’s behind my music, and I feel like energy itself is the
