| With Poor People’s Day, the elusive Bigg Jus returns to the spotlight with more boundary-pushing hip-hop. This time around, however, the fruits of his labor will be palatable to more than just diehard fans of his old group, Company Flow. Maintaining his lyrical inclination toward political haranguing, Jus’s lyrics roll spectacularly over DJ Gman’s dusty beatscapes, which run the gamut from grippingly melodramatic to jiggy as fizzuck. The title track’s drums alone are worth the price of admission—the lyrical and musical momentum that opens the song is as club-anthemic as indie rap gets, despite the fact that it diminishes gradually into an enervating, crooning denouement. On his last album, Black Mamba Serums, Jus rocked over some beats by Gman, changing up the more darkly challenging rhythms he had used on those songs when they were first released in EP form. Poor People’s Day, “orchestrated” by Gman, finds the producer taming his steez somewhat, introducing coherence and genuine groove into the edgy palette he brought to Black Mamba Serums. This benefits Bigg Jus’s flow, which, while not exactly all over the map, is definitely not constrained by rap’s traditional shackles of meter and rhyme. The pairing brings out the best from both partners; Poor People’s Day is purposefully not easy listening, but unlike its predecessors in Jus’s catalog, it’s willing to meet the listener halfway. - Boston's Weekly Dig |
1XLP/Out Of Print