| Here is possibly the most confrontational, dense, depressing, and indecipherable rap album of the year—and as a 45-minute exegesis on America as poverty-creation machine, it'd have to be. Bigg Jus, former member of Company Flow and presumable current member of an FBI watch list, is one of the few MCs out there who seem dedicated specifically to decrying the power structure instead of usurping it. It's hard to find any hip-hop analogues that come close—the sometimes-stilted way Jus rattles off flow-defying sociopolitical struggle dispatches is on some D. Boon shit, brainy sloganeering as lyricism and vice versa. Leadoff nonskit cut "Supa Nigga" is the red herring: Sky-bound R&B beats bolted onto a funeral march accompany some vaguely nonspecific badass-geek exhortations ("You need blueprints to construct a Stargate to escape the ass-whippin'"), but the accessibility gets dead-bolted from there on in. "Energy Harvester (Swallow the Sun)" heaves like a nuclear reactor with asthma under Jus' puzzle-box warnings of environmental decay. "This Is Poor People's Day" hiccups with fusion-jazz autism and an endless stream of anti-imperialist agitation straight out of any random issue of Workers' World; "Night Before" merges anarchistic visions of a coup d'état ("That's what happens when you start to feel immortal/The chickens come home and people feel like they need some kind of vindication/To reach out and kill the harbinger of doom") with lonely slow-jam delicacy. As obtuse and frustrating as it can be sometimes for listeners just coming down off a Kanye high, it's still all too necessary. In the meantime, you can curse the fact that this album has to exist while eagerly awaiting the day it sounds completely outmoded. - Seattle Weekly |
1XLP/Out Of Print