| The lost and forgotten member of Company Flow is back with a gritty and searing if slightly uneven clarion call-out. Long playing the Flav to El-P's Chuck D, Bigg Jus hit an early peak as one-third of industry legends Co-Flow. But unlike El-P, Jus has yet to make a solo effort worthy of holding a candle to Funcrusher Plus. While achieving biblical-status in the canons of underground rap, Funcrusher essentially funded the rise of backpacker-mecca Rawkus Records. That's hard to follow. Bigg Jus has got the name and the pedigree, but it's high time to get his name back in the spotlight, and Poor People's Day is nothing if not ambitious. To call it planned would be conspiracy-baiting of the most ludicrous order, but Jus couldn't have timed the release better: after the debacle in New Orleans, the plight of the poor and disenfranchised (read: black) is a most relevant topic, on the minds of talking heads on TV and would-be revolutionaries on the street. A semi-concept album, all thirteen tracks are "for" the huddled masses—whether it's Jus decrying the military-industrial complex in metaphor or ruminating on the burdens of being black—and downtrodden in America, cursing the man and wishing for a better future. The most poignant and searing verses deal with race: "How do I begin this history lesson?/ How do I teach my seed the government considers him opposition/... If they consider him a threat Lord knows they try to kill him/ But he must know about Tuskegee syphilis injections and how scientists turn vaccines into bioweapons." DJ Gman's empty-cupboard orchestration is well-suited for such heavy words. They're sparse and gritty, evoking images of empty streets in an urban wasteland and dark clouds over the horizon. While he uses a healthy amount of turntablism—a lost concept for some producers—he doesn't sample much. When he does use samples, they're used as punctuation: a chorus of chanting voices, some wailing strings or something else approrpriately onimous, eerie or dramatic. They don't steal the show by any means but they're not supposed to, it's Jus's show and he's got something to say. There's a reason why Juss is the forgotten member of Co-Flow: he's a talented and imaginative street poet, but his mic delivery is average at best, so he makes up for it with sheer imagination. Poor People's Day is full of terrible imagery, of scenes of mayhem and chaos, and promises of post-apocalyptic chaos. A typical verse sees Jus imagining himself as an "energy harvester/I sip on molten lava, skin made of solar panels/photosynthesis be pumping chlorophyll intravenous through my incisors." Such mysterious rhymes paint the picture of Jus not as a megaphone-wielding organizer of the masses, but an empty-eyed dreaded dude, knocking on your door in the middle of the night and splitting, leaving only a note on the porch reading "IT IS TIME." The complexity makes Poor People's Day almost impossibly esoteric, and probably purposefully so. It's a strange irony to have a paean for the masses be so cryptic, and many will be left scratching their heads, but a lucky few will get to enjoy a hyper-political, abstract gem. - Brainwashed |
1XLP/Out Of Print