The Optical Files #76: Scarface - The Diary (1994)

After the sprawling, heavily-weeded excess of The World Is Yours, Scarface wisely dialed it back, & in doing so ended up pendulum swinging for his followup. The Diary is almost stupidly singleminded: half an hour shorter than its predecessor, with no skits, only 3 interludes adding up to 3.5 minutes total, & only a single feature song. We don't even get J. Prince's usual spoken intro. What we do get as a result of this streamlined attitude is the most consistently hard-hitting production Face ever boasted, & the most effortless listen of his entire catalog to date.

Though I like to think of this album as the beginning of modern Scarface, his subject matter on this album is as simplified as the other elements. After the mood-setting instrumental intro, we get 4 songs in a row that consist mainly of pugnacious murder threats. The 5th song, "I Seen a Man Die," is also about murder but from another angle: the psychic toll that all this killing takes on the people who commit & are affected by it. With a relaxed yet chilling delivery, Face examines cycles of violence & the cold realities of death over a church organ-led instrumental punctuated by sinister reverbed vibraslap, like the everpresent danger of a rattlesnake lurking just off the narrow path. 

The brilliant "I Seen a Man Die" turns out to be the fulcrum of the album, because in the back half the subject matter diversifies & we get Face's reliable sex rhymes ("One," "Goin' Down"), a sociological takedown of moral guardians who try to blame the world's problems on gangsta rap ("Hand of the Dead Body"), a wild-out freestyle ("The Diary"), &...well, everything that's on Face's mind ("Mind Playin' Tricks '94"). Our guides through all of this are the production team of N.O. Joe, Mike Dean, & Scarface himself, some combination of which produce every song on the album. Their constant presence gives the album sonic consistency: you know you're getting Dean's trademark thick bass (often played in a slap style & sometimes heavily wah-wah'ed as in "Goin' Down"), layered guitars & dry, funky drums. Every track is impeccable musically, but if I had to pick highlights they'd be the shivery strings of "Hand of the Dead Body," which accentuate the rock-solid flows of Scarface & Ice Cube; the audacious "99 Luftballoons" sample in "Goin' Down"; & "Mind Playin' Tricks '94" whose iconic original beat is updated without being disrespected--this is how you do a remake!

This isn't a perfect album by any means. When you're going for short & sweet, every track has to hit as hard as possible, & I'm not quite sure what purpose songs like "Jesse James" serve aside from being funky, elastic grooves. But the album is short, sharp, shocking, & it leaves you wanting more. Add that to some of the best conceptual songs Face ever graced us with ("I Seen a Man Die," "Hand of the Dead Body"), & even if it's not as lyrically profound on the whole as some of his other albums, this is Face firing on all cylinders & creating an absolute classic.

The Optical Files #75: Beck - Odelay (1996)

Like a lot of people, my real introduction to Beck was this album. I had heard "Loser," of course, but I'd never delved into Mellow Gold or any of the (less accessible) albums before it. When I discovered Odelay (his first major label release), it made some kind of weird sense that threaded the needle of my '90s kid slacker appetites, my love of rap, & my retro Bob Dylan obsession. Beck owes a lot to Dylan both lyrically & musically: "Ramshackle" could be a lost Dylan tune, & there is a direct hat tip with the sample of Them's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" cover that appears on "Jack-Ass." That was actually my first favorite song on this album, with its heavily processed xylophone & languid pace giving me instant nostalgia.

There are pitfalls to writing lyrics like '60s Dylan, though: it's really easy to generate complete gibberish that way. Beck seems more into Dada-esque absurdity than Dylan's careful poetics--you can't convince me that "Heads are hanging from the garbageman trees/Mouthwash, jukebox, gasoline" has a deep meaning to it, but it sure sounds cool--though there is a respectable amount of thought put into the lyrics beyond just a thrillride of language.

The cut-&-paste ethos of the lyrics is echoed in the collage artwork: cowboys, eastern mysticism, wildlife, cartoons, ads, forgotten movie stills, all the detritus of a disposable pop culture landscape wheatpasted together in a booklet that dares you to make sense of it. Of course, this aesthetic continues in the musical approach Beck & the Dust Brothers (well-known Beastie Boys producers) employ. Much has been made of the genre-hopping: psychedelia, Americana, rap, lounge music, grunge & about 8 or 10 other genres are mixed throughout the album like smoking mad scientist beakers. But what interests me more than the genre-bending is Beck's rock-solid songwriting, ear for melody, & musicianship (he plays no fewer than 16 instruments over the album's course). From the folky chord progression of "Lord Only Knows" (again, heavily Dylanesque) that ascends into a deceptive cadence, to the balance of unusual percussion on the Revolver-esque "New Pollution" to the Sonic Youth noise rock of "Minus," Beck's always got another songwriting trick up his sleeve, & there's an offhanded joyfulness in the virtuosity he displays.

"Where It's At" might be the best-known song on this album, & I admire the way it pays tribute to hiphop without coming off as either appropriation or parody. Beck mixes '60s hepcat jive talk with his mixed-media poetics & loose, imperfect but authentically felt guitar solos (both acoustic & electric), all over a beat anchored by a funky organ & smooth horns. Beck is probably the best rap artist who has never claimed to be a rap artist.

Truth be told, while I respect the hell out of him, I've never been the biggest Beck fan. I love his restless creativity, his intelligence & restraint (mixed with the right about of idiocy & bombast), his seemingly genuine lack of fucks to give about his music's commercial appeal or lack thereof. I've heard most of his albums, & there are songs I love from all of them. For some reason, Odelay is the only one that ever truly clicked as an album. Then again, I'm only 36, so I haven't entered my crusty old music nerd Beck phase quite yet. Ask me again in 5 years & I'll probably tell you Stereopathetic Soul Manure is the pinnacle of human achievement.

The Optical Files #74: Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow (2002)

Blackalicious's followup to Nia was a refinement of that album's formula, doubling down on what worked, scaling back what didn't, & trying some new things along the way. As the group's stock was rising in the alternative hiphop world, they were able to reach out to guests like Questlove (when did he stop spelling his name with a ?), Gil Scott-Heron & even Zack de la Rocha. There's more of (almost) everything here: more live instruments (half the album is driven by live playing rather than sample chops), more ambitious, evolving compositions like "Nowhere Fast" (co-produced by Questlove), & even more extravagant rhyme schemes & relentless multisyllable sorcery from Gift of Gab. What there's less of: no real storytelling joints (though "Nowhere Fast" comes close), & less emphasis on ego trip tracks. Other than the 1-2 punch of "Paragraph President" into "It's Going Down," the braggadocious songs are hard to come by, as Gift seems more interested in being artsy than eating emcees for breakfast.

Consequently, this album owes a greater debt to poetry than their last record. Saul Williams makes a fiery guest appearance on the 10-minute epic "Release Part 1, 2 & 3," & there are spoken word, or spoken word-inspired, interludes peppered throughout the album. The lyrical topics are typically varied. Gift offers up another piece, like "Sleep" from Nia, in warm appreciation of the magic in everyday living: the nostalgic-sounding "Make You Feel That Way." "Purest Love" has a confessional autobiographical 1st verse, buoyed by lovely, delicate jazz flute by Karl Denson.

Speaking of which, "Purest Love," along with gospel-inflected opener "Bow & Fire," "First in Flight," "4000 Miles," the anti-war Ben Harper collaboration "Brain Washers," & "Aural Pleasure" are full of live instrumentation & as smooth & soulful as anything on Nia. But fear not: composer Chief Xcel still flexes his DJ muscles, both on the turntables & on the sampler. My favorite of the boom-bappier beats here is the swaggering funk of "It's Going Down," complete with skank guitars & wordless vocal chops. On the subject of chops, guest DJ Cut Chemist shows up for "Chemical Calisthenics," the followup to "Alphabet Aerobics" which one-ups the previous song's accelerando with start-stop tempo & meter changes.

Even though this album is technically better than Nia, I spent more time with that one & so it has more nostalgia value for me. While there's at least 1 misfire on Nia ("Cliff Hanger,") I can't find anything truly wrong with Blazing Arrow, but it's missing a tiny bit of the magic the previous album had. This one is great but, warts & all, I'll take the debut.

The Optical Files #73: Talib Kweli - Right About Now (2005)

When I wrote about The Beautiful Struggle & said "this was the best it would get for a while," my fabulous niece Harli asked "what about Right About Now?" My reply was that I hadn't listened to it in many years & only remembered 2 things: (1) the project seemed to exist solely to find a home for the Lauryn Hill tribute, & (2) "Drugs, Basketball & Rap" was pretty dope. I'm happy to report I still stand by both of these statements, but as a whole the project replicates most of the problems that The Beautiful Struggle had, & would be amplified in subsequent releases.

Relistening to this record, I was reminded of Chris Rock's observation: "People don't have a problem with conscious rap; they have a problem with conscious beats. If you make some ignorant beats, you can say all the smart shit you want." Kweli has always had a bipolar ear for production, & that holds true here: for every smart choice like Needlz's "Drugs, Basketball & Rap" with its pulsing synths & stabbing piano (although truth be told, it sounds suspiciously similar to dead prez's "Hip Hop"), there's a misfire like Kareem Riggins's "Who Got It," complete with stumbling drums, annoying treble leads & awkwardly sung chorus. I don't know if it's me, but it seems like for Kweli, the cornier the beat, the cornier the lyrics. So on "Who Got It" we get struggle bars like "who woulda thought that it would ever happen/rooting for Kweli 'cuz he brought back clever rappin," while on "Drugs, Basketball & Rap" we get some darts like "I spit the shit that fuck with C. Delores Tucker's sex life." (Although Tucker died between when he wrote that bar & when the album came out, so he had to apologize in the liner notes.)

This dichotomy continues throughout the album: 88-Keys's Latin percussion fueled title track & J Dilla's "Roll Off Me" with its unconventional drumbeat, sub bass & spooky piano arpeggio share space with Dave West's over-dramatic "Flash Gordon" & the somnolent smooth jazz of "Two & Two" by DJ Khalil. Once again, the best bars managed to find the best beats, highlighted by 2 songs produced by Charlemagne: the Black Star reunion "Supreme, Supreme" & the aforementioned Lauryn Hill tribute, "Ms. Hill." Lauryn Hill's public rep was at an all-time low in 2005, & Kweli's compassionate ode to her efforts to find her peace in a world that didn't want her to is one of the best pieces of writing he's ever done. If nothing else, I'm grateful for Right About Now because this track lives there.

As Kweli explains in the liner notes, the title of this CD is a reference to his frustration at how long it takes to release a record through the music industry. He felt disconnected from his fans since by the time a song made it to release, the feelings that provoked it were already a year or more old. This was his first independent release (& last truly independent one, since he inked a distribution deal with Warner shortly thereafter), & I surely respect the motivation behind it.

Yes, as with The Beautiful Struggle, I vibe with about half of this album. The same problems persist, as noted above, but this one only has 1 stone classic rather than 3. Nevertheless, I'd say the 2 are about equal in my esteem, & this one is shorter! So I will revise my original statement: this was the best it would get for a while. You're welcome, Harli.

The Optical Files #72: Jimi Hendrix - The Ultimate Experience (Compilation) (1992)

This album is of major importance to me because it was the 1st CD I bought for myself, at the record store in the Ocean City MD outlet mall the summer before I turned 11. I don't remember how I discovered his music initially, but I know Hendrix was the 1st musician I became a fan of independent of my parents or sisters. He was my gateway to psychedelic rock that wasn’t The Beatles; to heavier rock forms through his influence on metal guitar playing; to blues, both acoustic and electric; to funk thanks to his Band of Gypsys work. He was also my introduction to the limitations of greatest hits collections & the joy of deep discography dives. But on an extramusical level, Hendrix was my initiation into fandom in general. I did not owe my love of his music to a family member or mentor. He was my discovery, & my first taste of all the feelings that come with that: the pride; the defensiveness when someone slighted him; the sense of somehow being a stakeholder in his legacy; the communal thrill of meeting another fan in the wild; or more often, the solitude of private appreciation. It all started with this CD.

But on this listen, I was keyed into Mitch. I've been playing lots of drums lately, & I don't think I ever realized before just how deeply Mitch Mitchell influenced my own playing. He was a unique drummer, hard-rocking but just as influenced by jazz, powerful but nimble. From listening to this CD over & over & over & over again at a formative age, some of his fills--especially from songs like "Fire" & "Wait Until Tomorrow"--are burned into my brain, & it's hard not to plagiarize them when I'm improvising on the drums. That's why, as much as I like "The Wind Cries Mary," I think Chas Chandler messed up by drowning Mitch's drums in reverb & obscuring his tasty fills. You can hear him so well elsewhere, it comes as kind of a shock.

(As long as I'm critiquing 55-year old production, I'll add that I've never liked "Crosstown Traffic," despite how big a hit it was for Jimi. The whole thing is built on a lackluster lyrical metaphor & the mix is washed-out & noisy, too many studio tricks playing with stereo & flanging.)

As a compilation...well, it's okay. The track order doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, like how they cram almost all the ballads together near the beginning & we don't get another one until "Little Wing" 3 tracks from the end. It seems to be motivated neither by mood nor chronology. The inclusion of the rather slight B-side "Highway Chile" is a headscratcher too--whoever curated this collection must have had a soft spot for it. Thankfully, the compilation does give us some splendid examples of Jimi's (righthanded!) bass playing like "All Along the Watchtower" & "Gypsy Eyes." Basically any time you're listening to a Hendrix song & you notice that the bass sounds awesome, that's a pretty good indication that Noel Redding is not playing. (In case you haven't noticed, I love talking shit about Noel Redding.)

But of course none of that mattered to me back then. What mattered was Jimi, the way his vocals & his guitar seemed like 2 different entities--an axe with a mind of its own & a brainblasted poet reporting scuzzoid news from the 6th dimension. What mattered was the songs, man, & as much as I can gripe about greatest hits collections these days, this one introduced me to some excellent tunes. Since I have all the albums, I don't pull this out very often anymore, but dammit it was there for me when I needed it, so it earns a place of pride in my collection.

The Optical Files #71: KRS-One - The Mix Tape / Prophets vs. Profits (2002)

Like The Kristyle, this album exists in 2 versions: the retail version released by Koch & the CD-R street version under the title Prophets vs. Profits, which I bought from Kris directly. The two versions are different, but both are very slight releases, clocking in at 25 & 34 minutes respectively, & can more accurately be thought of as EPs (but despite the title, not a mixtape, at least by what that term meant in 2002). I've always suspected 2 things about this release: (1) that it really only existed to give a home to the Nelly diss "Ova Here," & (2) that the Nelly diss wasn't actually serious. At the time, pretty much everybody agreed Nelly vs. KRS was the most baffling beef since Common vs. Ice Cube. I've heard Kris say in interviews things along the lines of "I used to battle seriously, nowadays I just play with it." Kris knew he had absolutely no control over the commercial juggernaut of Nellyville, so when he mentions the release date in the song ("don't buy Nelly's album on June 25th") it feels more like free advertising for Nelly than calling for a boycott. (Kris even admits the non-overlap of fanbases on the followup diss, "He Don't Really Want It," that appears on Prophets vs. Profits: "it don't take me to say don't buy your album, street cats ain't buying it anyway.")

Kris framed the beef, though, as a broadside against the watered-down corporatization of hiphop, which is one of his battle cries. I've noted before that Kris's commentary seems to switch between 2 modes: literate pro-Black sociopolitical invective (this includes his more preachy religious material) & complaining about the commercialization of the industry & wack rappers who allow themselves to be exploited. This release is pretty much entirely preoccupied with the latter at the expense of the former. Despite the noble intentions of the crusade against "hip-pop" that doesn't respect the roots, I find myself becoming less interested in it as I get older. I mean, let's be real: mainstream gonna mainstream.

"Ova Here" leads the pack in terms of production, with the Beatminerz cooking up a stomping march on a big brassy orchestral chop. ("He Don't Really Want It," while overall a more savage diss, uses a much inferior synthy beat by Jim Bean.) Kris's frequent collaborators Inebriated Beats contribute a handful of other tracks in the same style--big drums & moody orchestra--but conspicuously absent are any beats by the Blastmaster himself. The only track he produces is the Mad Lion feature "Stop It," which ended up on the street version of The Kristyle & was a highlight there as well as here.

Even on a release so slight, Kris still manages to get some verbal haymakers in. On "Splash" he declares "You don't know me son/My facial features matches the Sphinx with its nose redone," in oblique reference to Nelly's comments making fun of his nose. "My People," which only appears on Prophets vs. Profits, has some excellent wordplay as well, although it always feels a little weird to hear Kris rap about shooting people. (At least since "9mm Goes Bang" anyway.) You can't really ask for much from a 25-ish-minute album that is expressly meant as a stopgap ("Something to hold you over," Kris says repeatedly). But a few bangers plus a few thinkers plus no real duds makes for a perfectly pleasant listen--even though I probably won't pull it back out for another several years.

Bressonian Quote #29 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Flatten my images (as if ironing them), without attenuating them" 

- Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

The Optical Files #70: Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)

When I was an adolescent, this was my favorite Bob Dylan album. I think my tastes were even grimmer back then than they are today because this is the bleakest Bob Dylan album...well, ever. After the empowering but still foreboding opening title track, there is only a single ray of sunlight, in the form of the uplifting "When the Ship Comes In." The other 8 songs are full of war ("With God On Our Side"), economic devastation ("Ballad of Hollis Brown," "North Country Blues"), racial violence ("Only A Pawn In Their Game," "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"), & permanent goodbyes ("One Too Many Mornings," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Restless Farewell"). Depending on how I'm feeling, the darkness of this album is almost suffocating--& whether in spite of that fact or because of it, it's still my favorite of his early acoustic period.

It's also the album that begins his transition from the strident topical songwriting of his first 2 to the more artistically free music he'd start making with the next one. Dylan is still somewhat in his imitative stage here, as this album owes a great debt to Woody Guthrie--from the oblique-angle adaptations of traditional refrains to the aw-shucks demeanor concealing his polemical intentions to the gently massaged Marxism (in a nation of such abundance, there's no reason people's literal lives should depend as much on economic factors as the protagonists of "Ballad of Hollis Brown" & "North Country Blues"). The former song is a masterpiece of sonic storytelling: by simply picking a single minor chord the entire time (a trick he's reusing from "Masters of War" on the previous album), Dylan creates a droning, insistent musical backdrop. It doesn't change when you think it should--kinda like Hollis's life--which gets creepier the longer it goes on. The latter half of the song throws a series of close-up images at the listener, like a sequence of monochrome crime scene photos: a patch of blackened grass, a handful of shotgun shells, a shotgun that moves from the wall to a farmer's hands. On top of those details & devastating imagery ("your wife's screams are stabbing you like the dirty driving rain"), Dylan shifts the mode of address from the 1st person ("his cabin broken down") to the 2nd person ("your children are so hungry that they don't know how to smile"). The shift makes an already confrontational song even more so--Dylan puts the listener in Hollis's shoes, left with the implicit question of how it all came to this.

Another song that feels visual to me is "One Too Many Mornings," which Dylan sings in a near-whisper while doing some elegant (if simple) fingerpicking. He paints a delicately-observed picture of the narrator leaving a room, & noticing the details both inside & outside. Nothing is overtly stated, but you somehow know that the lovers referenced in the song will not be lovers much longer. Another shift in the mode of address occurs here, but it is more ambiguous as to whether "my love" in the 2nd verse is the same person addressed as "you" in the 3rd, but I feel like it is. "One Too Many Mornings" says more in 120 words than most breakup songs can say in 5 times that.

"Only a Pawn In Their Game" commemorates the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, & points out the ways the racist establishment turns poor white people against black people, but rather than using that to excuse or ameliorate the crimes of racial terrorists like Evers' assassin, in Dylan's view it adds to their degradation. He points out that Medgar will be remembered as a king, but his murderer will never be anything more than a pawn.

Even this album's production is thinner than before or after: there are no full band breaks like "Corrina, Corrina" on the previous album or piano like "Black Crow Blues" on the following one. We are stuck with Dylan's trebly guitar, thin reedy voice & piercing harmonica (& there's even less of that than we've been used to). All of this adds up to a record that I can't just listen to at any time--maybe when I was younger I could, but I've seen too much of the world now to take this stuff lightly. I have to be in the mood to hear this, but when I am, there are few albums, from Dylan or anybody else, that hit quite this hard.

The Optical Files #69: Public Enemy - Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black (1991)

Following up the brilliant Fear of a Black Planet would have been difficult even under the best of circumstances. As I wrote in that piece, the album represented a moment that would never be duplicated. The group was coming off a relentless 1990 tour cycle. On top of that, the Bomb Squad had to deal with the loss of a hard drive filled with partially completed beats (producers everywhere know that pain), & had to rush to recreate them in order to meet an album deadline. The result was a record that, while there's nothing wrong with it, is the weakest of their first 4 & showcases a group that's running out of steam.

Although the Bomb Squad's signature thick textures are still in evidence, their data management misadventures resulted in a more streamlined overall sound for this album. Sometimes this works, like in 2 of the singles: the downtempo, loping bluesy stride of "By the Time I Get to Arizona" & the urgent stomp of "Shut Em Down." A lot of the time, though, the beats sound overly familiar & too similar to each other. Perhaps as a result of the more sparse production, Chuck uses more pocket flows here, particularly on the singles. He still plays games with the flow, but you'll find his rhyming words on 2 & 4 more often than in the previous albums.

True to form for a P.E. album, of course, the subject matter here is 100% on point. The singles I mentioned in the last paragraph both have powerful messages: "urinat[ing] on the state" of Arizona for refusing to acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. Day, & rejecting large corporations like Nike for relying on Black dollars without giving back to those communities. Of course Flav had to come out of pocket in "A Letter to the New York Post," making a bizarre random reference to James Cagney just so he could rhyme it with a made-up homophobic slur ("fagney")--but the general point of the song is well-taken. Fuck the New York Post.

Chuck, Flav & the Bomb Squad are not exactly foundering here, but much of this album could accurately be described as treading water. With the West Coast sound beginning to overtake noisy NY production to dominate the popular ear, for the first time Public Enemy was sounding a bit behind the curve. Once that happens, it's a hard thing to come back from--at least not right away.

The Northman - Featured Film of Interest

Like so many, I'm intrigued by Robert Eggers' young career and curiously anxious to see what comes next.  I'm not even sure how much I like his films, or if I'm just utterly fascinated by them (I mean this as a compliment).  He is highly original, skilled, and visionary as a filmmaker, unusually restrained 

and refined for early career, and utterly confident in fulfilling his independent aspirations for each film. The Lighthouse is an exceptional piece of work, and unapologetically arthouse in form and function. His films push art cinema onto the mainstream screens.  I'm not quite sure how he has gotten away with it, but I'm glad he has.  Up to this point, with a little help from A24, he has been very good for independent cinema at large.  

The Northman is no doubt a step toward larger budgets, hence higher commercial expectations from all the wrong people, and no more sweet indie home with A24 (this one is Focus Features Films). 

This makes the film particularly interesting and relevant in the context of his filmography.  So far it has garnered mixed and extreme responses from critics and audiences alike, which just adds to the mystique and lure for me.  

Below the trailer is a link to an engaging and smart critical review with a perspective that I appreciate. I have seen The Northman but am intentionally withholding my response until a second screening - well, because I honestly don't know what I think yet, other than visually spectacular.

Link:  Variety - Is ‘The Northman’ a Failed Art Film, or Is It Robert Eggers’ Stolidly Successful Blockbuster Audition?

The Optical Files #68: Ice Cube - Death Certificate (1991)

A few days before this album popped up on my list thanks to the random number generator, a Los Angeles rap icon released a new album that tackles intense subject matter & doesn't always paint the emcee in a flattering light. Lots of conversation followed around the responsible use of the emcee's platform & whether he was using his well-known status as a conscious rapper to make provocative statements without offering enough solutions.

Of course the album I'm talking about is Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar, but that whole paragraph could apply to the furor that swirled around Death Certificate when it first dropped, & relistening to it today allowed me to unpack some of my feelings about the new K.Dot, as well as how my perspective on edginess changes as I get older as a hiphop fan.

When my students share rap music with me, I encourage a lot of discussion of content. I usually leave all the violence out of the conversation, & focus instead on how the authorial lens treats marginalized groups--in the popular rap of today, that usually means women, LGBTQ+ folx, & sometimes people with disabilities. I've had students ask various versions of "this song talks about killing people, why are you so caught up on the word 'bitch?'" My answer is that, in my experience, very very few listeners come away from, let's say, a Comethazine album with the message that it's cool or desirable to gangbang & murder. But a lot of young male listeners come away from such an album with the message that it's cool to mistreat women. 

When you're an adolescent, there's a subversive thrill you get from hearing taboo content from a provocative voice, & relish in the idea of self-appointed moral guardians taking offense, no matter the context. But as an adult, you realize that not all edginess is created equal. So when Ice Cube raps about violent revenge fantasies against LAPD chief Daryl Gates in "The Wrong N***a to Fuck Wit," white men who sexually harass Black women in "Horny Lil' Devil," or Uncle Sam himself in "I Wanna Kill Sam," it hits a lot different than the repeated homophobic slurs in "Horny Lil' Devil" & "No Vaseline," or the xenophobia in "Horny Lil' Devil" & "Black Korea." ("Horny Lil' Devil" has a little bit of everything, doesn't it?)

Kendrick Lamar in 2022 & Ice Cube in 1991 both used the same tactic: dividing their albums into 2 clearly delineated halves. A major difference is that Cube made the meanings of the 2 halves explicit: he says it both on record & in the liner notes: "The death side, a mirrored image of where we are today [...] The life side, a vision of where we need to go." It's very clear that Cube is pointing out problems in the 1st half of the album & offering solutions in the 2nd half. Some topics are in direct conversation, like the gang truces of "Color Blind" as counterpoint to the set warfare of "My Summer Vacation;" the maturing out of childish shenanigans in "Doing Dumb Shit" opposed to the picaresque "Steady Mobbin';" or the extreme, deracialized sexualization of a teenage girl in "Givin' Up the Nappy Dugout" answered in (yet again!) "Horny Lil' Devil," which for all its crudeness, feels genuinely respectful of the Black women whose dignity it seeks to defend.

To me, the most powerful tracks on the album come near the end of the "death side." In "A Bird in the Hand"--over a sample-heavy Boogie Men beat that sounds more like the chaotic Bomb Squad production of AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted than the leaner, funkier offerings found on this album--Cube uses a surgical triplet flow to carefully & precisely unfold an explanation of the socioeconomic factors that lead so many underemployed, given-up-on young Black men to try their hands at the dope game. "Blacks are too fucking broke to be Republican," he declares, before ending the song on a double-double-entendre claiming that a kilo of coke will solve more problems than the current president: "A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush."

Soon after that triumph we get "Alive on Arrival," where Cube narrates from the perspective of an innocent bystander in a drive-by who dies in the hospital from neglect & indifference. It's obvious that the cops care more about interrogating him than saving his life, & the institutional problems (he cites the unavailability of "an overworked physician") & well-chosen details of humdrum waiting room existence ("I done watched 2 episodes of M*A*S*H") paint a vivid & disturbing portrait of the kind of thing that happens far too often & is written about far too seldom. Of course, the last stroke of genius is ending the "death side" & starting the "life side" in the same place. From death to birth, from dystopia to careful optimism, the symbolic hospital is the album's fulcrum.

Death Certificate is one of the most ambitious & artistically successful full-fledged concept albums in hiphop history. If you put this album on for something in the background while you do other stuff, you'll find yourself sitting down & forgetting the other stuff because you're getting drawn inexorably into Cube's world. The vocals are so powerful & the concepts are so vividly compelling that it's impossible not to listen. In the context of Kendrick's latest opus, it needs to be acknowledged that not every rapper has the luxury of being able to embody characters, to say provocative things on record without necessarily having it interpreted as literal or an endorsement. Cube & Kenny were both very aware of that luxury, & were happy to use it to make artistically layered statements. What would the world look like if we gave every rapper that benefit of the doubt?

The Optical Files #67: Cold Crush Brothers - All The Way Live in '82 (1994)

The Treacherous Three & Furious Five all have fairly extensive recorded catalogs, but the Cold Crush, just as influential an early hiphop crew as the others, barely managed to record 5 singles, & never made a studio album. As a result, there's a certain mystique around them among those who weren't lucky enough to experience them in person, buoyed by much-circulated bootleg tapes like their 1981 battle with the Fantastic 5. In 1994, Tuff City brought out this compilation, which claimed to finally reveal a document of their legendary live show to the masses.

As it turns out, the experience of this low-budget affair isn't much different than listening to one of those bootlegs. The sound is ragged all the way around--tracks 4 through 6 (here labeled as "Freestylin'," "Are You Ready" & "Yvette (and More)" are obviously from a better quality source than the first 3. The balance of all 4 microphones lets you hear their carefully practiced vocal routines & harmonized voices, whereas the 1st half of the disc features hypeman-type vocals that threaten to drown out whatever the main emcee is spitting. I wish the recordings on this CD were better labeled as to exactly when & where they were captured (I'm sure some old school rap supernerd would be able to source them), but I suspect that the latter half was recorded well after 1982, the disc's title notwithstanding.

That's okay, because the 1st half is more interesting, despite the degraded quality complete with tape breaks (I assume that's why the tracks randomly fade out & fade back in later in the same routine). I believe this half is authentically from 1982, & Caz mentions that they are performing in Connecticut for the 1st time--in a roller rink! I'm reminded of how important setting the mood & hyping the DJ was back then, as the 1st 3 minutes feature no rapping whatsoever, just introductions of all 6 members (Caz, Almighty KG, Easy AD, JDL, Tony Tone & Charlie Chase), plus some DJ cuts. Once the rapping starts, the 1st routine is a 10-minute long, unstructured riff over Taana Gardner's "Heartbeat" break. After some talking, Charlie Chase drops the same beat & they go off again.

This thing is as raw as it gets--I love hearing the needle jump off the record because they're getting too hype, & hearing the emcee recover in real time. I love hearing the stage banter, including all the old-school crowd participation standbys from "throw your hands in the air" to "somebody say ho" to asking which NYC boroughs are in the house. As a record-listening experience, the unstructured feel plus the rough recording can make it become a little monotonous, but it's a fascinating listen nonetheless: these guys were on the cutting edge of something, & probably didn't even know what that something was yet. It's so pure & unforced, & for giving us a window into the past--into some sweaty roller skating rink in early '80s Connecticut where nobody knew how major a historical moment they were participating in--I'm grateful for whoever had the foresight to bring a tape recorder.

Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy - Images of Intrigue

 

Links:  

NPR - This is the First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of the Milky Way

BBC - Black Hole:  First Picture of Milky Way Monster

Nature.com - Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

The Washington Post - Supermassive Black Hole...

The Optical Files #66: KRS-One - KRS-One (1995)

Your guess is as good as mine as to why Kris decided to start releasing records under his own name instead of Boogie Down Productions. The style & sound were the same, the personnel were the same, & the albums still bore the credit "Overseen by Scott La Rock." But there's no denying that on this album & its predecessor, KRS sounds reinvigorated (although I'm a big fan of Sex and Violence), both verbally & musically, & this album is a blast of confidence without a weak track to be found.

There is a great balance between conceptual, message-oriented tracks & classic braggadocio on this album. Of the ego-trip joints, the clear winner is "MC's Act Like They Don't Know," which is one of my candidates for best rap song ever made. The beat is classic DJ Premier, built atop a dramatic Clifford Brown sample with bouncing bass & jazzy chords, plus that bell! Meanwhile Kris is relentless with his booming voice, experimenting with choppy flows but somehow always staying in the pocket. Damn near every bar is a quotable. The same can be said for the opener "Rappaz R. N. Dainja," another Preemo production, & "Wannabemceez" with its fiery Mad Lion feature. While Preemo puts in some serious work on this album, the production hero is Kris himself, who laces 6 of the album's 14 songs, & from the pulsing bass & eerie piano chords of the staggering "Ah-Yeah" to the compulsively head-noddy "Free Mumia" to the dramatic, moody synths of "Health, Wealth, Self," they're the best bunch of beats he's ever assembled.

The ego-trip songs are good, but it's on the conscious joints that KRS sounds better than ever: righteous, inflamed & full of purpose. On "Ah-Yeah," a song dedicated to the Black Panther Party, he unleashes an impressive litany of Black revolutionary figures he claims to embody the spirit of, depending on the necessity of the moment. Sometimes the pacifism of a Sojourner Truth is called for, he says, & sometimes the violence of a Nat Turner--sometimes the extremism of a Bobby Seale, & sometimes the mediation of a Kwame Ture. In "R.E.A.L.I.T.Y.," perhaps the most complex song on the album, Kris makes reference to the double consciousness of W.E.B. Dubois while unfolding a treatise on the exigency of hiphop in the gulf between what has been promised to Black America & what has been delivered--what he calls truth, meaning what's on paper, vs. reality, meaning lived experience. "The truth is that police must serve & protect/Reality is Black youth are shown no respect/The truth is government has a war against drugs/Reality is government is ruled by thugs." On "Free Mumia," Kris & Channel Live take down the self-appointed moral guardians of American culture who have attacked hiphop music; everybody from C. Delores Tucker (who gets off easy compared to the demo version of the track that has Channel Live describing a sexual encounter with her) to Tipper Gore & Rush Limbaugh. Then there's "Out for Fame," another rock-solid KRS production & ode to graffiti culture where Kris compares the commercialization of rap music to the (at that time) still-underground graf scene. "Now that rap music's making money for the corporate/It's acceptable to flaunt it, now everybody's on it/Graffiti isn't corporate so it gets no respect/Hasn't made a billion dollars for some corporation yet." I have to imagine in a post-Banksy world that Kris looks back on these bars with the rueful satisfaction of a Cassandra.

There are a few bars in here that aged poorly, like Kris on "De Automatic" suggesting that his opponents are soft by saying they "wear a pair of panties," or dismissing wack emcees who "should be wearing an apron scraping a pot with a name like Miriam" on "Build Ya Skillz." (The latter song also features Busta Rhymes throwing around the "batty boy" slur, but we all knew that about Busta.) Considering Kris's repeated references to "the goddess" on this album & his insistence that his higher power is a Black woman, it's odd to hear him grab the low-hanging fruit of suggesting feminine = inferior. He's too good a lyricist to need that.

Despite a problematic or struggle bar here & there, this album is an embarrassment of riches for lovers of boom-bap & conscious lyrics. If I had to choose just 1, I'd say this is the best & most consistent album KRS ever made.

The Optical Files #65: The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

I will describe the background of this album the way my high school music teacher described it to me: one day in the late '60s, Paul McCartney got really high & said, "hey, let's get a bunch of strange people & circus performers & put them all in a bus & drive around the countryside & see what happens!" Well, nothing interesting happened, so the Beatles did what they did best: they wrote some new songs, shot musical sequences for them, cut those together with the bus tour footage, & called it a movie--which aired on the BBC at Christmastime in 1967 & which pretty much everybody hated. 

The music, on the other hand, pretty much everybody loved. When I acquired this CD as a middle schooler (I think I stole it from my parents?) I didn't know any of the background, or that the Beatles had only written 6 new songs for the movie. The other 5 tracks on the CD are unrelated non-album singles that were packaged with the soundtrack as an LP for the US market--a move the band disliked but were powerless over. I've always found the history of the Beatles record packaging to be baffling--were the labels convinced that tastes were so radically different between the UK & the US that every single release for the first 5 years of their recording career had to be shuffled around, reassembled, & sometimes retitled?

As a kid, I thought this CD worked just fine as a single album, but I did always think there was something strange about it. The fact that it flows so well despite its cobbled-together nature speaks to the consistent core elements of this period of the Beatles: studio experimentation, ambitious instrumental arrangements, the obvious influence of psychedelic drugs. From the brass on the opening title track to the flutes & recorders on "The Fool on the Hill" to the trippy vocal effects of "Blue Jay Way" to the extreme studio tinkering & found sound samples of "I Am the Walrus," the soundtrack half is a superbly crafted ride. The instrumental "Flying" is one of the funkiest things the Beatles ever recorded, & "I Am the Walrus" & "Blue Jay Way" still sound cutting-edge 55 years later, which is kind of astonishing given how thoroughly imitated they've been.

Despite some of the dumbest lyrics in all Beatledom, "Hello Goodbye" is still a nostalgic song for me. What hit me this time about "Strawberry Fields Forever" was the huge layered drum overdubs, as if there are 12 different Ringos banging away jazzily, plus the way Paul's Mellotron dominates the mix in the beginning. Speak of Paul dominating, I wouldn't be surprised if "Baby You're A Rich Man" was written expressly to be a bass showcase. The orchestration craze continues with "Penny Lane"'s extravagantly arranged horns & piccolo trumpet solo by David Mason. These are all amazing singles but their inclusion here makes the CD feel weirdly backloaded.

The soundtrack portion of this CD is great but lightweight, & the singles tacked onto the end are better heard in other configurations, all of which makes this the least essential Beatles release of this period, minus Yellow Submarine. But as I always say, mediocre Beatles is better than a lot of bands' best work, & if I were stuck on a desert island with this CD I could do a hell of a lot worse.

The Optical Files #64: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland (1968)

 

It's tough to say which of the 3 Jimi Hendrix Experience albums is my favorite, but Electric Ladyland was definitely the most important to me as a youngster. Here Jimi continues his close collaboration with engineer Eddie Kramer, maximizing the use of the studio as an instrument with lavish amounts of overdubbing & effects. (Stereo flanging, innovated by Kramer for the previous Hendrix album, is all over this record, to the point where it becomes kind of annoying in songs like the title track & "Crosstown Traffic.") But more importantly (in my view) than the studio wizardry, Hendrix was becoming comfortable with more expansive types of songwriting, & this record boasts several of the best songs he ever penned.

"The Burning of the Midnight Lamp" was my 1st favorite Hendrix song, & on this listen I think I finally figured it out. There are lots of things to love about this song--the mysterious, vaguely Middle Eastern main riff, the multi-tracked guitars that are such a Hendrix trademark, the wah pedal (1st time he ever used it), the harpsichord for crying out loud--but I think what really makes this song work are the wordless backing vocals by the Sweet Inspirations. They lend a grand, almost cinematic quality to the psychedelic freakout, & they beg the question: if the song is all about loneliness, then who (or what?) is making all these sounds of other people? The mystical atmospherics of the song are what draw you in & make you slap that repeat button.

Speaking of psychedelic freakouts, it took me a long time to appreciate the 14.5-minute blues jam that is "Voodoo Chile." It used to be a skip for me, but the sheer quality of guitar playing on display & the superb organ of Steve Winwood create a powerful statement, buoyed by the room noise that open & close the track & underlie it as well--the picture of being in a crowded smoky club & having Hendrix come onstage & just annihilate the place is painted clearly.

The centerpiece of this album, & the reason I loved it so much as a science fiction-obsessed teenager, is the aquatic post-apocalyptic prog epic "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)." Hendrix's love for science fiction showed up in a lot of his work, but this is the only time he told a full SF story through song: the surface of a future Earth is devastated by war machines & on the point of becoming uninhabitable. A small group of scientists have created a device to transform their bodies into half-fish creatures that can survive in the sea. They say goodbye to the surface & descend into the seemingly endless depths to find a hidden undersea world that welcomes them as brethren. With grandiose riffs, soaring melodies, marching drums that turn into hard bop jazz cyclones & guitars simulating whalesong, the 14-minute suite is by turns rocking & soothing, bookended by the jazz fusion workouts of "Rainy Day, Dream Away" & "Still Raining, Still Dreaming." I've always hated the "it was all a dream" gimmick in storytelling, but this one is handled so elegantly I can't help but smile every time.  

It wasn't planned, but is nicely coincidental that I listened to Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding right before this, being the source of the well-known "All Along the Watchtower" cover that appears on this album. The best testament to Jimi's genius is the fact that ever since, Dylan has played the song live in Hendrix's style. But part of the reason the cover works so well is that the song lives inside Jimi's mystical poetic wheelhouse, & both parties are necessary for such a potent combination.

I hate to harp on about it, but Noel Redding was never the right bassist for Hendrix & he knew it, considering how Jimi took over bass duties himself on some of the album's best songs, including "1983" & "All Along the Watchtower." As I noted a few albums ago, Jimi would soon lose Redding for the much better-suited Billy Cox, but unfortunately he died before that band could record anything truly worthy of the musicians' talents.

The Optical Files #63: Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding (1967)

 

Still recovering from a serious motorcycle accident, taking what would prove to be an 8-year break from touring, & working out lots of songs with the group that became known as The Band, when Dylan returned to the studio in 1967 it was with a very different outlook. The album that resulted from these sessions was an earthy antidote to the art-rock excesses of Blonde on Blonde, both musically & lyrically. The music on John Wesley Harding is sparse to the point of minimalism, & the strange verbal strategy plus the consistent sound add up to an album that's hypnotically soothing & almost tantric in its contemplation.

9 of the album's 12 songs are played by a trio: Dylan on guitar & harmonica, Charlie McCoy on bass & Kenny Buttrey on drums. I've always loved Buttrey's drums on this album: dryly produced, insistent, but full of subtle touches like his shift into a funk/soul pattern in the back half of the title track. McCoy is also a star here: with such a minimalist arrangement, the bass has plenty of room to shine, & his active playing livens up songs like the Irish folk-inspired "As I Went Out One Morning," which is almost a showcase for him. An album this rustic has no business being this funky too, but the rhythm section makes it so.

The guitar/bass/drums/harmonica setup is so consistent that when another instrument does pop up--like the piano in "Dear Landlord" & "Down Along the Cove," or the steel guitar in the latter song & "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"--it's striking, as if the whole album has taken a big turn just by adding 1 instrument. "Dear Landlord" is probably the most interesting composition here, with more playful bass runs by McCoy & Buttrey laying down a heavily swinging blues shuffle. Bob plays swanky chords on the piano & sings it with more soul than we'd really heard from him up to this point. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" also plays with genre, unfolding as a pure country 2-step ballad with the twangy pedal steel to prove it. It simultaneously points toward the next album Nashville Skyline whilst being more country than anything thereupon.

Dylan's lyrical strategy has undergone an evolution too since the 3-album run that preceded this. No longer is he using extravagant language to obscure meaning--he's now using simple language to tell riddles. There is a mystical quality to the songs here in their simplicity & their oblique religious references. The lyrics feel more like zen koans than songs--for the first time, it seems Dylan doesn't want you to decode his lyrics, he just wants you to let the sounds & associations seep into your brain. 

If you noticed I've used a lot of words in this writeup like tantric, mystical, religious, & zen, that's because in some opaque way, John Wesley Harding is a deeply spiritual album. It's not explicit in any given song, but the congregate impression is of more searching & grasping for faith than any of his explicitly Christian albums from subsequent decades. 

"My trip hasn't been a pleasant one, & my time it isn't long/& I still do not know what it was that I've done wrong."

Relevant Film Quote: Hank - Swiss Army Man

"Well, you can't just say everything that comes into your head.  That's bad talking."

- Hank (played by Paul Dano), Swiss Army Man

The Optical Files #62: Jimi Hendrix - First Rays of the New Rising Sun (Compilation) (1997)

In the late 1990s, Jimi Hendrix's family managed to win a court battle over the rights to his music, so they set out to make themselves some money by publishing some CDs. The problem was, the vaults had been plundered so thoroughly in the 1970s that there wasn't anything unreleased left. But you can't blame the family for wanting to get their cut, so the first thing they did was compile a bunch of tracks that had previously been issued on the first 3 posthumous Hendrix albums (Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, & War Heroes) onto a CD that claims to be a reconstruction of Jimi's vision for his next album, a double disc to be called First Rays of the New Rising Sun. This is a bit of a dodge, of course, because even the liner notes freely admit that nobody could possibly know which songs Jimi would have selected for the album, as there were only 6 recordings he considered near completion at the time he died.

Jimi Hendrix was a perfectionist who worked very slowly, & earmarked certain tunes for repeated tinkering, retakes & overdubs. Because most of them lack a final mix, the songs here have a bit of a ramshackle feeling that reveals their cobbled-together nature. Some of the grungier songs benefit from not having that last layer of polish, like "In From the Storm" with its stomping, proto-metal main riff, or the epic prog progression of "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)." For others, like the heavily Motown-influenced "Earth Blues" (featuring backing vocals by the Ronettes!) or the delicate, glassy "Night Bird Flying," you can't help but wonder what Jimi would have done to push them over the edge if he had lived. The latter especially; with its harmonized guitar leads, tasteful percussion & nimble meter changes, "Night Bird Flying" sounds closer to an Experience song than anything here, but somehow bests them all with its carefully constructed harmonies. On the other hand we get the harmonica-heavy Bob Dylan pastiche "My Friend," which sounds totally unlike anything else Hendrix ever did--it's a curious dead-end for Jimi & it would be weird to hear a whole album of tunes like this.

If there is an element that makes the songs on this compilation better than his work with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, it's Jimi's style expansion to more fully encompass Black music, especially funk & R&B. This advantage can be embodied in a person: Jimi's longtime friend & bassist Billy Cox. Cox is a vastly better bass player than Noel Redding, & his funky, bouncy attack & athletic fretboard runs are always entertaining & even cut through Jimi's most headspinning solos. Also, Jimi finally got a real rhythm section between Cox & the reliable, inventive Mitch Mitchell. Mitch & Jimi's relationship in the Experience was certainly unique, but it didn't allow Jimi the freedom to soar the way the new configuration did. Just listen to the interplay between Mitch's careful swing & Cox's nasty bass distortion on "Dolly Dagger."

There are some weak spots on this album for sure. "Astro-Man" has a great vocal delivery but is hampered by a totally unnecessary homophobic slur in the chorus. Even by the time I got this album in the late '90s, I was very familiar with "Angel" from the "Ultimate Experience" compilation, but the mix included here is subpar--the vocals are too up front & the drum overdubs sound weak & unfinished. But lest this start sounding like a negative writeup: there's no doubt that Jimi & co.'s usual brilliance is all over this record. There's not a bad song on it, but that doesn't mean it really hangs together overall. First Rays of the New Rising Sun is a compilation that really wants to be an album, but it's a pretty unnecessary one for those who have the original 3 posthumous records.

The Optical Files #61: Mos Def - The New Danger (2004)

The early 2000s was a time of elite, respected emcees turning into crooners & alienating their hardcore rap fanbases. Within the space of a few years, CeeLo Green of Goodie Mob & Andre 3000 of Outkast both released solo albums where they did more singing than rapping. So when Mos Def's highly anticipated sophomore album dropped after a 5-year wait & he spent the opening track warbling like Thom Yorke over tinkly piano & brushed drums, it's easy to see why a lot of rap heads felt abandoned. It turns out that was an unfair characterization: there is rapping on almost every song, & at least half the tracks are full-on rap songs (in particular "Sunshine," "Close Edge," "Grown Man Business," "Life is Real" & "Champion Requiem" would fit nicely on any other Yasiin album). But the damage was done--the problem isn't the lack of rapping so much as the deemphasis of rapping. Yasiin is a very verbal person but here he wanted to make an album that spoke through sounds, & for every conventional "rap beat" there's an unexpected detour that takes us down a musical back alley. In the process, he takes us on a journey through his own deep love for all types of Black music, putting jazz & blues & rock & soul in a blender with hiphop & ending up with a unique indulgence that's never truly been repeated.

Before we go any further, I need to acknowledge my bias because Yasiin Bey is my personal GOAT. When he is really spitting, there's no other emcee's words that can affect me in quite the way his can. But there seems to be a deliberate change in lyrical style here: less poetry, more mantras, as if he's casting chanting spells, communicating with the universe rather than the listener. Songs like "Ghetto Rock" & "Sex, Love & Money" are rap songs that don't act like rap songs, with dub-style reverbed bass, pleading guitars, shakers & horn stabs switching up the flow. If the hardcore riffing in "Zimzallabim" & "War" seem to owe a debt to Bad Brains, that's because Brains guitarist Dr. Know also plays in Mos's band Black Jack Johnson, here going by his government name Gary Miller & contributing to a handful of tracks on this album. Rap, singing & spoken word all vie for prominence on "Modern Marvel," a 9-minute 3-part suite sampling & contemplating the place of Marvin Gaye in today's world. Like a lot of this album, the self-conscious artiness makes it sonically interesting but emotionally removed.

Of the straightforward rap songs, "Sunshine" is a highlight, a Kanye West beat sampling Hair that sounds like Black Album era Jay-Z, which Mos leans into by using a Jay-Z type flow. It's also the source of the chorus phrase for my friend Marcel P Black's "Principles & Standards," so we have that to thank this album for if nothing else. Another Jay-Z connection is found in the "Takeover" reconfiguration here titled "The Rape Over." I appreciate the message--commercialized rap music, sold out to corporate & government interests, pushes messages that encourage consumerism & support of American neoimperialism--but at the very end I get caught up by the regrettable line "quasi-homosexuals is running this rap shit." No way around it, Yasiin was wrong for that.

"Life is Real" feels like the closest thing to Black on Both Sides that exists on this album; it captures the same kaleidoscopic, fiercely intelligent verbality while offering a fine statement of purpose: "Reach the world but touch the street first." Call me uncultured, but I'll take more songs like these over self-indulgent stuff like "The Panties" & "The Easy Spell" (even though the latter features Mos on every instrument, banging out some Mars Volta-style experimental rock with hollow, insistent drums & mega-distorted bass & keys).

That's really where I come to in the end: what keeps me from fully engaging with this album is not the weirdness, it's the fact that the album seems to want to keep me at arm's length. Every once in a while the confluence of words & music hit me the way Yasiin's other work does, but those moments are outnumbered by moments of coldness. The result is a confusing but utterly compelling 75-minute experience, that unfortunately feels more alienating than not. But exploring another one of his many angles on Blackness & stereotype threat, I'm sure Yasiin didn't care what I, or any other white person, or indeed any other person, thought of it. He made art, & then while everybody was trying to decide if it was good or not, he made more art.