I have a lot of history with this CD. When I met KRS at a lecture/book signing in 2004 (back when I cared about autographs), this was the album I brought for him to sign. After scrawling his graffiti tag with a flourish over his photo on the inside flap, Kris put highlighting brackets around the portion of the liner notes that read: "A special thanks to George Bush for fuckin' up the nation and continuing the conspiracy to destroy the African. Thanks!" We shared a rueful smirk at the fact that, almost a decade & a half later, another George Bush was continuing that work in the nation's highest office.
A glance at the liner notes is useful here for more than just my nostalgia or finding historical parallels. Kris was mad this time around. You can tell in the way he repeatedly points out the hypocrisy he sees around him--conscious rap was having a moment around 1990 (largely thanks to Public Enemy's runaway success) & like any other trend, this brought a lot of insincere bandwagon jumpers. Kris doesn't mince words in decrying the "frauds of revolution" who "call themselves the teachers and in another breath they're gangster pop star pimps acting the way the government wants black people to act." So much of the indignation that fuels KRS-One's music has come from watching a culture he deeply loves--a culture he helped give birth to--be repeatedly coopted, watered-down, disrespected, misrepresented & exploited for literal decades. It's easy for me to say, "hey, mainstream gonna mainstream," but I'm not as deeply invested in the culture as KRS-One. (Getting there, but not quite.) Kris was beginning his speaking engagements around this time & the album features several interludes taken from them. The interludes (one of which is by Kwame Ture, not KRS) mostly discuss white America's perceptions of hiphop & of Black people in general. "Exhibit E," in which Kris critiques the Emancipation Proclamation, was always my favorite. He points out that Lincoln didn't realize that "the African is not a slave [...] What Lincoln is ultimately saying is, 'Now you're born a slave, you'll always be a slave, & all I will ever see you as is a slave--& I'll free you.'" That blew my mind the first time I heard it at age 17 or so, having been brought up to think of Lincoln as one of the good ones.
Kris fully came into his own as the Teacha on this album, but I've always noticed a disconnect between songs where he's getting busy & showcasing rhyme skill ("Ya Know the Rules," "The Kenny Parker Show," "Original Lyrics" or the title track) & songs that exist merely to convey a message. "Beef" is a good example of the latter. It was the 1st time I'd ever heard a rapper speak on vegetarianism (beyond the no pork rule observed by Islam & NGE), & I always loved it as a topical song. But I noticed that, as opposed to his economy of well-chosen words when he's just rappity-rapping, in his message songs KRS often inserts words & phrases at the ends of lines that are only there to make it rhyme. "Fear & stress can become a part of you/In your cells & blood, this is true." Or "When the cow is killed, believe it/You preserve those cells, you freeze it." "This is true" & "believe it" are verbal fluff--it's possible to make your point & keep the rhyme going without inserting superfluous phrases. Kris figured that out, though, since this is the last album where he does it.
The production here is handled almost entirely by Kris himself. The only track he doesn't have a producer credit on is the classic "Love's Gonna Get'cha (Material Love)," which Pal Joey laces with a '60s-style bass groove, a drum-machine cowbell, & a Jocelyn Brown sample. The song is iconic with good reason: it's a chilling feat of storytelling as Kris explains the path that many ghetto youth take from innocents to criminals, complete with well-articulated details of poverty ("I've got 3 pairs of pants & with my brother I share [...] I've got beans, rice, & bread on my shelf"). It's always struck me that the story does a better job of illustrating how the deck is stacked against poor urban Black people in a way that makes desperate antisocial measures seem like the only way out (see the despondent refrain "tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do?), rather than the stated moral about not falling in love with material items.
Another storytelling joint I always loved is "100 Guns," with its synth bass & reggae piano & horn samples that create a deceptively cheerful beat for a story about gun smuggling that makes it clear the real villains are the corrupt cops. We've also got the rhythmically complex "Breath Control II," built on samples of a blues shuffle in 6/8 retrofitted to fit a 4/4 time signature.
One of the most compelling yet problematic songs here is album centerpiece "Ya Strugglin'." Over a bouncy D-Nice co-produced beat driven by jazzy piano stabs & a swanky sax chop, KRS criticizes Black people who change their appearance to try to look less Black. None of this is really any of my business--but I do know that the history of Black women's relationship with their hair is long, fraught & complex enough that a glib "you should just wear it natural" is reductive--but Kris spends most of the 1st verse promoting the myth that white supremacy seeks to "feminize" Black men. "Are there any straight singers in R&B?" he asks. This is implicitly homophobic (& GNC-erasing as well) while not really relevant to the topic at hand. Verse 2 & Kwame Ture's spoken interjections are great though.
Because of the iconic "Love's Gonna Get'cha," I can't really argue that this is the "lost" BDP classic that more people should hear. (We'll get to that one soon enough.) But I do think people who stop after Ghetto Music are doing themselves a major disservice. He hadn't quite mastered the integration of his teaching with his mic-murdering instincts yet, but there are so many gems to be unearthed here--except the unfocused dancehall workout "7 Deejays" that clocks in at over 9 minutes, every song is a heavy hitter. Damn, I had really good taste as a teenager!
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