Life was the last KRS-One CD I ever bought after purchasing every one since The Sneak Attack in 2001. At 14 tracks & 43 minutes, it feels like a back-to-basics album after the comparatively sprawling Keep Right. Alas, it also sort of feels like a placeholder album, existing just to keep up his pace of a release every year or 2. The subject matter is pretty standard for Kris: antimaterialism, the lifegiving spirituality of hiphop & its richness as a culture, the sad state of mainstream rap, plain old emcee ego tripping, & a few songs about the pitfalls of living the street life. I've written before about how Kris's lyrical topics seem to vacillate between indicting the larger society & focusing on hiphop specifically. On Life he does more of the latter, which isn't my preferred mode, but it doesn't mean there aren't some gems to be found.
The album highlight is "Mr. Percy," where KRS & guest Triune speak plainly about poverty over a bluesy distorted bass. The emcees discuss rising unemployment & homelessness rates, economic despair, inflation & wage stagnation. It's real & gutsy, like when Triune asks how he can have a Masters degree & still only make 30K a year. The song's themes resonate even more deeply 16 years later, though I don't know whether to attribute that to prescience or just how little anything changes under capitalism. "Mr. Percy" demonstrates the kind of street-level humility that KRS brings to his best work. On the other side of the coin, "I Am There" is completely missing that humility. Kris describes himself in almost deific terms as a quasi-mystical being, even making the outrageous claim that those who truly understand his words will never need a psychiatrist (!). That's some cult leader shit to be honest, & it's an example of the furthest reaches of Kris's arrogance & blind spots. (More on that to come when I'm finally done with KRS for this series.)
Back on the topic of this album being streamlined compared to its predecessor: Keep Right showcased a dozen or so beatmakers, but on Life all the production is credited to "The Resistance," whoever that is. Liner note perusal would suggest that it's a production team made up of Donald Baker & Dax Reynosa. The single producer gives the album a cohesive feel, & the slamming drums on opener "Bling Blung" let you know that this record will be no less gritty--& thankfully a bit less brickwalled--than any KRS album that went before. Samples, though, are in short supply. It sounds like there is some live instrumentation combined with some really good MIDI, but the only songs that sound like they're built around samples are the final 2, "Still Slippin'" & "My Life." There are a few ambitious misfires like the frantic, uptempo rock-guitar "Gimmie Da Gun," & Kris's affinity for awkward sung hooks rears its head on "The Way We Live" & a few others, but overall this is pretty good production by the standards of 2000s MIDI-era indie rap.
Thankfully the album closes on a high note: the aforementioned "My Life." It's not new territory for Kris--he told autobiographical stories in "Hiphop Knowledge" from The Sneak Attack & "True Story" on The Kristyle--but I love hearing the details of those heady early days in the Bronx over a soulful sample-based beat that sounds like classic Kris. This is how you self-mythologize, man, not by claiming you can cure people of their mental illness.
So with this album we leave the era of front-to-back bangers & enter the era of KRS-One records that have a handful of dope songs to recommend them. But rather than bemoan the diminishing returns, it's probably a better approach to appreciate the longevity & the fact that he still had something to contribute 19 years deep in the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment