I don't think Arrested Development gets the credit they deserve for being pioneers of the conscious end of Southern rap. In fact, I don't think the conscious end of Southern rap gets the exposure it deserves period. You can hear the influence of 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In the Life Of... in eccentric Southern hiphop acts from Outkast to CunninLynguists to Little Brother & even Jay Electronica. Dropping in 1992, this album can be seen as the last gasp of conscious rap in the mainstream before it was fully overshadowed by gangsta shit (a trend Speech has a lot to say about); a slighty late-arrival Southern-fried alternative to the NYC eclecticism of A Tribe Called Quest & De La Soul. In fact, Prince Paul's sample-collage production style for the latter group is echoed here, although occasionally the group (who is credited as a whole for producing every track) leans more toward a Bomb Squad-esque noisiness. With their genre-blending, funky foundation & identity as a musical collective with a charismatic leader, Arrested Development would probably prefer comparisons to Sly & the Family Stone, whose songs they sample on at least 3 tracks here. However you slice it, this is a unique record with seemingly endless replay value.
Speech's sharp critiques of the gangsta lifestyle don't just come in obvious forms like "People Everyday." They are also woven into the album's trio of ebullient love songs ("U," "Natural" & "Dawn of the Dreads") as well as the essential humility of "Give a Man a Fish," in which the group pledges to keep their day jobs (like DJ Headliner's barber hustle) rather than sacrifice their art to commercial concerns.
Aquatic imagery abounds on the album, from the closer "Washed Away," which uses shoreline erosion as a symbol for Black assimilation, to "Fishin' 4 Religion," where the world is a vast ocean full of little-understood religious practices in the form of sea life, to the personal favorite "Raining Revolution." This latter song, along with "Children Play With Earth," exemplifies the Afrocentric philosophy that appreciates the natural world in opposition to the white bourgeois's attempts to devalue/mitigate it.
The spiritual centerpiece of this album is also its biggest hit: "Tennessee," which folds together all the album's themes Afrocentric ancestor-consciousness, anti-modernity, skepticism of the gangsta lifestyle & the historicity of natural spaces. Far from presenting himself as a spiritual guru, however, Speech acknowledges the limits of his perspective: "Ask those trees for all their wisdom/They tell me my ears are so young." Don't get me wrong: I love gangsta rap, always have, & probably always will. I don't subscribe to the idea that the more nihilistic forms of hiphop signal the downfall of society. But I do think we were in a better place as a culture back when Speech & Eshe were sharing the airwaves with Snoop & Dre. To echo the harmonious Afrocentrism that Arrested Development preaches: all we ever wanted was balance.
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