aaamusic | On 07, Aug 2011

So you think you know precisely what the world needs in order to snap out of this funk it’s got itself in? You’ve taken a good, long, hard look at the underbelly of human nature, stared into the abyss and come to the conclusion that the only way to cure this insidious, flesh eating disease of rioting, mass poverty, war, deepening socio-economic divisions and vacuous celebrity fascination that humanity has let fester for too long is to write a labored, hectoring, nihilist, vaguely left leaning rap album. Take that, society.

 

Political music is, 9 times out of ten, a pretentious honey trap. Some might say that if one doesn’t write political music, or shies away from making comment on the time, then they could be said to have fundamentally missed the point of art in general, that if they want to have a message that means anything it’s their duty to rage against anything that tries to tell them what to do, after all, isn’t that the point of rock n roll? To take authority figures in a set of cross hairs and see who can shout the loudest “fuck you!” at them? The other side of that is realizing that rock n roll grew from teenage rebellion, that, yes, it is about shouting “fuck you” at authority figures, it’s just that for most part those authority figures are parents and teachers. I.E, the only authority figures that will be affected by shouting “fuck you” at them, without being able to give you too much in the way of retribution. Maximum scorn from the minimum amount of effort. While this is all well and to some extent encouraged the moment that one tries to apply this style of rock n roll rebellion to anything other than some vague notion of “The Man Keeping You Down” one sounds like a pretentious tosspot. For example, go out and shout the loudest “Fuck You” you can the next time you see David Cameron. You done it? now were you ignored or punched? I’m going to assume you were ignored.

 

Now pay attention 007, because this is where Portland rapper Sole comes in, he’s made a name for himself by spinning politically minded rhymes in the face of his peers more interested in bitches and bigging up their own bad ass credentials since 1992. I’m going to be honest here, quite possibly the main reason I’m so disappointed with this album is because of the promise of so much more, Sole is a talented man, only someone with a grudge would say otherwise, he’s eloquent, he seems to be a great producer and his band, Skyrider, seem to be able to take a genre, turn it on it’s head and still make it sound unmistakably like that genre but this album is so much less than the sum of its parts. Sole’s lyrical dexterity seems to be stuck on stringing together more and more needlessly complex metaphors as to why the world is fucked and, on the piano led D.I.Y, how he is so unswervingly punk rock in the face of, all together now, a world that’s terminally fucked.

 

Of course, unless a band or artist is preaching about homophobia and genocide, good tunes can forgive slightly off politics but this is another way the album doesn’t realize just what it has, Skyrider are an insanely talented group, as I’ve mentioned before but all they seem to do here is paint every song the same overly dramatic, po-faced shade of grey. When they do pull it out the bag, like on Formal Designation 134340’s mellotron and harp led hip hop it sounds fresh and extremely interesting but for most part it sounds like We Will Not Be Moved, low key, acoustic dirges that only serve to make Sole’s actual lyrics sound even more nihilistic, pessimistic and, at times, deeply annoying.

 

Disappointing is definitely the word of the day when it comes to this record, made even worse by the brief flashes of inspiration that sometimes creep through but hurriedly excuse themselves, as if an exciting melody would distract from the “message” of the lyrics. Hope springs eternal.

 

Author: Will Howard