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Album Review
by SashaS
6-4-2004
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| Dead Prez: Gangstionary but real |
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Dead Prez: 'RBG - Revolutionary But Gangsta'
(Epic)
Dear Prez fight the law, injustice and indifference
Credibility among the Hip-hop community doesn’t appear to be an issue in the culture that’s turned toward celebrating the bling-hood. The last [new?] remaining rappers that are active on the revolutionary-stroke-gangsta hip maybe be Dead Prez but that is not a clear-cut evident because ‘RBG - Revolutionary But Gangsta’ may not get you an interference-free perception.
A follow-up to 2000s ‘Let’s Get Free’ that was hailed up there with Nas’ ‘Illmatic’ as a ‘debut classic’. Four years on, after record wrangling and trouble with the law, the pair are back on the attack. The Prez’s new album ‘Revolutionary But Gangsta’ is more personal and indeed gangsta-orientated than the worldview on their debut.
Their attention now is on the politics of their lives, of the streets, as a lot of things have gone down and these issues are addressed here: the police, the industry, disintegrating communities, social treatment and militant trends. Stic rhymes about his alcoholism in ‘The Bottle’, M-1 raps on his homeless and jailbird past. There are gun-shots, urban-dialogues, info (on self-defence), as much sounds of bong-ing as the Cypress Hill's rhymes…
‘RBG’ is also a very deceptive album that uses mellow and catchy tunes to dupe rap-tourists into false security: the menace of lyrics is not reflected in dark and mean sounds that pull a gun to your sorry ass; its balance lulls you into swaying to the beats but the rhyming content keeps hitting you, such as “a kid was shot last night by police accidentally.” It is a duality that works, albeit - after a while for this ‘old skool’ ears who hoped to be sonically shaken is if encountering Public Enemy’s ‘Nation Of Millions’ for the first time, all over.
They are also making the point of this radio-friendly R[ap]&B crossover music and proving that an apparently amicable musicality doesn’t have to equal vacuous blandness - reference ‘Radio Freq’. Rock-idiom and lead-guitar are successfully used on ‘The Way of Life’ but the six-strings are not courtesy of some name axe-man; other than Erykah Badu, the only guest on the new album is Kanye West, who produced ‘For The Hood’ before his own album went platinum in the USA. [Although there is also a remix of ‘Hell Yeah (Pimp The System)’ featuring Jay-Z that ends the ‘official’ dozen tracks.]
M-1 recently changed his real name from Lavon Alfred to Mutulu Olugbala in honour of Tupac’s activist stepfather Mutulu Shakur, and Stic changed his to Khnum Olugbala, the reason being that the black race has names that can be traced back to the days of slavery. Dead Prez are deadly serious and they don’t take lightly all this commercialisation without pride.
‘RBG’ is surely neo-gangsta but revolutionary… Yet to be debated whether music’s inheriting quality is to evoke anything resembling barricades…
But, as M-1 stresses, “[If] You do that [prettify], you’re a fake. And it [their music] says that, no matter how low you are, you can free yourself.”
This duo are still da bros who blast the corrosion.
8/10
SashaS
6-4-2004
Dead Prez’s album ‘RBG - Revolutionary But Gangsta’ is released 05 April 2004 by Epic
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