Review - Various Artists: A Blow To The State

VARIOUS ARTISTS
A Blow To The State (Coup d'Etat)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

Alternative rap is a wonderful thing for those of us who hate the negative messages so prominent in mass-market rap. Since rap is speech by definition, it has always been a soapbox, much more so than other forms of music in this era when so many people pay little attention to lyrics being sung and just cling to the beat. If rapper X says "Get a gun son, hang with a gang," the message gets across. Alternative rappers aren't into that. A lot of the listening public isn't, either, including me, and therefore I'm very happy to discover artists like Variable Unit, Common, Blackalicious and Pete Miser. This sampler from the Coup d'Etat label just added a handful of artists to my preferred listening list, and a few that make me go "hmm."
Soul Purposes' "Dry Spells" is a mish mash of stuff about "Vaseline and lotion" and "spread legs" that would be same old same old if not for the punch line, which is that the song is about NOT getting laid. Dry spells, right? A horribly negative vibe engulfs "Snakes in the Grass (The Jon Sexton Story)", Rasco's bird-flip to the head of his former label. It took me about three listens to figure out what was going on in the song, and it's less sinister than it sounds, though if I were the person he's rapping about, I'd move to a safer place. Like Iraq.
The others range from fun to important. J Live's "One For The Griot" takes the Griot (storyteller) tradition to a new place, adding a friend on the phone who offers opinions on the ending of his story, asking for new versions (he gets three). Very amusing. Akrobatik's "Balance" offers up a great sentiment that I don't necessarily agree with 100 percent. The theory, if I read it correctly, is that rap is either gangsta, which is bad (agreed), or very intellectual and wordy, which is equally bad because it turns off the kids. My problem with that theory is that all rap doesn't have to be for the kids, or for people with a particular level of education. Variable Unit isn't going to get through to the average 12 year old kid, but a politically aware college kid who's tired of being spoon fed rapcrap by MTV should be addressed, too. Still, the basic message of the song, which comes down to let's watch out for the government because it's currently being run by lunatics, and let's watch each other's backs, is right on the money. For those who like the bizarre, MC Paul Barman, the rapper people either love or hate or love to adamantly not hate, has a track on this collection. He's a tall, skinny white guy with an IQ of 2000, an Ivy League grad who raps like he's just sucked down a mixture of nitrous and helium, saying some things that are just plain stupid ("What a coinky-dink! I'll put my hand down their pants and make my pinky stink"), and some that are cleverly... um... stupid ("It's abundantly clear, there's profundity here. It tickled pimpled clowns and comics when I liberated one of those fancy meshy office chairs and called it trickle down ergonomics"). Hmm.
Coup d'Etat achieves their goal, at least with me, because I have added J Live, Akrobatik, Soul Purpose, Rasco and Fackts One to my CD hunting list. I've added MC Paul Barman to my "find a few MP3s and give it time" list, because he's freakin' funny... but I don't know if I could handle a whole CD without shooting my speakers. Then again, I once felt that way about Weird Al. Oh.. wait... I still can't listen to an entire CD of Weird Al. Scratch that. Check out what's going on at Coup d'Etat, though. It's a sampler, not all the songs are brand new, and you're not going to love everything, but if you want more from rap than the radio gives you, and you're sick to death of the negative vibes from 90 percent of the genre, this is a good starting point for discovering some rap that'll work for you.
Track List:
Balance (Akrobatik) * How Real It Is (J Live) * We Get Live (Rasco) * Life Music (Fakts One) * Dry Spells (Soul Purpose) * Snakes in the Grass (The Jon Sexton Story) (Rasco) * One for the Griot (J Live) * Strictly for the DJ's (Akrobatik) * Take Cover (Soul Purpose) * Bleeding Brain Grow (Barman, MC Paul) * We Gonna... (Fakts One) * Embedded: Another Blow to the State)

© 2003 - DJ Johnson