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***Twenty-five, bookless, bored, obsessive, hypocritical, barb-witted, full of shit, and horrified by the war machine; what else could this outspoken tangle of contradictions do but make the next classic rap album? sole lives out a perpetual identity crisis so we don't have to, surfacing each of his past lives in his music: the 13-year-old Ice Cube from Maine, the Lord Finesse-styled battle MC who ruled open mics in New England, the hyperactive San Francisco transplant consumed with the idea of anticon, and finally the sagacious mid-twenties writer who hums Dylan and guns for Bush. When the hip hop he loved failed to inspire him further, sole made rap songs that defiantly drove back the border of what could even be considered a rap song. And when the cogs began to click in harmony, he locked himself in for a year and half and authored an album that completely blew away the expectations that have been steadily growing around it. The late American poet Gregory Corso once satirically referred to himself as "an ugly bag of water," and sole elaborates the phrase, suggesting that humans, as "live water," are systematically devalued, that their lives and opinions are to an extent bought and paid for. Rather than lodge heavy-handed attacks, however, sole does the only thing he can do: bare his inner dialogue with all the anger, humor and insecurity that you'd expect from someone who turns the lines "I wanted to be black at age 14 / so when they say I don't respect the culture / the truth is I'm not smart enough to write a book" into a refrain, as he did for "da baddest poet." sole may be the only rapper in history to mock his critics while simultaneously telling them that they haven't gone far enough. |
