In dire times like the current era, the encroachment of hegemony starts to seem like a real threat. Most of the major radio stations in the U.S. are now controlled by a single media outlet – Clear Channel – meaning that playlists across the nation have become more standardized, streamlined and, arguably, blander than ever before. No wonder real innovation and daring formats seem so hard to come by in the popular realm. Maybe it’s an overreaction to suggest that the enormous media conglomerates are dead set on turning us all into normalized consumer clones, but I still get excited any time something comparatively radical infiltrates the popular consciousness, whether it be the sprawling avant-funk of Outkast’s recent efforts or the gonzo indie-crossover of Modest Mouse’s platinum dreams. Music like this is what keeps rock n’ soul alive.
Rapper Mos Def has long been known for blurring the lines between indie and major, popular and counterculture, and while many have called “The New Danger” a radical departure from his previous work, the record’s real modus operandi is to make these binaries even more explicit. “The industry is just a better built cell block,” he intoned memorably on his 1999 breakthrough “Black on Both Sides,” and his five-years-in-the-making follow up comes across like an attempt to break out of the chain gang once and for all. I doubt it’ll net him much airplay – indeed, first single “Sex, Love, and Money” barely reached the R & B Charts – but try to spin it as background music and I bet you’ll still come to the conclusion that airplay isn’t what he’s after. A reaction is more like it, and the reaction so far has been widespread confusion. His politics are nothing if not confrontational; the blackface poses in the album booklet and the titles of the first two tracks, “The Boogie Man Song” and “Freaky Black Greetings” make that clear from the git-go. And anyone looking for a clear-eyed statement of purpose had best look elsewhere.
But concerted music fans know better than to expect a coherent political program from their gold-plated idols, and what made his debut’s standout track “Rock and Roll” so powerful wasn’t the message but the emotional punch of the music underlying it, a nervous vamp topped by Mos Def’s pained croon which exploded into full-blown hardcore-punk rag—“Elvis Presley ain’t got no soul” may be a debatable sentiment, but the beats backing it are soulful for sure. On “The New Danger” he follows through on the trajectory suggested by that track, reclaiming “Rock and Roll” and remaking it in his own image.
Several tracks employ the services of his band, Black Jack Johnson, which features luminaries like Dr. Know of Bad Brains (not coincidentally a band he name checks on “Rock and Roll”), P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and Living Colour / Sugarhill Records bass player Doug Wimbush. All are ace players with enormous stylistic reach, and though I wish Mos Def had bothered to write lyrics for more of the group’s tracks there’s no denying the wallop of songs like “Zimzallabim,” which finds the MC at the top of his lyrical game: “And this is no Limp Bizkit, this is Jack’s fat cock / Load it up, slide it back in, soul, black rock / Brooklyn got the bumrush that you can’t stop.” White-boy rap-rock’s slide into irrelevance may have rendered Mos Def’s point somewhat moot, but on “The New Danger” he works out a vision of the black-rock future as fascinating as it is uncompromising. Where some find an unfocused mess I hear a courageous stylistic detour by a genuine provocateur who’s more than willing to get his hands dirty. Let him be your favorite nightmare.
Leave a Reply