Hip Hop Is Dead Review

The title is a headline and he knew it. The album underneath is more careful than the slogan, and better. Carry On Tradition is the mission statement, an older rapper listing the names younger listeners cannot be bothered to learn and refusing to be gracious about it. Where Are They Now does the same job with warmth instead of scolding. Can't Forget About You takes a standard from an earlier era and builds a genuinely lovely single around it. Black Republican is the one everybody wanted, two former enemies trading verses over strings, and it is more interesting as a document than as a song.

Still Dreaming and Let There Be Light bring outside producers and outside energy. The trouble is cohesion. The beats come from too many hands and pull in too many directions, so an album arguing for craft and continuity ends up sounding like a compilation. A few tracks chase exactly the radio sound the record is complaining about. He is a first rate essayist here and an inconsistent bandleader, and the gap between those two is the whole story of his middle period.