Untitled Review

He announces a title designed to start a fight, spends half a year being condemned for it by people who had not heard a note, then releases the album without a name at all. What survives that circus is the most sustained piece of argument in his catalog. Sly Fox takes apart a cable news network with the precision of somebody who has been watching it closely and hating it carefully. America is a plain, weary accounting of a country's promises.

Fried Chicken turns a joke premise into an unnerving song about appetite and self harm. Black President samples a candidate and refuses to be uncomplicated about him, which is more useful now than the celebration would have been. The closing address is genuinely uncomfortable and means to be. The weakness is underneath. Too many beats are stiff, keyboard heavy and undercooked, and a couple of tracks bury a fine verse in a chorus nobody needed. The reviews split hard along exactly this line, and both sides were reading the same album correctly. Ambition this large deserved better company.