Non-Prophets - Hope (10/10)

"Ah, forget it; it's actually accepted for rappers to have no ethics.

Their albums would benefit if they put in half the effort.

I attended candlelight vigils for Matthew Sheppard

While you put out another 'fuck you, faggot'-record."

from That Ain't Right

While mimicing sounds of the past is certainly not rare in any genre- rock music has arguably been doing it for the last couple of decades, "Hope" was allegedly made in an effort to consciously sound like it came out in 1993. The early 90's represent a time when hip hop was on the cusp of going mainstream and the technology available to unsigned musicians was a limiting factor. As a result, albums from that era have a certain sound and feel to them where beats are blurry and simplistic, loops are short and drums all sound more or less like they were made on an 808(which they probably were).

While I can appreciate the effort to refer to the early 90's as a sort of "Golden Era" and wanting to revisit that place ten years later, I'm not sure whether or not producer Joe Beats and rapper Sage Francis' attempt was a successful one. The album is great, don't get me wrong- like really insane great, but it still comes off as way too complex in both production and lyrical delivery to have been made in -93.

Sage Francis lyrics impresses throughout the album, always complex but never overly so. Where most MC's seem to go for either message or delivery, Sage manages to shine in both departments and delivers thoughtful lyrics through the most advanced rhyme structures you'd have ever heard in -93. The lyrics deal mainly with hip hop as a culture, which is perfectly fitting for the artistic concept behind the album. Tongue in cheek jabs at other rappers, current political issues and old-fashioned boasting all appear as lyrical themes on the album, as well as some more unorthodox- the song "Disasters" being about children and more specifically artists making music about children("I've got a mouth to feed too, and it lives on my face/in a house that's see-through and it's your kid's mom's place/baby mama drama blah blah blah/I've got a problem but I'm not sitting on top of a barbarian chair/with rastafarian hair").

Sage's playful yet cynical lyrics are the biggest take-away from the album for sure, but the production is always top-notch as well; at times Joe Beats lays on the scratching a bit too much but the beats manage to sound good even when they're as simple as a bassline over a breakbeat and the minimalist style is perfectly executed on songs like "Any Port", "Fresh" and "New World Order".

There is no reason to not love this album.

High point of the album: Fresh

Low point of the album: The Cure