KRS-One refers to this as his twenty-third album. I don’t know. It depends on which ones you count. Not that it matters much when you’ve been dropping them for this long. KRS-One; remember he started with Boogie Down Productions; is a real pioneer in the world of rap music. The fact that he’s still doing it all these years, decades, later is a testament to his love for hip-hop, which he uses not just to boast about his own rap skills but to Teach his students (fans) about the ways of the world, particularly when it comes to society and race.

Today’s lesson has to do with Da Protests that peaked with the 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands, or knee, of Da Police, which the race-obsessed automatically attribute to racism, even when the cop is black. The Teacha is no exception; PowerPoint the Ghetto Music album cover; but he deserves some credit for calling out democratic politicians and the media for being the hypocritical opportunists they are. “Black Lives Matter now; they all wanna use it,” he observes, “What we seeing is the corporate co-optive of another black movement.”

Boom is one of too many songs dampered at the breaks though. The album actually starts off surprisingly fresh because the first two songs showcase the “lyrical legend”; he indeed still has the skills to outrap most of these “young’uns”; without any (stale) hooks to bring them down. Perhaps he should do a whole album just rapping to the beat, which he sort of just did at his Block Party with Kid Capri. The Invaders isn’t included again, which is a relief, but at least that’s a good song; something that’s been a rarity on KRS-One albums for a long time.

my rating : 3 of 5

2020