This most recent effort (Parker's eighth album overall) is, with a few glaring exceptions, a welcome addition to his oeuvre. As with previous efforts, the so-called Blastmaster's primary interest is not simply to catalogue ghetto woes, but also to suggest the moral fallout that ensues from them. On "R.E.A.L.I.T.Y.," he observes that every black man "leads two or three lives trying not to be kilt / We say peace cuz that's what we want / A piece of the pie that America built." The minimal backing -- flashes of synth and fat, syncopated drum lines -- purposefully spotlights Parker's oddly endearing nasal baritone.
"Squash All Beef" is as close to a pacifist manifesto as rap will allow, with Parker exhorting his followers to become "mental vegetarians / I never ever ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan / And I shouldn't have to run from a black man."
"The Truth" is the record's most ambitious effort, a lyrical lecture that lays bare the abundant hypocrisies of biblical scripture. Set to a bubbling bass line, Parker slyly reframes the Christian obsession with crosses: "See, what if Jesus Christ was hung upon a tree? / Up on every church wall, that's exactly what you'd see / If Jesus Christ was shot in the head with no respect / We'd all have little gold guns around our necks / If Jesus Christ was killed in an electric chair, now get it / You'd be kneeling to the electric chair with Jesus still in it / You gaze upon the cross and you see the execution / You yell 'Stop the violence,' but the cross is still worn." His take on the Adam and Eve story -- that Eve, the only woman on earth, "must have had it going on" with her two sons -- offers a succinct answer to a question that has long puzzled scholars.
Parker's rarest talent is an ability to assume the voice of fictional characters, which allows him to make his points by telling a story. On "Hold" he speaks from the perspective of a crack-crazed murderer, and "Out for Fame" offers a firsthand account of the graffiti artist as creative force.
Sadly, the album is also tinged by the kind of bullshit posing that Parker usually stands against. "I'm all about survival / I got all the rhymes / Cuz I killed all my rivals," he chants on the thoroughly unpleasant "De Automatic." Coming from most other rappers, this kind of hateful and hackneyed self-celebration would be more routine than galling. But by this time, Parker should know better. If he wants to portray himself as a prophet of the inner city, he needs to be pointing the way out, not going with the flow.
-- Steven Almond
Passengers
Original Soundtracks 1
(Island)
U2 should be celebrated for doing what so few major rock bands have managed to do: They broke the chains of their own stardom. For a while it looked as if they were going to carry the "monsters of rock" banner into the area staked out by institutionalized and calcified old-timers such as the Who and Pink Floyd. But with 1991's Achtung Baby and 1993's Zooropa, U2 stopped waving flags and learned to laugh at their fame, shedding their self-important image and finding more creative legroom in the process. Only in this context could U2 allow their long-time producer Brian Eno virtual membership in the band and immerse themselves in the anonymity of film music as faux group Passengers.
On their debut album, Original Soundtracks 1, a collection of fourteen compositions for independent films (and one performance piece), Passengers take on the challenge of interpreting the moods, themes, and textures of the visual medium. Eno, who's done this sort of thing for decades, plays a defining role. With their electronic pulsations and organic atmospheres, tracks such as "United Colours" and "One-Minute Warning" are akin to Eno's previous ambient-techno work. Even the tracks bearing U2's stamp are enriched by collaboration: The hilarious "Elvis Ate America" becomes even more absurd with rap maven Howie B's scratching and vocal shouts, and the touching "Miss Sarajevo" is made infinitely more profound by opera icon Luciano Pavarotti's tenor. Passengers is more likely an inspired tangent rather than an indication of U2's future sound, but it adds to the band's impressive and progressive body of work.
-- Roni Sarig
