Hello Cruel World

Now on Fake Four after leaving Anticon -- the underground hip-hop imprint he literally helped create -- rapper Sole is free of the fog-like production that characterized so many of his former label's releases, but don't expect it to be all sunshine and light. With his band in tow, this literate, rapping skeptic spits his bitterness over musical beds that are attractive and/or accessible, and suddenly the album's title references Sole's desire to bring the underground angst to the masses, injecting a little ugliness and art into your everyday programming. When Pack member and Internet phenom Lil B joins the cause, the results are phenomenal, as they are when a Timbaland-meets-Hans Zimmer beat supports the Anticon story "D.I.Y.," which offers the cold hard truth "When shit would go wrong, the label would say `Focus on your art'/I'm 33, I'd rather focus on not being broke." Save a couple political figures -- and you can bet Dick Cheney is on that list -- the rapper's biggest beef seems to be with the inevitable letdown of modern life, and while longtime fans will thrill to hear this message with some crossover potential underneath, hiring avant and indie folks like Xiu Xiu and Sage Francis isn't the way Jay-Z or Birdman would try to stack paper. Even if the "preaching to the converted" cliché still applies, this flirtation with mass appeal is interesting for those with even a bit of an indie-hop bent, and hearing Sole working with a less forgiving rulebook just makes the album's successes more massive. He's cool, yet hardly constrained in these semi-pop surroundings, and when you can skillfully fit lines like "Let me write these cantos, be the first poet on the moon" into this mix, there's no reason to stop pushing envelopes. ~ David Jeffries