Definitive Jux
2005
Black Dialogue
About This Album
Black Dialogue is another album to pick up for the friend who diligently forwards the Boondocks comic strip and regularly mourns the death of hip-hop's spirit of '90 (not realizing that the spirit of '90 wasn't all that different from the spirit of 2005; just as 2005 has a Ying Yang Twins for every Talib Kweli, '90 had a 2 Live Crew for every Tribe Called Quest). Underground figures Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, and DJ Fakts One are the Perceptionists, who nonetheless make an unsurprisingly damning case against the ill (not ill meaning good, but ill meaning bad) strains running through hip-hop: "Throwin' money at the screen that other brothers ain't catchin'"; "'Cause y'all some disappointments, like U.S.A. basketball"; "Yo ho hoes are the popular scum/Some MCs are nice, but the key word's some/Others suffer from suckerdom/Some succumb to a rough rhyme and some powerful drums." Lif and Akrobatik have a long history, so they sound natural as brainy verse-swapping partners, and they're sharp throughout, whether they have their sights set on the Bush Administration or are simply batting boasts back and forth. A good chunk of the production work is top-shelf frostbite funk, handled in turns by Fakts One, El-P, and newcomers Cyrus the Great, Willie Evans, and CamuTao.
Track List (try tracks 7,9 and 10)

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