Dead Prez

Throughout the late '90s, conscious hip-hop implied not only a certain political bent, but also a sonic aesthetic: dusty grooves, post-Premo drums and patchouli-soaked soul. But with Let's Get Free, Brooklyn's dead prez changed all that. The music here is loud, gritty N.Y.C. street hop, full of rattling snares and murky, minor-chord samples. Emcees stic.man and M-1 match the music's grit. On "They Schools," they compare education to slavery and conclude that "cracker" teachers can "suck my d*ck while "Police State" finds the crew suggesting that we "organize the wealth into a socialist economy." This is classic hip-hop agrit-prop.

Radical rappers Stic.Man and M-1 of Dead Prez proclaim themselves to be "somewhere in
between N.W.A and PE." But that comparison is a bit limiting: Their rhymes are more fluid
than Public Enemy's, they're more informed than Ice Cube was during his black-power
stage, and their song "Assassination" goes further than N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police." "I swear
on the president's grave, I'm sick of living in this bullshit," they promise. "We do... More >

Pretty lively for socialist moralists with no sense of humor ("Mind Sex," "It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop").