“Desire”
Pharoahe Monch
Street Records Corporation
(Out Of 5)
Eight years after he first implored us to get up ““ among other things ““ on “Simon Says,” Pharoahe Monch returns with his sophomore album “Desire.” While enduring problems with his record label, the cofounder of seminal duo Organized Konfusion has kept busy since his last album, releasing a smattering of singles and making guest appearances. A highlight has been his collaboration with J Dilla, the excellent “Love.” And in a bizarre and disorienting collision of artistic worlds, he has even ghostwritten for hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Throughout all this Pharoahe has continued to rap, something some of his cohorts have since stopped doing. Where fellow renaissance-rap-men like Cee-lo, Andre 3000 and Mos Def have forsaken rhymes in favor of singing or acting, Pharoahe has stuck to his guns. While his occasional sung verse is anomalous, it’s certainly not unwelcomed.
Listening to “Desire” might show us why. As his most potent weapon, his flow is something to be admired: a vicious torrent of unpredictable, angular verbiage. Though he seems to have reined in his style, Pharoahe still attacks his verses with his ferocious sing-song, ripping through topics with elan.
“When the Gun Draws” is a continuation of Organized Konfusion’s classic “Stray Bullet,” with Pharoahe once again embodying a bullet: “Good evening, my name is Mr. Bullet / I respond to the index when you pull it / … With domestic matters and coke deals / I change brain matter to oatmeal.” On “Welcome to the Terrordome,” Pharoahe pays homage to Public Enemy, mimicking Chuck D’s basso profundo voice atop a skittering horn break and updating Public Enemy’s sociopolitical concerns to address the war and Hurricane Katrina.
Unfortunately, the beats can’t match Pharoahe’s lyrical performance, and that isn’t for lack of trying. The beats vary widely in style, from the distorted guitars of “Free” to the sultry, Dilla-esque groove of “So Good” to the electro-hoedown on third single “Body Baby.”
While none of the beats are patently bad, some suffer from blandness. The sprightly horns on “Push,” courtesy of revered funk heroes Tower of Power, wear thin over the course of three minutes. The beat for “Hold On,” with a chorus sung by Erykah Badu, is a mellow hip-hop song by-the-numbers, a bland mid-tempo beat that is redeemed by Pharoahe’s wit: “Incompleted / Only deleted / To be pushed to the back of your mind like a hairline that has receded.”
There are, of course, bright spots. The album’s intro, a slave spiritual, is a fitting opener, alluding to the contractual servitude of the current record industry. The jagged guitar stabs of “Lets Go” by production duo Black Milk match Pharoahe’s frenetic energy. “What It Is” is a stark, paranoid soundscape for punchlines like “Came out the fallopian blastin’ / Pharoahe hungrier than Ethiopians fastin’.”
In what has been a weak year for hip-hop, Pharoahe injects some vitality into a genre that seems to have stagnated. With the releases of “Desire” and a revitalized Talib Kweli’s surprisingly good “Ear Drum,” maybe hip-hop isn’t as dead as we thought.