Sage Francis - Human The Death Dance

Well, it is customary to present ones credentials when reviewing a hip hop album. I’m not going to bother though, but let’s just say I haven’t been happy with mainstream stuff since P-Diddy was called Puff Daddy and the dead started collaborating with the mediocre living spawning unholy covers. Critics keep singing the praises of the current crop of boring plagiarists to not “seem stuck up” but as a critic I find myself obligated to have high standards and stand my ground. Either way I still enjoy some of the older stuff, lots in Spanish (Control Machete, Molotov) and abstract hip hop (Subtle) but I didn’t become aware of Sage Francis until earlier this year, thanks to his track ‘Crack Pipes’ on the Ant Icon sampler. While I’m no expert on the guy his albums have been on repeat at my cubicle for the last few months. To sum him up in a few words, I would say he’s clever, agile and eloquent. Oh yeah, and there’s some comparisons with Eminem because Sage Francis is white but honestly while Eminem fights hard to fit in Sage Francis effortlessly stands out. Unfortunately there is no specific gimmick I can use to describe him, since nothing about this MC is average. On one hand he’s a vegetarian that doesn’t drink nor do drugs. On the other hand his hard hitting rhymes go to really dark places, so despite his political content this is no positive rap for the kids. He jumps back and forth between exhilarating displays of skill and melancholic spoken word tales of hardship. And by the sound of his lyrics he clings to his thesaurus like other rappers cling to their prop guns.

Human The Death Dance (Epitaph Records) is his most recent release and it opens with some recordings from his childhood days much like Personal Journals did. The lyrical content moves back and forth between autobiography and social commentary, touching upon subjects like his college football days, friends with drug problems, rhyme battles, wannabe gangsters, ex girlfriends, poverty, self promotion, religion, war and politics. The music his producers lay under his vocals is always amazing, chock full of guitars, saxophones, trumpets, pianos and morphing beats. My favorite would be “Got up this morning” which crawls along with a great mix of blues and hip hop, throwing in harmonicas, fiddles and some soulful vocal samples. An unusual sense of humor prevails as well, with some great word play on every track and the bizarre Broccilude, a brief intermission that serenades broccoli using samples from Iron Chef. Still lyrically the main standout is ‘the underground for dummies’, a track with old school sensibilities that sums up his career while mocking hip hop’s obsession with street cred and hipsters worship of irony. After the exhilarating “high step” the album becomes a lot less playful, with emotionally complex songs such as ‘Keep Moving’, ‘Waterline’, ‘Black out on White night’, ‘hell of a year’ and culminating in amazing ‘Going back to rehab’. I’m glad to hear Epitaph Records lets him do whatever he wants, because to edit this guy would be a crime.