Hip Hop Review: One Be Lo, THE R.E.B.I.R.T.H.

A CanineMind Exclusive

In their Wu-fever, our hapless antagonists also missed my advance copy of One Be Lo’s The R.E.B.I.R.T.H. (Subterraneous Records). Lo’s latest might not have been worth a grand theft auto charge, but its second half was at least worth a listen while they were rooting through my shoeboxes.

Lo initially broke through in 2000 as One Man Army, one half of the Michigan duo Binary Star; their full-length from that year, Masters of the Universe, got over as much on its smart rhyming as on its raw authenticity. At a time when underground stalwarts like De La, Tribe, the Roots, Mos, Kweli, and Common were producing more and more polished projects, Masters of the Universe had a youthful, do-it-yourself vibe that was much closer to Enter the 36 Chambers, Soundbombing, and People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm than Art Official Intelligence, Things Fall Apart, and Like Water for Chocolate were. Masters was low-fi, low-budget, and fun, the kind of album that listeners could probably see themselves making in a basement somewhere.

Several projects later, Lo’s M.O. hasn’t changed much – he’s still about conscious rhymes, day-in-the-life narratives, and independently produced beats… for better and for worse. And we might as well start with the “worse,” because that’s how R.E.B.I.R.T.H. plays out.

From the start, the album suffers from “overages” of all sorts, from beats to song structures. Despite contracting his beats to producers outside his own Subterraneous camp (which handled the bulk of his prior efforts), R.E.B.I.R.T.H. still suffers from the same wack music surplus that plagued 2005’s S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. What’s more, the beats on the album all suffer for the same reason – overlayering. Even in their best performances (“Hip Hop Heaven” comes to mind), Lo’s production crew adds too many elements to the mix; all the loose noises and extra instruments not only give the tracks sloppy feels, but, in many cases (“Keep It Rollin’” especially), they make it hard to concentrate on Lo’s lyrics.

Meanwhile, the same producers take the abuse of sampled dialogue to new extremes. Nearly every song on R.E.B.I.R.T.H. features at least one audio sample from a movie; in certain spectacular cases – “The G Gap” – the count runs as high as four. None of these outside voices are talking to each other, which becomes readily apparent when two that close out one song run flush up against a third that opens the next.

Lyrically, Lo doesn’t do much to salvage the album until its second half. With his ageless voice, athletic flow, and bundles of energy and intelligence, Lo has always been a top prospect, but it isn't until late tracks like “House Rules,” “Gray,” and “Hip-Hop Heaven” that he finally asserts his vet status. On “House Rules,” Lo looks at ghetto life through the lens of dice games, taking a great conceit and matching it with top-notch lyricism: “It’s only natural Seven-Eleven / Enter and exit this world / Life is a gamble for hell and heaven / Pourin’ my soul on stone / Born to roll / In front of corner stores where little Joe’s throwin’ bones / Ace trey or maybe a deuce deuce / They roll up on the scene where it takes place lookin’ for who’s who.” The shimmering atmospherics and sighing background vocals on “Gray” up the “House Rules” ante… after forty minutes of imperfect fits between beats and rhymes, all aspects of “Gray” (well, except for the soft jazz sax) come together to create five minutes of palpable soul

Last but definitely not least, Lo closes out with “Hip-Hop Heaven,” a legit contender for the best story rap since Nas’s “Rewind.” Hold up, run that back. Yeah, I said it, the best story rap since Nas’s “Rewind.” I can’t do the song's concept justice without spoiling it – you’ll have to listen for yourself.

Unfortunately, a handful of great songs don’t make an album. After almost eight years recording as a known quantity, Lo’s facing a basic decision: stay in the basement or innovate. In this case, “innovating” doesn’t necessarily mean adding things – money, guests, producers, etc. – it might mean cutting things – concepts, layers, samples – to get a cleaner, more direct sound. After all, a R.E.B.I.R.T.H. is always chance to father a new style.