Dead Prez

Let's Get Free marks a welcome return to the days when rap articulated a political consciousness, as Dead Prez members SticMan and M1 spit a vision "somewhere in between [Public Enemy] and N.W.A." Like those groups, the Brooklyn-based duo is on a serious black community empowerment tip. And also like them, the Prez have seen their actions censored and attacked by the plantation mentality of the distributing arm of the record industry. The cover photo for Let's Get Free displays a famous photo of youngsters defiantly brandishing firearms during the 1976 student uprising in Soweto, South Africa; retailers have forced the group to place a sticker over the guns. The Prez have complied, but not without adding a statement to the label that reads: "This artwork has been censored by the powers that be, due to its political content."

Split into two parts --"Today" and "Tomorrow" -- Let's Get Free finds the Prez attempting to loosen the shackles of black oppression by throwing Molotov-cocktail-like rhymes throughout the album's first half. On "They Schools," the Prez declare American schools nothing but "a twelve-step brainwash camp" that don't "teach you shit but how to be slaves and hard workers for white people." In "Police State," the Dead Prez organize the 'hood under Afrocentric ideals instead of gangbanger posturing. On "Hip-Hop," the duo challenges those who stole rap's political soul and who are more concerned with fame than social change: "Would you rather have a Lexus or justice?" The Prez take a breather at the end of "Today" to talk about some "Mind Sex" that refreshingly substitutes Big-Willie-style skin play with talk of intelligent mental foreplay.

The "Tomorrow" side offers up an optimistic, health-orientated yin to the urban-guerrilla-inflected yang of "Today." This side has the Prez delivering on-point platforms for community-building with cuts like "Be Healthy," "Discipline" and "We Want Freedom." The latter cut is a shout out for the community to uphold the legacy of the Black Panthers: "Tell me, what you goin' to do to get free?/We need more than MCs/We need Hueys and revolutionaries."

Because of its lyrical content, this disc might fall on deaf ears, but the production quality, delivered by the Dead Prez, Hedrush, Lord Jamar (of Brand Nubian) and the stellar musicality of players like Melvin Gibbs (Project Logic, Rollins Band, Vernon Reid) ensures that the beats hit as hard as the rhetoric. Yet to ignore the lyrics here is to miss the point. The Dead Prez stop just short of demanding militant action to reverse the social status quo for black Americans. The question remains, though: Will the hip-hop community answer the call?