Send "Brother Ali " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 A girl whose first sexual experience was a molestation is encouraged to overcome her trauma and learn to feel real love. White Americans are confronted with their role in the legacy of slavery and their responsibility for the cultural and social structures it left behind. Immigrants, a child of divorced parents, and a self-hating gay teenager get a keep-your-head-up. The ostracized, leprous son of a plantation owner learns to sing from the field hands, only to reject his family's adulation of his talents when he realizes they won't let those same field hands inside their house. These are some of the ways Brother Ali focuses his storytelling talents on Us, and I just wanted to mention that as soon as possible because some people may prefer an advance warning when a rap album is filled with what is perceived as moralistic sermonizing.But this isn't "moralistic sermonizing" where Brother Ali is concerned-- it's displays of a humane, often-troubled conscience. For an MC who has so many tracks which denote his "bad motherfucker" status, his persona's dominated by a welcoming strain of populist empathy, an attitude that offers an accessible solidarity just for listening. And unless you happen to be someone who thinks he's a better MC than Ali is, this man will not actually talk down to you, no matter how sociopolitically agitated he gets. If rap didn't exist, he'd be the greatest high school guidance counselor in Minneapolis. But as a talent in a scene that holds decades' worth of some of the most sensitive identity politics of any popular culture movement in the last 50 years, Brother Ali has had to put that populism to good use....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| Emotionally complex but bristling with prickly bluster, Us makes Brother Ali sound at times like he's revealing more than he means to, the pairing of internal conflicts with "I'm a bad motherfucker" posturing functioning as cause-and-effect dialogue. One seems to grow out of the other, roiling pain that results in vain, callow self-affirmations. It's an interesting dynamic, one that gives added depth to an album that's already sufficiently intricate. If the connection weren't so visible, this kind of bragging might seem out of place for Ali, a devout Muslim with an established social conscience. After drawing fire (and press) for 2007's "Uncle Sam Goddamn," he offers nothing similarly controversial here, providing less direct politics than character sketches, the aforementioned bombast, and a hackneyed theme of unity. These narratives have two focuses: some illuminate, creating fairly trenchant pictures of fringe characters or detailing Ali's own struggles; others, like "House Keys," in which he talks about robbing the drug dealers living in his former apartment, and "Bad Mufucker Part II," where his tough-guy reputation halts a brawl in its tracks, are flatly self-aggrandizing. In this sense, the album represents an endless process of construction and demolition. The smart tracks build up the complexity of Ali's persona, while the dumb ones diminish it. The juxtaposition of these two different modes creates a fuller exposition than what you'll find on most hip-hop albums. Usually there's all the bluster and none of the pain, the cause of the artist's booming insecurity left unexplained....full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| In his vehement insistence that his music "blurs racial lines" Brother Ali no longer tries to prove himself on his 4th studio record. In fact, he takes it for granted instead apprising society of its evils and intolerance from the perspective of a devout Muslim. Consequently, Us continues a two-album slide into mediocrity coming off 2003's career-defining Shadows on the Sun with more preaching, more retellings of supposedly commonplace ghetto tribulations, and (unfortunately) more of a reversion with respect to both production and lyricism. In a year where Ali's label, Rhymesayers Entertainment, released a pair of verbally complex and sonically progressive hip-hop records (see P.O.S.'s Never Better and Eyedea & Abilities' By the Throat), this move comes across as questionable; Us reduces his typically unique and circuitous rhyme scheme to something completely simplistic and uninteresting. In addition to the blues that producer A.N.T. attempts to emulate throughout, these easy-to-learn/ lifetime-to-master methods are inadequately represented with a static 12-bar formula and unimaginative rhymes. Where the duo does break from form is where strict adherence would make most sense - "Breakin' Dawn" is an oriental come chain-gang pious piece that suffers only from excessive length and repetition. It's puzzling as to why Ali so willingly abdicates his lyrical throne atop Rhymesayers compatriots, in favor of a monotonous flow and more basic rhyme scheme akin to Slug; some of the beats here are pure gold and feel wasted on this record. Besides some cases of mistaken identity (see his discussion of slavery on "The Travelers"), this production mismatch is the true frustration here as the primary criticism in the past has been exactly the opposite. "Breakin' Dawn", "The Travelers", "Round Here", "Games", and "Slippin' Away" really make one wonder where this iteration of A.N.T. has been; if beats like this existed on Shadows on the Sun, it would have been an outright classic. As it stands, Us lies at a precarious crossroads of self-help preaching and black history compendium, succeeding at neither and exposing a serious disconnect between lyricist and producer....full text |
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