RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta

03/30/2004 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Dan Leroy

It would be so much easier if Dead Prez wrapped themselves in the bloody, threadbare mantle of the Black Panther Party because they were too untalented to come up with a better gimmick and too dumb to know any better. That isn’t the case, which makes RBG one of the most frustrating releases of this or any other year. Politics aside, there are undoubted moments of excellence on the Jacksonville hip-hop duo’s second major label album. There’s the poignancy of the working stiff’s lament, “W4,” and “F---ed Up,” whose payoff line – “I don’t wanna be a Gil Scott-Heron, y’all” – sadly and ironically echoes the great poet’s own tale of alcohol abuse, “The Bottle.” There’s the imagination of “20,” the story of a bag of ganja from beginning to blunt. And there’s dpz’s widening palette of rock, rap, R&B and reggae, which in quieter moments, also recalls Scott-Heron, but never neglects the street. Then M1 and stic ruin everything with shoutouts to every group of terrorists but Al-Qaeda and a fable about robbing a pizza delivery man because they were hungry. From beyond the grave, Huey Newton strikes again.