Boogie Down Productions

BDP's third album, Ghetto Music, finds KRS bringing more knowledge, teeing off on wack emcees and ignorant mentalities. Highlights include "Why Is That?," "Jack Of Spades" (which was featured in the film I'm Gonna Git You Sucka), and the dubbed-out "Jah Rulez."

In a rap world dominated by militant showboating and relentless self-aggrandizement,
KRS-One, the main brain of Boogie Down Productions, is an influential and reliable voice of
hip-hop reason. He stated his credo plainly last year on By All Means Necessary. "Boogie
Down Productions is made up of teachers," he announced over the scratch 'n' slam of "My
Philosophy." "The lecture is conducted from the mike to the speaker." Ghetto M... More >

KRS-One isn't just serious, he aspires to sainthood, and tough noogs if you think that makes him "boring" or "pretentious" or any of that racist, anti-intellectual cant--he comes so close that the whole of the record is greater than the minimalism of its blueprint stylee. Austerely sampled or all the way live, the music per se is almost hookless and swingless. But the dubwise skank of his natural groove carries his rhymes when the rhymes themselves don't capture the consciousness like a good hook should. Though I wish he didn't feel compelled to argue what color Moses was, his fundamental conceit--a peace harder than violence--is visionary. And when he takes no sh*t from the police, I say amen. (Grade - B+)