PHAROAHE MONCH | “Rock the Bells” tour | Tweeter Center, 885 South Main Street, Mansfield | July 26 | 617.931.2000 It may not be what hip-hop wants right now, but it’s what hip-hop needs. Like Little Brother’s 2006 disc The Minstrel Show (Atlantic), Desire has the potential to wake up the sleeping hordes who rose in praise of Black Star, early Roots, and Dead Prez. Monch has returned just in time to remind everyone that there’s something timeless in skillful lyricism and soulful beats. Rigid ideas of what constitutes “real” have painted mainstream hip-hop into a corner.
In fact, retro tracks like the celebratory “Push” and the recklessly funky “Body Baby” make a solid case for different as great. So, as much as Desire sounds as if it should have come out in 2001, there’s a lot to like here. Still, it’s refreshing to hear an album without brittle Neptunes ripoffs, shamelessly commercial Storch keyboards, or Asian strings from some unknown Timbaland follower. Next-level production might catapult these lyrics right into the realm of an instant classic. The only cut that’s truly fresh comes from up-and-coming Detroit producer Black Milk, whose “Let’s Go” tosses wobbly guitars and splashing cymbals all over fading tape decks. The second half of the album is shameless neo-soul, good, but still a bit like OutKast releasing Aquemini right now. “Free” has bouncing guitars that flirt with rap rock years behind schedule the abstract paranoia of “What It Is” comes across as dense next to the spare, spooky nature of so much contemporary hip-hop. Drenched with horns and gospel-tinged choruses, the arrangements suggest that he’s been in a cave for the better part of a decade. Of course, the beats throughout Desire belie just how out of step Monch is with the times. But Desire is the Super Mario 3 of classically trained MCing: “I’m the poetical pastor/Slave to a label but I own my masters,” he rhymes in “Desire.” “Still get it poppin’ without artists and repertoire/’Cause Monch is the monarch only minus the A&R.” Elsewhere, he plays with the names of phone companies (“Cingular, not plural”) and other artists (“pop shit, make you feel the Clipse like Pharrell”) and manages to make rapping from the perspective of a bullet fresh on “Gun Draws.” It’s hard to figure how an MC this skilled could be out of the game for so long. It’s like watching a blacksmith hammer away, or playing an original Nintendo. Monch, who joins the Wu-Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, Talib Kweli, and others on the “Rock the Bells” tour that lands at the Tweeter Center next Thursday, deploys cleverly twisted wordplay and skillful manipulations of rhythm that seem almost anachronistic and outdated. It’s shocking to hear an album like this in 2007. The 13 songs on Desire are packed with the kind of personality and bravery that are too often lacking in commercial hip-hop climate. Yet Monch, who finally released his long-awaited, much-delayed second album, Desire (Universal), on June 26, doesn’t seem the least bit concerned with trying to recapture that fleeting moment in the spotlight. That Godzilla sample, initially uncleared, has kept his solo debut, Internal Affairs (Priority), out of print to this day. But almost as quickly as he arrived, Monch was swept away in the wake of label politics and copyright law. All it took was a Godzilla sample and a simple, forceful “Simon says get the fuck up” for hyper-technical New York MC Pharoahe Monch to leave his mark on hip-hop history with “Simon Says (Get the Fuck Up)” eight years ago.
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