Jul. 21, 2010 - Issue #770: Draw It Yourself
Old Sounds
Dead Prez - Let’s Get Free
(Loud) Originally released: 2000
STILL FREE » Dead Prez is not over yet / Supplied
In response to "Over," Dead Prez stuck to the duo's political roots and released the track "Far From Over" on the 2010 album Revolutionary But Gangsta Grillz. The track uses the beat from "Over" while asking "What are we doing? Oh yeah, what about let's get free?" Though the duo—consisting of stic.man and M-1—does give Drake credit for not selling crack, the members slam his priorities and those of other apolitical rappers with the line "I swear it feels like the last few years in the mainstream everyone's forgot about repping the cause."
Let's Get Free is utterly sodden with Dead Prez's care for the cause. The album begins on a chilling note with the first track, "Wolves." The song samples a speech by Omali Yeshitela, leader of the African People's Socialist Party and founder of the Uhuru Movement to liberate Africans. Yeshitela describes a hunting method in which hunters use a bloody knife buried in icy ground to trick wolves into killing themselves. The wolves lick the blade repeatedly, unknowingly drinking their own blood, until they bleed to death. "That's what the imperialists did to us with crack cocaine," Yeshitela says.
On the third track, "They Schools," Clayton Gavin, aka stic.man, describes his experience at James S Rickards High School in Florida: "I got my diploma from a school called Rickards, full of teenage mothers and drug dealin' niggas. In the hallways, the popo was always present, searchin' through niggas' possessions." The song goes on to describe the public school system as a "12-step brainwash camp" designed to pump out workers who will only be exploited down the road by their bosses.
The anti-establishment "Police State" once again opens with the wisdom of Yeshitela: "The police become necessary in human society only at that junction in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got it." The song is an anthem against the police state, which the pair blames for the perpetual problems of poverty and injustice that cause women to be treated with disrespect and black men to spend distressingly large amounts of their lives in prison.
"Be Healthy" is a hit among vegans and vegetarians for its positive sentiments about eating "no meat, no dairy, no sweets / Just ripe vegetables, fresh fruit and whole wheat," while George Orwell's Animal Farm found new life in Dead Prez's interpretation "Animal in Man."
Let's Get Free is the kind of album you can revisit again and again. The beats never get old, the sentiments always feel true and the politics remain relevant. With the release of this album, Dead Prez helped make it cool to care. V vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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