Music Spectrum

Benzi Presents. . .Get It Together, free mixtape from Outasight as a tide over until his LP drops, features a few tracks and old favorites blended together for your listening pleasure by DJ Benzi. Outasight himself is a blended latte—jiving hip hop groove with plenty of spoonfuls of soul and pop—which makes him quite appealing to this rock-centric critic.

Get It Together includes “Change the World,” a positive vibe, soul-swinging, finger-snapping joint. It’s 60’s Motown with a swing thing spun by a hip hop swagger.

“Change the World” also exemplifies KRS-One’s The Gospel of Hip-Hop, where you can feel like the music can propel you to make a difference in the world around you. KRS-One points to the ability of hip-hop to lift up through love. Outasight lifts up through “Change the World,” giving us a glimpse of our possibility and hopes and dreams.

I feel like I woke up this morning and I could change the world
I can change the world
I guess it’s true true true.

This glimmer of a world opened up before us, this idea that there’s more than what we’re experiencing now, that’s what makes me think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can weave together with some of the words of Outasight.

Grab your free mixtape by clicking on the picture.

Outasight
Warner Brothers

The Music Spectrum Notebook Series digs into my handwritten notes about music still getting my attention.

Iyeoka—Nigerian-American, singer, poet, and 2010 TED Global Fellow—released her album, Say Yes, back in November 2010, and ever since receiving it, the CD’s hung around my current stack. I want to like this album for one reason: the first track, “The Yellow Brick Road Song,” is outstanding. However, aside from flashes here and there, flashes of India.Arie, Motown soul, Tracy Chapman, Luscious Jackson, and poetic slam, the album cannot live up to that first track.

However, I decided that it’s time to shed light on that first track with its infectious groove and bounce. Set in the right light, Iyeoka’s song could spin out into the hope that we have in Christ, the hope of being more than we are when we’re left on our own.

I know how possible we are
We can go and achieve the inconceivable
I know just how possible we are
We can follow our own yellow brick road.

An outstanding, uplifting rap from B.Cap really tops off this track’s upward movement. The song then culminates in the line: “There’s no tornado that can stop us now.”

The song resonates and entwines with the fact that nothing is impossible with God. That’s where I can see using this song in a devotional mode—pointing us not just to the possibility that exists in ourselves but to the possibility that exists in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Iyeoka’s grooving, bounce brings out that power, joy, and upward movement from God. For that reason, go back and grab this track while hoping for more similar songs from Iyeoka’s future projects.

Iyeoka
Underground Sun
B.Cap

While I mainly slide towards all things rock and roll, there’s been certain rap/hip hop artists that have made a crossover appeal to me—whether it’s back in the day with Run-D.M.C., or a few years ago with Just Jack, or more recently with Sims (review). Now entering that circle is Outasight whose Figure 8 EP comes complete with fresh raps, rocking flow, and life’s brightness.

Aside from the catchy “So What” and the dreamy-yet-hand-waging “Figure 8,” the EP features the vocational calling “Life or Something Like It.” Sounding like a man called by God to let his light shine as an artist, Outasight raps about celebrating the life that he’s been given. When he talks about stepping outside of the huddle and no one being behind you because they never really loved you, well, that sounds like what a Christian artist experiences when they step out of the huddle of the Church and step into the wider culture. Unfortunately, there are some Christians who will reject the artist who engages the wider culture, but meanwhile, that Christian wants to follow in the steps of Jesus who hung out with all kinds of people, letting His light shine into every dark corner, and bringing His love to all. Outasight’s “Life or Something Like It” could very well be an anthem for that kind of living.

Outasight
Warner Brothers Records

I ain’t no expert on hip hop, but I know something good when I hear it, something that can resonate with my rock ‘n’ roll heart, something that rings with truth in the midst of the raps, flow, and beats. That’s the case with Sims on Bad Time Zoo, especially the single, “Burn It Down.”

“Burn It Down” struts and swaggers like something from El-P with the hooks of Just Jack. Sims shows great chops, and the track comes handwagging on some nice horn work.

What’s intriguing about the rap is the final line: “Welcome to the veldt.” That line could mean interpreting the whole song through a short story by Ray Bradbury called “The Veldt.” The story of a “smart house” whose nursery puts the children in a virtual African landscape complete with lions on the prowl who seem far too real, it questions the use of technology and its psychological effects on children and parenting.

In a way, Sims’ “Burn It Down” brings out those same tensions wondering:
What will you call your home?
What will you call your own?
Where will you lay them bones,
lay them greedy bones?

I see Sims questioning our greedy landscape that grabs for everything but leaves precious little thought to what we really need—like a home built around love.
Everyone stepping sideways to the cheapest sleight of hand
Play to your weakness, see the darkest side of man.

That’s what Sims is calling on us to burn down. Let’s set aside all of these things we cling, too, and burn them down. “Burn it black/Down to the ash, start from the scratch/
Build it all back.”

I would chime in at this point and say this is a spiritual call to new birth, to burn down the sin and watch new life emerge. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in us; this is what happens through Baptism; this is what we experience in Christ.

Sims’ question, “What will you call your home?” seems to point in a spiritual direction, too. It’s a question of where we’ll put our hope, where we’ll hang our dreams, where we’ll place our trust. Sims himself even hints at the spiritual dimension of the question when he says:
Which one will save your soul with your sight on solid gold?
Oh, hell no, can’t feel that hallowed ghost
with his hands wrapped around your throat.

I’d interpret that last piece as the choice between heaven and hell, between Jesus and the devil (“Which one will save your soul” with your greedy vision?). It’s hard to feel the Holy Spirit while the devil is clamoring for your attention (“Can’t feel that [Holy Spirit] with [the devil’s] hands wrapped around your throat.”).

The song ends saying, “Welcome to the veldt.” Welcome to the smart house, welcome to the house that let lions into the nursery, welcome to the world that allowed us to be devoured by lions, devoured by the devil. Welcome to the veldt, but the song’s message is clear: burn it down. Burn down this veldt. Burn down this dark reality. Burn down this place that would devour us. Feel that hallowed ghost (Holy Spirit) and shake off the devil whose hands are wrapped around your throat.

So, then, I hear a prayer here: Burn it down, Holy Spirit. Burn down this evil world. Bring this world to an end, Jesus. Bring us all to heaven. That’ll be our home. A far better home than we could ever invent by ourselves, because it won’t be the veldt of our own design. It’ll be the true world of peace that God intended for us to experience.

Bad Time Zoo will be released on February 15. Check out the video for “Burn It Down”.

Sims
Doomtree