P.O.S - Never Better

Released: February 3, 2009

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Unlike yesterday’s entry, this was an album I was waiting for.  Another release that slathered our campus with posters, P.O.S and the Rhymesayers crew were making sure this wasn’t ignored.  A few days after its release (in February, mind you), I gave the disc a listen with my then-roommate, a fellow P.O.S-enthusiast.

Looking across the room, I said, “Mark my words; this is going to be one of my top albums this year.”

Almost a full four seasons later, here we are, and Never Better is by far my top choice.

I know that P.O.S (whose real, easier-to-type name is Stefon Alexander) didn’t start in hip-hop.  His roots are in punk music, and while that’s a genre I never explored at length, it’s not hard to hear it in his three releases so far, all of which I’ve put serious listening time into.  If he wasn’t performing under Rhymesayers, a blatantly hip-hop label, and roaming the country with ensemble outfit Doomtree, I would beg the question as to whether Stef wants to be called a hip-hop artist at all.  There’s so much more fusion to his work, especially this latest disc, than a vocal track and backing beats.

It’s made for a breakout season for Stef (and in turn Doomtree and Rymesayers.)  When I’m walking through Target, I can see copies of this album all, and I’m glad to see that it hasn’t stopped in Minnesota.  Over the summer I was wandering through a store in Omaha, Nebraska, my hometown, and this was one of the featured discs.  I know that P.O.S is going on nationwide tours and getting huge turnouts and attention for them.  His performance at Soundset this summer was packed; I can speak to that firsthand.

This album deserves that attention, hands-down.  It’s not only one of the best I’ve come across, but one of the most important, with daring songs like Purexed, a track that fast became a staple of my summer.  With songs about trusting in yourself to be a beautiful person, trusting in other people to defy their stereotypes (and quacks say if he’s beat up/he’s bound to smack you, Stef says on Been Afraid, one of the album’s most powerful tracks), and questioning mainstream politics, he’s as informational as he is entertaining.

He’s not afraid to recycle material, either, but in a productive way.  Revisiting Savion Glover, a track from Doomtree’s False Hopes album, gives it a spark it didn’t have before.

Between the new and the old, Stef has brought together a myriad of different things and put them together in a way that doesn’t answer to anyone.  It’s part punk, part hip-hop, part politics, part self-assurance, and the varied nature of the album is what puts it at the top of my list.  It’s not afraid to be its own thing that tells people to be their own things, and as someone that believes in the power of music to change lives (Susan Boyle, anyone?), I think he’s onto something.

Like I said, it’s as important as it is entertaining.

And entertaining it is.  Dropping in pop culture references from Fugazi to The Big Lebowski, Stef definitely has his feelers out and isn’t confining himself to his own art and where it falls.  He’s self-referential, talking about the song itself in Optimist (We Are Not for Them), and throwing back to his previous album, Audition, at the very start of this record.  I’ve talked a lot about what went into it and what I take from it, but at its basest level, it’s an enjoyable album.  The instrumentation keeps a foot tapping, his delivery is timed while being a little improvised (see the end of Purexed, where he falters and laughs; I still can’t tell if it was just an outtake left in), he’s got a voice that leads and commands, his pacing is impressive, as on the title track where he takes an interesting candor. . .  It sounds as good as it feels.

Wordplay is an element not confined to the independent hip-hop scene, but I’ve noticed it being used there the most.  Someone once told me that a pun is the lowest form of humor, and I think the line between that and tricky wordplay is thin but vitally important to recognize.  Listening to the way Stef plays with what he’s saying, whether it’s his rhymes or the words themselves, is just another degree to the consideration put into these fifteen tracks.

Give this album a chance, and give it a listen.  This is another record that I recommend putting real attention to in order to get everything out of it that you should.  It’s unfortunate these days how much work independent artists put into their works just to have them become background noise.  Do P.O.S and the entire Rhymesayers label a favor and if you haven’t yet, give this album a real listen, whether it’s your first or fifteenth time through it.

This is, like I said, by far my favorite release of the year, and it’s been holding to that title since almost 2008.  I’m proud to have listened to and enjoyed this as much as I have, and it won’t be going anywhere in 2010.

And that winds up my best of 2009 list.  A happy new year to all of you, happy listening for 2010, and now we’ll resume our regularly scheduled, musically unguided reviews.

Take care, all.

Cheers.

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