When we last left Christian rapper John Reuben, he was entrenched in a battle between two personalities, The Boy Vs. the Cynic. For a guy who started his career on an uneasy mix of thoughtful rhymes over pop/rock-inspired rhythms, and a healthy dose of goofiness that was part Eminem and part circus clown, he had certainly come a long way. It was a self-aware album, an admission that there were two sides to his hip-hop persona, and only as that album drew to a close did they manage to come to a truce at a place of hard-earned wisdom. (Not that there weren't several nuggets of wisdom earlier on, but showing the incompleteness of either philosophy was kind of the point.) That gave meaning and purpose to the musical whiplash... but it could still be tricky to listen to, making his albums feel a little inconsistent even if each one contained its share of strong songs.

Reuben might finally have that problem licked on his 2007 album, Word of Mouth. I can detect a healthy balance of boyish optimism and well-tempered skepticism running throughout its brief 10 songs, and let me tell you, when you pare an album down to such a small number of offerings, you'd better hope there are no duds in the bunch. I think it's the first time Reuben's accomplished such a feat, quite honestly. This time, there aren't any wacky interludes or DJ spinning tracks to fill time - the message and the music are quite focused, and yet there's a lot of playfulness and diversity to be found in the construction of each individual song. Forget the Eminem comparisons that have only really dogged John Reuben because he's white - start thinking Beck and you might get a better idea of where he's headed. I don't even know the extent of Beck's musical exploration, so this isn't an "If you like A, you'll like B" sort of comparison, but it's definitely the first thing that comes to mind when a guy starts throwing plucky strings, a children's choir, banjo and dobro, poppy dance beats, and the occasional funky guitar lick into the backing tracks for his hip-hop songs. It's the kind of thing that totally doesn't sound like it's gonna work at first (even as a seasoned Reuben fan, I have a definite "adjustment period" with each new album), but when you realize how well it does work, it's tempting to label the guy a genius.

Now if you're an aficionado of hip-hop for the things that actually make it sound like hip-hop, you'll probably disagree with that statement, pointing out that Reuben's got a bit of an awkward flow on several occasions, and that his music sounds pretty good to suburban kids like me who are more comfortable with genre mixing than we are with straight-up rap music... and I wouldn't disagree with any of that, really. Reuben's found his weird little niche, and he's happy with it, and I'm not interested in his music because I want to prove how diverse my musical tastes are or be part of some scene. The musical twists and turns amuse me, and the words, even when the delivery is too slow and measured to sound natural, are generally pretty hard-hitting. Reuben excels at what he does, and I've learned not to make the mistake of saying it's "better" than standard hip-hop just because it avoids that genre's cliches... it's just a different thing altogether that happens to interest me more, and I've heard a few other rappers (of more than one color) try this sort of thing and come off as mere novelty acts, so it's no longer the whole, "Hey, he's rapping to an acoustic guitar!" gimmick talking - that might have been enough to get me on the Reuben bandwagon in 2000, but times have changed, and thankfully, so has he. (Though you will still hear him rapping over an acoustic guitar, as well as the many other wacky things I mentioned.)

What's most striking about Word of Mouth is its Ecclesiastical tone - a lot of it deals with the frustration of growing older and suddenly passing that point where the age you're dying to be is behind you and you're wondering what you did with your prime. Reuben, like me, is coming up on age 30, so it's not like he's some old dude yet, but it's that phase in life where a lot of people first start to deal with "feeling old" - they've taken on more responsibility, have less free time, and find that life is more routine than those heady high school and college days. This could lead to a lot of narcissistic and introspective angst for some artists, but a lot of John Reuben's point in exploring these feelings is to honestly admit that he's dealt with it, too, and come out realizing that you're only as old as you act like you are. Responsibility and the need to make a paycheck can't be ignored, that's a solid fact of life, but why do we play the easy victim and allow these things to kill our courage, our innovation, our freedom to live a creative life?

At times, John makes his point by satirizing hipsters and scenesters who are too eager to play the role of something they're not, and at other times he's pointing the finger squarely at himself, saying he's the one who bought the lies and left his inner child on life support. Through it all, there's a silver lining, a sense that this childlike faith can be won back again - but you've gotta own up to your own laziness and be willing to fight for it. You'll have to watch carefully to catch those nuggets of truth in between the admissions of life becoming ho-hum and man starting to lose touch with his dreams - Reuben may have once spit out "God Is Love"-type cliches with CCM star Toby Mac at his side, but now he's turning around and asking us why we let that love turn to apathy. It's a hard question. And hearing it stated so boldly is one of those things that turns out to be soooooooo good for the soul.

Sing It Like You Mean It
Roaring twenties, depressed at thirty
Busybodies move with urgency
I put my ear to the street, somebody catch me up to speed
I want to win, but I don't want to compete...
With a loud whistle and the crack of a whip, the intro to this song will totally startle you if you have your stereo volume set too loud. Reuben appears to be up to his usual goofy tricks with spaghetti Western-style guitar licks, references to some of his nicknames, and the joke, "What's round on the ends and high in the middle" (to which a group of kids cheerfully responds, "O-HI-O!") But the words have a definite serious tone to them, as he raps about the days of youth, a time in a person's life when they have mere pennies to their name but feel like they have a wealth of dreams and ideas. This turns into a hard look at how the years fly by and people grew older and more established, but also more complacent and stuck in a routine - "Own some land, pay the tax/Mini-van with two and a half/Raise your glass, toast to past/It all happened a little too fast/Passionate about what you can't get back." The chorus has a strange melody to it, one which grows in intensity as it unsettlingly changes keys each line, almost taunting the listener to stop faking it: "Sing it like you mean it! Make me believe it! Dream like you own it! The party ain't stopping until we've outgrown it." Thankfully, there's some solace in that last line, but it hits hard for those of us who told ourselves we had already outgrown it.

Trying Too Hard
Are we having a good time?
Absolutely, who wouldn't be?
You can introduce me to the moody cuties
And dudes who act like I'm supposed to know they should be
Well I don't, nor do I care...
"Oh buddy," John half-whispers at the beginning of this one, "the freaks come out at night". He's satirizing the whole clubbing scene with this one, which makes sense, since it's a venue where the type of music he likes is often played. Now he's got nothing against going out, and dancing to some great tunes, and enjoying the company of friends. But he's in the mood to skewer those who just show up to be seen acting cool. Against some staccato guitar riffing and busy, shuffling drums and bass, he mocks those who feel like they need to throw away all of their disposable income on overpriced drinks just to maintain a social life - he knows they're really just "telemarketers and busboys trying to tear the club up", and his message is basically, "Dude, you can be yourself and have fun and nobody's gonna look down on you for it, but stop acting like you're somebody important who I should bow down to." He also hints at how entertainment can be a form of escapism, wasting the hours away in an attempt to push away our regrets over who we've become: "Every one of us is born a genius, until we got too cool to play." About the only thing I don't like here is the awkward spoken hook: "You're trying too hard, you must not know who you are. It's not natural; you look uncomfortable." It just doesn't pop out with the right sort of pizzazz to be a line that you'd want to repeat as the refrain of a song - but that's a misstep that Reuben often makes, unfortunately. Aside from that, it's a rock solid track that was ingeniously written. I love the little ad lib at the end where he suddenly breaks away from the narrative of the song to remark, "Hey waitress! I did not order this."

Make Money Money
Now kids pay good money to look poor
And get charged for the extra work
Of perfectly placed character
Isn't that some irony? Expensively indie!
There's probably no bigger hip-hop cliche than talking about making money - but if you hear this song's exuberant chorus of voices urging us to "Make money money, make money money money!" and then proceed to save said money money, and think John's just rapping about living large, you're not paying attention. (Hopefully the banjo plucking, toy xylophone, off-key acoustic guitar being tuned, and other assorted instrumental contributions will remind you that this is anything but typical commercial hip-hop.) He's really trying to impart some wisdom about how money disappears fast and you'd be wise to spend it slowly and carefully. What John finds ironic is how much people who have money will spend to basically look like they've rolled out of bed - a sort of weird fashion trend that glamorizes poverty, because that's where your heroes came from or whatnot. John's also points out that it's not cool for the poor to turn their noses up at the rich just because they have different circumstances. He's basically affirming that we're all given a different lot in life, but need to be wise with what we have, because all of our possessions are fleeting. This is straight-away the easiest track on the album to get hooked on - the old-sounding dude singing the chorus and the banjo provide a quirky melodic element that's difficult to get out of one's head.

Focus
Anticipation nowadays looks a lot more like anxious
Time killed away our imaginations
We used to escape into fantasies and fairytales
Now we medicate... How do you feel?
A brilliant intro of plucking strings and echoing "la"s from the voices of children leads into what is, for me, the most hard-hitting track on the album. It's a more ominous, darker-sounding song, with the thick sound of the live drums, the piano, and the forlorn melody (hauntingly echoed by the chorus of children) insistently knocking at the door of one's soul, pleading for us to veer off of the pre-set course that leads to death by way of pure numbness. John raps about the idealistic days of youth, asking how many of the heroic dreams we once declared we'd follow are actually realities, and pointing out the irony in how as youngsters, we couldn't wait to be all grown-up and married with children and "real" jobs, and now here we are and we're idealizing those younger days that we'll never have again. He's making it clear that idealizing any time in your life other than now is a recipe for disappointment - the time to change the world, or at least stop and look at it long enough to make sure you're really still living in it - is now. It's one of those songs that hits me square between the eyes and forces me to think hard about whether I'm really OK with just living the "easy life" now that I can pay my own bills and keep my wife happy and I've got a pretty comfortable schedule to adhere to week in and week out. Is there anything important left to happen? Are there still dreams to shoot for, or have I accepted a life of "normalcy" because it's better to not have unpredictable surprises that shake it up? John sounds mighty depressed here as he ponders similar questions, but it's the kind of depression that leads you to get off your lazy but and revives some of that youthful spirit - it's never too late.

Word of Mouth
Trend-setters, real go-getters
Closed-minded, free-thinking hipsters
Instant classics adored by critics
It's just music for the kids...
Reuben gets extremely sing-songy for the title track, with its slick bass line, insistent piano, and smart-alecky lyrics about a musician's fifteen minutes of fame and the critics who will show up and declare it's all nothing new. Listen carefully to a song that appears to just be about trends in hip-hop music and John responding to his critics, and you'll discover a deeper layers that echoes the sentiments of King Solomon - "There is nothing new under the sun". John's response to that realization, instead of to be bummed and stop trying, is to basically say, "Yeah, I'm doing something that sounds like something else you've heard before. I'll never be 100% original. Tough. Doesn't mean I can't have fun doing it." But you could also see it as John mocking the music industry's desire to crank out hit after predictable hit with nothing really different that stands out - the poppy nature of it, the cheesy synthesizers, and the loopy change-ups in the chord sequences as the song transitions into its coda definitely have a tongue-in-cheek nature, as John repeatedly remarks, "Familiarity breeds content." It's a shame that this fizzles out into a short interlude of people laughing at John while he sings off-key about he wants people to like him, but other than that, it's a fun song, if slightly over-the-top.

Miserable Exaggeration
People-pleasers never win, spread yourself too thin
It's best to just do what you feel in the end
But you'll change how you feel for the sake of the truth
When the world you're living in becomes bigger than you...
Several disparate elements combine to make a strangely cohesive whole in this odd song - an opening monologue by a French woman, space-loungey bells and keyboards, jazzy muted trumpet, and some other synthetic bloops and blurps. I'm not entirely certain, but this seems to be a song about overanalyzing life to the point where you're so busy picking it apart that you forget to actually live it. It has its roots in the work of other jazz-influenced rap artists, with a futuristic twist - I can't say I've ever heard another hip-hop song quite like it, but then that's true for most of the album.

Universal
Reality will still be there for you when the song is through
Twenty-four seven, breaking news
This just in, but I'm not paying attention
Ignorance isn't bliss, but taking a break from it is...
John continues to exude introspective wackiness (that might sound like an oxymoron, but John's quite adept at bringing the two together) on this interestingly syncopated song, which features some of his slickest lyrical delivery - it's got a rhythm somewhat like the cranking of a jack-in-the-box, if that makes any sense at all. I'm not as big on the little kids singing the chorus on this one, but that's probably just 'cause it's a tough chorus to decipher in the first place. "Cosmic meltdown, dress is formal"? Oooookay. The song seems to follow-up from the last one, in terms of emphasizing the need to take a break from over thinking life, and just have fun in a while - this is in stark contrast to the warnings from earlier songs not to waste one's life by medicating it with constant, meaningless pleasure. This may be John's way of saying that it's really about balance - it'd be unhealthy to ignore the real world, but it'd also be unhealthy to let it stress you out to the point where you completely lose your ability to "eat, drink, and be merry".

Curiosity
I've held a lot of conversations
With well thought out exaggerations
Thin line between insanity and insight
Better hope you're right...
A more up-tempo, bumping beat comes in for this goofy, danceable little song - perhaps the most melodic on the album, aside from the title track. John sings his own hook on this one, and it's kind of an ode to the imagination - "That's just your curiosity interrupting the routine." It's about the tendency of the human mind to ask the hard questions about the reality around us, and how we sometimes shut it down too soon for fear of learning something difficult to accept, but at other times we think too hard and take it way too far. It takes some discernment to know the difference between the two, and John's exploring the way that his own brain works, saying he'd rather take the good with the bad than train himself to shut the old brain off. Instrumentally, he's produced a solid song here, with some slick bass and an insistent beat that keeps things moving at a brisk pace. It's one of those tracks that, after initially listening to the album and being perplexed by some of the strange hooks and musical ideas present, I was drawn back to this one enough to listen through in order to get to it, thus leading me to appreciate the other songs around it more.

Cool the Underdog
I hate to interrupt your fantasy, but that chip on your shoulder is self-pity
Self-awareness became unhealthy, close your eyes and enjoy the scenery
If genius can't change the world, he might as well leave it
If genius can't change the world, he might as well critique it...
The intensity, and John's need to tell off his own ego, finally boil over on this climactic but somewhat disorienting track, named for one of the many nicknames that John mentioned during "Sing It Like You Mean It". John's delivery during the verses makes it tricky to find a reference point in terms of where the beat actually begins, and the space-aged mixture of tense strings, angular guitars, sad piano, and that old dude from "Make Money Money" singing another hook makes it easy for the weirdness to almost overshadow the strength of John's words... almost. But these lyrics are something else. John takes a page from the last album's "Cooperate" here, telling off his prideful side for always playing the part of the downtrodden underdog who the rest of the world likes to oppress just for the sake of it. He could do all of the sarcastic venting in the world, and even say a lot of poignant things that ring true about the world around us, and if all he's doing is blowing off steam, what does it really matter? He repeats this single line in the song's refrain, and it's perhaps the most disarming statement that he makes on the entire album: "The thrill of proving the world wrong is finally gone. You should move on."

Good Evening
Even if it's fashionable to be the pessimist
Skipped out of style, went straight to vintage
Can I get a "yes, ya'll" from all the naysayers
Listen to me now, or catch up to me later...
John usually starts off his albums with a catchy party song, but here, he's interestingly saved the most obvious party song for the end. This one's defiantly positive, in the vein of "So Glad" from the last album (even to the point where it sounds like Tim Skipper, one of John's favorite go-to guys for hooks, is singing the chorus, but I can't find him anywhere in the credits this time around). He catches himself being sarcastic and trying to silence the "player-haters", before realizing that hey, life's short and I might as well enjoy the party with the people who showed up. It's kind of a silly send-off after the heaviness felt throughout the rest of the album, and perhaps there's something tongue-in-cheek happening here, too, depending on how you take the line, "We'll take a happy ending, even if we're pretending". I'd have to listen more to really decide. Unfortunately, this one's kind of the weakest song on the album - not because it's happy, but because it's kind of an incomplete though that really makes for an awkward finish. The chorus throws out the line "Nobody's leaving until" seemingly just to rhyme with the statement "Goodnight is farewell", but until what? John never elaborates. This one really suffers from a case of not knowing how to complete a good thought that was started, as it degenerates into John freestyling about taking Bob Dylan's microphone, scat singing for a little bit, and then stopping the song to comment on how some of it was good, which cuts out abruptly, and... that's it. What the... ?

Eleventh-hour missteps aside, Reuben has probably delivered a career-defining album with Word of Mouth. What's delightful, despite his ruminations on the old fifteen minutes of faith and assertions that nay-sayers won't get it, is the surprisingly warm critical reception that it's already getting - and not just with the usual suspects at sites like Christianity Today. All Music Guide loved it, and I don't necessarily see a high rating from them as a beacon pointing the way to artistic brilliance, but in this case, they're a source more likely to say a few kindly nondescript words about how the already converted who don't need convincing will like a particular Christian music CD and it's really more of the same compared to superior mainstream attempts in the genre, slap a mediocre rating on the thing, and call it a day. It's nice to be in agreement with a source like that - I've been following John for years and I'm starting to feel like he's finally arrived. I wouldn't say he's the Sufjan Stevens of hip-hop or anything, but if he continues on this path... well, a guy's never too old to follow his dreams.

ALBUM WORTH:
Sing It Like You Mean It $1.50
Trying Too Hard $1.50
Make Money Money $2
Focus $2
Word of Mouth $1
Miserable Exaggeration $1
Universal $1
Curiosity $1.50
Cool the Underdog $1
Good Evening $.50
TOTAL: $13

Websites:
http://www.johnreuben.com
http://www.myspace.com/johnreuben

Recommended: Yes