Kris Parker is renown through out the world for his dedication to promoting Hip Hop as a culture as well as working to resolve various social and political issues. However, regardless of where his work and music have taken him, Kris has always made sure that God has maintained a prominent place in his life.

Like many of us, the tragic events of September 11th have caused Parker to contemplate and re-examine his beliefs and spirituality. While many other artists in many other genres simply push their thoughts and feelings aside in favor of continuing to secure their financial futures, Kris Parker chooses to explore these topics in his music. Once again he picks up the mic as KRS-ONE, this time rapping primarily to uplift the spirits of his listeners.

That’s right. KRS-ONE put out a Gospel album.

However, just calling it a Gospel album isn’t 100% accurate. While the majority of Gospel rap has traditionally been just a very diluted Christian version of Hip Hop music, KRS, being the proponent of Hip Hop culture and awareness that he is, made sure that the spirit of the hardcore rap music he helped to spawn remained intact on this project. As a result, his latest album Spiritual Minded is Gospel/Hardcore hybrid. Call it Godcore or Urban Inspirational or whatever else you can think of, but at its essence it’s just great music with a greater purpose.

Track Listing
1. Opening
2. Lord Live Within My Heart
3. Take Your Tyme
4. Take it to God
5. Good Bye
6. South Bronx 2002
7. Never Give Up
8. T-Bone Speaks
9. Tears
10. The Struggle Continues (Choose Your Way) feat. T-Bone
11. The Conscious Rapper
12. T-Bone Speaks Again
13. Trust
14. Come to the Temple feat. Smooth B., Rampage, Rah Goddess, and Fat Joe
15. Ain’t Ready
16. God is Spirit feat. B.B. Jay
17. Know Thyself
18. G. Simone Speaks
19. Dayz Ahead
20. Power

The Spiritual Minded album starts out with a short spoken introduction by KRS-ONE, then immediately moves into the first song, “Lord Live Within My Heart”. It’s easy to tell KRS is behind the boards here; he puts together one of those BDP beats that’s nothing but a hard kick drum, a little snare and high hat, and meager synth horn accompaniment. It’s the type of beat that non-emcees are afraid to rhyme over because there’s nothing to distract the listener from the artist’s lyrics. Kris spits a standard freestyle on this with crooners Anthony Grant and Lanji filling in the empty spaces.

“Good Bye” is a tribute and prayer for all those Hip Hoppers who have fallen for whatever reason. This would have been a pretty nice track if KRS wasn’t being backed up by weak keyboard chords and the single most annoying instrument on the planet, the soprano saxophone. That shrill “Kenny G” sound makes me want to pop my eardrums with a #2 pencil. It’s a shame because the rapper is really dropping some meaningful lyrics here, but the music makes you want to desperately hit skip.

On “Take Your Tyme”, the Teacher makes an appeal to young women not to follow the trend of sexuality and promiscuity currently permeating Hip Hop. To me, this sounded a little lopsided since there were no lyrics to the fellas out there trying to hit everything that moves. Still it’s a good message, especially with Lil’ Kim and her ilk dominating the airwaves presently. Cookies and Cream architect the music, using The Overcomers Christian Center Adult Choir to add a more traditional feel to an innocuous piano and guitar melody

To further increase the gospel sound in his “urban gospel” music on Spiritually Minded KRS-ONE wisely enlists the help of several Christian music choirs and performers, including Gospel rapper B.B. Jay. On “God is Spirit” B.B. and KRS collaborate to rap about the influence that God has had on their lives. B.B. naturally can’t quite keep up with KRS, but he’s definitely no slouch on the mic. He does do a kinda nice job on producing track though; the basic keyboard and drum package he constucts works very well with the Blastmaster’s loose rhyming.

But, KRS will never neglect to expound on the virtues of Hip Hop culture, and always raps passionately about the subject. KRS reps the “BX” like Benny Blanco (gold star for the first in the comments section who can name that movie) with the new update of his old anthem, “South Bronx 2002”. This is classic KRS-ONE / BDP. Over a sparse drum machine beat he kills the mic, covering topics about his Hip Hop’s current state of affairs. This is probably my favorite track on this CD. I love it when he talks about the state of MTV and radio in the second verse. Check the audio here:
http://www.rapnetwork.com/audio/krs-south_bronx_2002.ram

The lyrical pyrotechnics continue as producer Domingo takes a page from the Rza on “Never Give Up”. For this, the beatmaker borrows a Cantonese female voice sample to loop over the uptempo track. With his lyrics, the Teacher assaults the fake rappers, dishonest labels, and corrupt radio stations for knowingly adding to the decay of Hip Hop culture by messing up rap music. On the wide-open beat of “The Conscious Rapper” KRS-ONE paints a vivid picture of how difficult it is to maintain his spirituality and positivity in his music and how his commitment to spreading peace and knowledge attracts so many detractors. He makes a lot of sense when he talks about how conscious rappers will always be called “arrogant” just because they’re trying to uplift and educate people (I’ve read a lot of those articles). Kris confesses, “sometimes it’s easier to just pop the Cris.”

The Temple of Hip Hop represents on the collaborative “Come to the Temple”. Femcee Rah Goddess, Rampage from Busta Rhymes' Flipmode Squad, and Fat Joe of the Terror Squad spit verses about their struggles in Hip Hop, while Smooth B. from the old-school group Nice & Smooth sings the hook. With the pronounced drums and polished synth harmonies it turns out to be a pretty good track. It’s a shame that some of the other members of the Temple like Xzibit and Freddy Foxx (I think) didn’t drop verses here.

And as always, the political views are sprinkled liberally throughout the LP, but they essentially come to a head on “The Struggle Continues” . Over a deceptively simple but catchy drum and synth beat laced by Chase, KRS-ONE and T-Bone trade inspired lyrics. KRS moves himself up a few spots on an FBI watch list with these verses:

“How can we ‘Rap the Vote’ /
When we trapped by dope /
When we lack all hope /
Wnd we got no coats /
We tell our kids to go vote /
Or they don’t have a voice /
that’s a lie, you not really giving them a choice /
I speak facts; truth to the kids /
Tell ‘em the 2000 Presidential election was rigged /
Tell ‘em their vote doesn’t count /
‘Cause most of those votes were tossed out /
Faith in politics is the wrong route /
No doubt, tell them to trust God, not man /
Speak truth, I’m sure they’ll understand /
But no, you want to lie about it all day /
Cry about it and go away /
Rhyming’s about the only way I’m heard /
And that’s absurd in a democracy /
That’s why these cops be stopping me /
It’s hypocrisy /
The whole society’s corrupt and greedy /
We give to the rich and lock up the needy /”

One of the concerns I had when I first heard about this project was that KRS was going to sacrifice his usual onslaught of social and political messages blazing over a hardcore beat for this spiritual release, but luckily this didn’t happen. He continues to drop jewels from beginning to end over his standard banging drum machine beats without ever losing his sight of his goal to uplift God.

I would have loved nothing more than to have slapped about 30 stars on Spiritual Minded, but unfortunately the production on this album prevents me from doing so. For the most part, the beats are great. KRS, Tine Tim, Domingo and others do an admirable job of putting together some definite head-nodders without resorting to gimmicky samples or over-syncopated percussion. The problems come on the stuff that’s not their forte like the slower, more emotional songs such as “Good Bye” and the R&B/Gospel-type track “Tears”. The vocal, melodic, and percussion elements on these are often disjointed and detract from the overall song. Luckily though, these slower tracks are few and far between.

But all in all, this is definitely a great offering by KRS-ONE. It was a HUGE risk for him to try to put out a Gospel Rap CD, but it certainly paid off. And when you look back into his discography, rapping about spiritual issues is nothing new for Kris. His beliefs have been present in all his music almost since the start of his career.

With Spiritual Minded Kris Parker once again shows us that Hip Hop does have spirituality and consciousness despite what the major media outlets insist on telling us. Non-Christians, don’t sleep on this either; essentially it’s the just the same quality Hip Hop KRS-ONE has been delivering for the past 15-plus years, just with a greater emphasis on his spiritual side. Go out and buy this today.


For more info on the Temple of Hip Hop, visit: www.templeofhiphop.org



Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Waking up