Spiritual Minded
As hip-hop eats itself and continues to digest everything else around it, so does KRS-One. After performing every other recognizable rap subgenre, from "gangsta" to "battle" and "conscious," the Blastmaster goes gospel this time around. On "God Is Spirit," he teams up with talented gospel MC andNotorious B.I.G.soundalike B.B. Jay with decent results, while "Power" sounds way more gospel than hip-hop. The themes of redemption and rebirth run throughout the album, especially on "Tears," which is dedicated to the lives lost on September 11, 2001, and "Good-Bye", which pays homage to fallen hip-hop soldiers like Scott La Rock andEazy E, among others. You do get a small taste of the rapper you grew to love on "The Conscious Rapper," a brilliant essay that takes you through the trials and tribulations of a "conscious" MC, so the album's not entirely bad. But the problem is the beats. KRS-One self-produced more than a quarter of the album, while the rest of the underwhelming rhythm tracks cooked up by mediocre knob twiddlers Domingo and DJ Tine Tim ultimately sink this project.Spiritually Mindedis noCriminal Minded. --Dalton Higgins