Arrhythmia
While most rappers prize money, women, and some convoluted version of "street cred" above all, Anti-Pop Consortium's Beans, Sayyid, and Priest immerse themselves entirely in the joys of language, spitting staggeringly complex monologues in a riot of free-association poetry. "I'm now worthy of the grace / My face graces Jupiter's lakes," they stutter on the excellent "Bubblz" as dislocated bongo drums gasp and stammer around them. The production is out there: "Ping-Pong" loops the snap of a bouncing Ping-Pong ball, while the digital static of "Mega" segues an opera singer's heavenly scales into the trumpet of jungle beasts.Arrythmiais occasionally a difficult prospect--you may want to scream out for a simplistic Puffy brag or a funky Neptunes hook to take a breather from this never-ending torrent of ideas. Still, it's a mind-bending success that seeks nothing less than to deconstruct and rebuild the discipline of hip-hop from the ground up.--Louis Pattison