KRS-One and the Temple of Hiphop
Spiritual Minded
Koch / In the Paint Records

Nowhere in popular music does the pendulum swing so quickly as in hip-hop. For every advance or shift in theme, persona or style there's a corresponding reaction. It's the genre where the biggest changes happen in the smallest periods of time.

So it is with the new album from KRS-One, the onetime ringleader of the seminal rap outfit Boogie Down Productions, a man so widely respected that he's turned up on albums by groups as diverse as Public Enemy and R.E.M. A reaction to and refutation of the materialistic and soulless hip-hop of mainstream radio and music videos, Spiritual Minded finds the 36-year old rap legend heavily influenced by Gospel music and God — not necessarily in that order.

The Brooklyn-born rapper's 10th album takes its inspiration from the 27 Bible verses listed along with its 20 tracks; the album's title recalls BDP's 1987 effort, Criminal Minded. Though there's plenty in the way of positive messages here — and several tracks that prove KRS can still battle with any of the game's top MCs — there's too much proselytizing and only the slightest hint of humor. Sometimes the pendulum swings too far.

"Know this: There was a time when humankind was one with God, in perfect peace," says KRS at the outset, setting the tone for the next 70 minutes of rhymes and old-school beats.

From there he moves into a track that is fairly typical of the album as a whole, "Lord Live Within My Heart." Rhymes like, "It's the K to the R to the S to the Uno/ You know, if you don't know, your crew know" show that he hasn't lost his fastball, even as the track's aggressive spirituality and Gospel refrain demonstrate that KRS thinks it's time to take hip-hop in a new direction.

Later, on an up-tempo track called "Take Your Tyme," KRS calls on women to respect themselves, letting fly with some of the album's most impressive rapid-fire wordplay: "Sex is like candy/ Be disciplined, no splurgin'/ You don't your stomach hurtin'/ Girl you gotta ... take your tyme."

"South Bronx 2002," a bit of "street gospel" that reprises a 1986 track of the same name, is as smart as political hip-hop gets: "Do what you gotta do/ But while you're wavin' flags/ Remember Amadou Diallo," KRS raps over a spare bass line, invoking the name of the unarmed man who was shot and killed by four New York City cops in February 1999.

On "Take It to God," KRS challenges the MTV mindset adopted by a generation of rappers, one that places greater value in ostentatious displays of wealth than it does on self-awareness.

"Good Bye" — as in "never got a chance to say" — is built around a list of hip-hoppers who've died too soon; Tupac, Biggie, Big Pun and KRS's former DJ, Scott LaRock, are among those remembered here. Seeing so many of his peers cut down has left the self-dubbed "philosopher of conscious rap" with a rather cryptic worldview: "You've gotta die before you die so when you die you don't die."

The track serves, too, as a memorial for the days when hip-hop "wasn't about no crime." Raps KRS, "If you battle me, fine/ But in the end we recline/ With a bottle of wine/ MCs, the original kind." That's followed by a bit of call-and-response in which KRS says simply, "Hip-hop," and a female backup singer replies, "Why did you change?" The heart is there, but the execution — or maybe it's just the maudlin, synth-heavy backing track — misses the mark.

KRS has said the material on the album was influenced by Sept. 11; "Tears" is the most obvious manifestation of this. Beginning with an audio clip of a newscaster describing mass memorial services and moments of silence, the track features an overload of religious imagery. And just in case the listener isn't getting it, KRS puts it even more directly, asking, "How long you ignore God's law?"

It's heartening to see an elder statesman like KRS chide hip-hop's young stars for caring about little else than "cars and rims and tattooed arms and Tims." And, in terms of marketability, it's brave to rhyme about God, as he does almost nonstop on this album. But unlike Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop, By All Means Necessary and several other early recordings that made him one of the most revered figures in urban music, Spiritual Minded will not be remembered as KRS-One at his best.

— Kevin Canfield (kcanfield at snet dot net)