Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury

The album was somewhat good, but it felt like a slightly flat Public Enemy

The beats were uninteresting a lot of the time, and the rapping was ok but nothing special. Some of the verses I enjoyed, it's a shame they can't write a chorus for shit. They think repeating the title of the song passes for one

I did enjoy their take on California Uber Alles though that was fun

This sounds like an afterschool special made by listening to PE’s Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black and trying to clean it up and mainstream the ideas. It also makes painfully clear how important good rhyme skills and intricate beats are to make rap music compelling. The lack of this combo in most songs here, coupled with Franti’s lack of a convincing flow, make this rap-by-number concoction a pedestrian listen.

Almost a 4 !I liked alot about this but none of it hit hard enough to make an impact. He talks a lot of sense though.

Good beats, interesting themes, but, most of the time, it sounds like if Chuck D couldn't rhyme. Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury shows he's capable of socially conscious rap that actually rhymes. 3.75

Love the revolutionary hip hop genre but this was a bit slow for me.

Love that.

Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury
You could say this is very prescient, that the social and political themes Franti (V ‘03!) raps about are very apposite today, or you could say same as it ever was - the inequities of 1991 aren’t just the same as they are in 2026, they are the same as 1977 or 1968 or 1951 or whichever year you might choose. Or you could say, like the album cover, it's all very obvious and simplistic - tv bad, government bad, inequality bad etc etc.

Musically it does feel caught between a kind of Public Enemy-lite and a more Jazzy golden age of hip hop sound, and it’s definitely more successful when it leans on the latter - the piano and flute parts of Famous and Dandy are much better than its siren laden intro. Television the Drug of the Nation is of course well known and it is great, if a little heavy handed in places, again leaning more on that golden age jazziness rather than the more frenetic Bomb Squad sound.

Language of Violence, The Winter of the Long Hot Summer, California Uber Alles and Water Pistol Man are all good too, variously low key and jazzy or in the case of California Uber Alles tracing the line of social protest and DIY from punk to hip hop. There are a few dips, Socio Genetic Experiment is strangely annoying and Music and Politics has the earnest discomfort of attending a slam poetry night.

It’s on the cusp of 3 and 4 - a lot of it is great, but for me it doesn’t quite seem to come together as a whole, so I’ll go with the highest of 3s.
📺📺📺
Playlist submission: Television, the Drug of the Nation

eh, rap de mensagem de ótima qualidade.
mas concordo co amigo, precisava de uma produção mais polida. não que seja ruim, mas é longo e fica mei cansativo...

Not my kind of music, but the content is still relevant and true today. 3/5

Was not a fan of this. The conscious message is cute n cool and all but the music sounds like bullshit. Won’t be revisiting.

EDIT 25SEP2026: Yea this shit deserves a 1. I was being nice when I gave it a 2

I love this album. It was probably the lp that showed me what hip hop could be (well that and Public Enemy headlining the 1992 Reading Festival). Readng the other reviews I think this probably had a bigger impact on the Indie/Alt community in Britain than on the Hip Hop world.

Listening again I can see why some would call the flow old fashioned, but this I don't listen to enough rap for it to sound dated to me. The subject matter, however, is unfortunately modern.

I love the concept but don't care about the product. Pretty luxurious, I know

Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury along with being one of the biggest mouthfuls of an album to say (especially if you include the group's name too) is a pretty good hip-hop album. It apparently appears to be industrial hip-hop which is a genre i haven't heard much of together but quite a lot of separately. And i see it with some of the electronic vibes in some of the instrumentals which are pretty good sounding by the way and i also like that the lyrics aren't terribly shallow which is a problem which plagues a lot of hip-hop records. My only issue with this album is the length of some of the songs which in some cases, go on for far longer than they need to. It is still a pretty solid album despite this blunder.
Best Song: California Uber Alles
Worst Song: The Winter of the Long Hot Summer

Sounds more like an audiobook. Quite annoying

'Exxon and on and on and on'; 'Athletes and entertainers / Have become the minstrels of commercials'; 'Why most people think Central America means Kansas / Socialism means un-American / And Apartheid is a new headache remedy.' There're few hip-hop records THIS political, where every line critiques the system and there's no break from a penetrative analysis of society. It'd be easy to dismiss this record as a dated phenomenon - T.V. is the drug of the nation? - ha, how 'bout brain rot and American fascism? But Michael Franti is too original to be overlooked, a breathing composite of Gil Scott Heron, Chuck D, and George Carlin. And when he sounds too much like the Public Enemy front man, Franti can confide in Rono Tse's industrial refreshments.

This instantly reminds me of Public Enemy knock-off, even as far as the main MC vocal goes - he does remind me of Chuck D. Television is the drug of the nation is the track which stood out the most. Good stuff, probably 3 stars, cause I would still prefer Public Enemy for this political hip-hop stuff

I gotta say, I did not dig it at first, but was loving it by the end.

Uma única canção de 4 minutos (Music and Politics) é muito pouco para um disco de mais de 1 hora e 6 minutos.

Говно

Hideous cover, but finally hip-hop with some statement and without women moaning