Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury

Thank you for reminding me to listen to the Dead Kennedys again

Disposable it is indeed. Tedious, unaffecting nonsense.

I should like this, but I just cannot get into the album.
The beats are interesting, and honestly fine, but never really that exciting. The lyrics are meaningful and personal, but just so on the nose that they lose the appeal.

The social and political commentary on this album is so ahead of its time that most Americans STILL aren't ready to hear it. It's not like other people weren't saying similar things at the time; it's more they talked about the effects, rather than the roots. This guy went to class, took notes, analyzed the material, and extrapolated more significance than the lecturer gave, and threw his thesis into this album. "Music and Politics" was a superb bit of introspection you'd be surprised to hear from anyone today, let alone someone on a hip-hop album from 30 years ago. That took courage.

The beats were and samples were on par with the rest of late 80s to early 90s hip-hop; nothing special. The flows were standard and don't stand out as better (but possibly slightly worse). Overall, not a great musical experience nor necessarily a showcase of great talent (though I do appreciate some of Franti's current works from a musical perspective).

Ultimately, this gets 4 stars from me for the disturbingly prescient political and social commentary and the bit of introspection I surmise most of us could use to better ourselves.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Maybe this is just outside the range of what I can absorb and comprehend as a listener and as a human being.

Cool beats. Lyrics are heavy handed and not always artfully composed, but are nonetheless quite based!

Like a lot of albums from the 90s, it's too long with it clocking in a 66 mins. On the whole, this was pretty decent but I did find the beats to be a bit samesy/boring.

Mom, can we have Public Enemy?

We have Public Enemy at home.

At home:

Television The Drug Of The Nation, a must listen, classic!

There is a lot to like on this album, but by the end I felt exhausted from political lecturing. I get it, we're still screwed!

Chicanery music but boring.

Oh wow, we don't really learn anything at all, do we?

Tijdens het luisteren google ik het album. Grove samenvatting: een maatschappelijk geëngageerde poëtische Public Enemy. Doet het internet die laatste wat mee te kort. Die hebben de muziek toch ook ingezet om een positieve maatschappelijke omslag te bereiken. Het zal er op duiden dat dit wat minder agressief is. Waardoor ik makkelijker bereikt word. Maar aan de andere kant moet je muziek eerst horen voordat het je kan bereiken. En door de stevige opzet had ik Public Enemy al honderden malen gehoord en dit nog nooit. Het is ook wat raar om dit als reden voor de selectie te noemen. Er is voldoende rap in deze categorie. Maar het is de selectie van de 1001 die juist de meer aggressieve rapplaten eruit heeft gepakt.

Ik heb al eerder geschreven over het idee dat maatschappelijk geëngageerde rap wel erg snel poezie wordt genoemd. Net als bij Public Enemy zijn de teksten vaak juist vrij letterlijk. Op een woordgrapje hier en daar na.

Muzikaal zijn nummers als de titeltrack inderdaad goed te vergelijken met Public Enemy, maar net iets minder krachtig. Er zijn ook hele andere klanken. Zo klinkt de muziek onder Socio-genetic experiment wat als de muziek van Tricky. Maar net iets minder pakkend.

De individuele nummers zijn eigelijk altijd wel beter gedaan. Maar als album heeft dit wel een kwaliteit. Elk nummer heeft aandacht gekregen. Opvullers zijn er niet. De stem blijft fijn luisteren en goed te verstaan.

Oh yeah. I like this. Righteous lyrics and groovy baselines. Underrated early 90s hip hop.

Great lyrics. A bit long

I thought this came out in the 80s based on what it sounded. There are better sounding hip hop albums that came out before and around the same time. Rapping was a bit dry. It was a decent album but I didn't find it very interesting. The only song that stood out was - Music and Politics.

It's OK. I've always liked Michael Franti...but I've also always thought he was a bit tedious. I listened to Spearhead a bit when I was young, but although this predates that, the Michael Franti I know is all here. He's a good storyteller, if a little heavy-handed. If you want a history lesson, or if you want to be outraged at the state of the country, this is the album for you.

Honestly, it's staggeringly sad that this album could have been written today. INS Greencard A-19 191 500 is the most timely 30-year old song I could imagine.

Overall it's a decent album that's probably a little longer than it should be. I like it, but he has a unique voice that gets to be a bit same-y after awhile.

This is another one of those albums that I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. Summer of 92, on the radio, as i was driving through Florida. It instantly caught my ear as a that Unique style that I had never heard before. This was in the days before Shazam and the internet, and I was just passing through listening to a radio station. I would never hear again. So it took me kind of a long time to figure out what artist it was and how to find it. Once I found it I listened to it on constant rotation for weeks.

Years later I would fall in love with the band. Spearhead. Took me awhile to connect the dots and realize that that Michael Franti was the frontman for both of them. Early spearhead kept a lot of the anger, energy, and politics of Disposable Heroes, but put it to really fun music. Re-Listening to this album really makes me wish Franti could get some of that anger back. We need it more than ever now.

A surprisingly strong example of politically conscious rap. It does dip into #im14andthisisdeep territory now and then, but I suppose his heart is in it, and it's a rawness and honesty that I can respect - if nothing else, at least the pen game behind it all is consistently impressive.

The album does also benefit from great production, not just from the excellent jazzy beats, but also its storytelling through the use of samples. On that note, my personal highlight on this album is the intermission track INS Greencard A-19 cleverly evoking some of the alienation and red tape immigrants face through sound design alone. Sad to say that the hysteria on illegal immigration has only gotten worse since.

Overall it's far from perfect, but I think it treads ground that not many hiphop albums do, and I think that does deserve some recognition.

Standouts: Satanic Reverses • Language Of Violence • INS Greencard A-19 191 500 • Music and Politics

This was a new group for me. I really enjoyed this album, even if it was a bit long.

Solid 4.

Well, that was quick today. I listened to the first three tracks briefly. That's just hip hop. Even if the rap isn't quite as aggressive as so often in this genre, I wasn't interested. The community of my streaming provider seemed to be of a similar opinion. The viewing figures for "Television, the Drug of the Nation" are in the low seven-digit range (which is not much for a over 30 years old song), those for the other first three tracks in the low six-digit range. All others are in the low four-digit range. A silly album cover, by the way. 1/5