Foreign Legion: Kidnapper Van

Self-professed distributors of "clever lyrics and hot beats," Prozack, Marque Stretch, and DJ Design mediate cultural significance and playful oblivion. They recognize their music as a socially responsible art form, but they don't crowd Mos Def at the hip-hop pulpit to make this point clear. Instead, lessons are taught by way of the composite arrangement. The beats (stylistically akin to DJ Premier's method of looped sound bytes) inform the lyrics, and vice versa. It is the communication of elements, rather than the overt and unchallenging sermon of the MC, that carries the message.

Kidnapper Van's greatest quality, however, is its recognition of hip-hop's self-accountability. In "Underground," an open letter to underground and retro rappers, FL fondly recalls a moment in hip-hop history when MCs could "keep it real/[But also] keep it skilled still." It contends that Old School cannot be reduced to self-conscious pandering to anti-pop sentiments or rhymes about basketball games and block parties. From Grandmaster Flash to Chuck D to RZA, hip-hop's trump card has always been its encouragement and embrace of innovation, its ability to reinvent modes of expression without short-changing the substance of what is being expressed. Aware of this ideological lineage, Kidnapper Van honors a continuum on which style and substance are neither mutually exclusive nor bound to a traditional mold. And it does so with a subtlety and an intelligence that adds refreshing new pages to hip-hop's textbook. Although it probably won't be preached (or even heard), a new gospel has certainly been handed down to the hip-hop masses. (Insiduos Urban)

—Thomas Kane

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