Anti-Pop Consortium Return

The group that personified what it means to push hip hop forward and push the boundaries that define it are back and as you might guess, they're on top of their game once again once again. Seven years after they parted ways to pursue separate projects, Anti-Pop Consortium have reunited and recorded their fourth album Fluorescent Black. Fluorescent Black is far from your average hip hop record, in fact, this work of independent hip hop art is a brutal contrast to just about everything around it. Blunt, aggressive, and beyond intelligent Anti-Pop Consortium prove that maturity, wisdom, and the ability to crank out a killer record at the drop of a hat is all second nature to them.

These left-field, abstract wizards of the beat write songs that aren't normal, don't pretend to be normal, and don't want to be normal. Utilizing guitars as much as turntables and able to drop rhymes at light speed the group clearly fear nothing and are constantly at war with how generic so much of today's music has become. Fluorescent Black is a challenging record, it doesn't have a huge club banger on it, but instead it has dark dreary beats that sound like Radiohead if they had street cred. It's grey matter that will make you think as it's beats roll over you in a manner similar to a Panzer tank. In other words, Fluorescent Black is relentless stuff and that's what makes it so good.

For a group that's been away for nearly seven years, it's hard to believe that Fluorescent Black is as consistent as it is. But it is and from the opening moments, "Lay Me Down," to the infectiously dim, "Shine." and the left of center abstract beats of, "The Solution," Anti-Pop Consortium show just why they were the rulers of the independent hip hop scene. This is a group that's so original and so far ahead of everyone that they could afford to take seven years off and pick up right where they left off and no one would still be close to being as ahead of the curve as they are. Fluorescent Black is a brilliant return and a fantastic return to form. Edgy, grim, and free of restraints Fluorescent Black is one of the best hip hop albums you haven't heard but need to.