Bigg Jus - Poor People's Day (2005)

As regular viewers will probably have worked out, most of what you read here turns up because I feel like writing about it rather than through a desire to keep anyone's finger on a pulse of any description. The only reason it's taken me this long to get around to Poor People's Day is because I had assumed I'd already written something about it, but apparently not. The reason I had assumed that I'd already written something about it is because it's an honestly fucking amazing album.

You may recall Bigg Jus as having been one third of Company Flow, which will at least give you some idea of where Poor People's Day is coming from. Musically, it's not entirely unlike what El-P has been doing since Company Flow imploded - that same kind of post-industrial extrapolation of hip-hop fundamentals first drawn up on a couple of decks plugged into a light pole in the park. There's a science-fiction element, maybe a psychedelic tinge to the treatment of some of the samples and a bit more of a melody, but it's that same angry insurrectionary lurch albeit with a reduced sense of claustrophobia.

Lyrically, it further underscores that Company Flow were never just El-P with two other guys, and even titles such as Energy Harvester hint at similar dystopian obsessions; as does the subject matter. Bigg Jus is one of those guys who simply can't be pigeon holed and probably shouldn't be, given how fucking angry he is regarding the state of the world, society, and the machine which has made its business to shit directly upon us to an hourly schedule; and his politics are delivered without any of the conspiracy bullshit which blunts the testimony of many of his contemporaries. Poor People's Day is what we used to refer to as righteous truths, although it eludes even the conscious rap tag through having better things to do than waste half its playing time whining about other rappers letting the side down, which makes for a nice change.

Poor People's Day is one of those rare efforts that transcends its genre through not quite sounding like anyone else out there. It's truth is raw and of such emotional power as to reduce the best of us to tears simply through telling it like it is, for which soul music is as good a term as any. This one is right up there with Funcrusher Plus and I'll Sleep When You're Dead.