Album Review: The Undisputed Truth by Brother Ali

Brother Ali :: The Undisputed TruthRhymesayers EntertainmentAuthor: Arthur Gailes"I came in the door, 1984Paint on the wall, got chased by the lawOnce got stole in the face for the flowWas never given the zone, had to create my ownAs clean as the nose on my face that I placed on the stoneHad to stake my claim to the throneAin't no mistaken the sacred in his toneAli the new name by which greatness is known" If you missed his intensely personal 2004 debut, "Shadows on the Sun," there are a few things you need to know about Brother Ali: He's an albino, a devout Muslim, a proud father, and one of the best rappers to ever grace a microphone. And from the moment the hard guitar riff of "Whatcha' Got" (above) blasts through your speakers, it's clear that the Brother is on a mission with "The Undisputed Truth. " The title is as fitting as it is grandiose; Brother Ali is as honest as a rapper can be, he's as likely to give a self-conscious commentary on his own actions as he is to declare that "the truth is here.

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Review Summary: Brother Ali returns with the help of Ant and releases a solid, soulful hip-hop album. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in sheer quality, but some more variation would have been nice.Let's get this over with. Brother Ali is albino.On 2003's "Shadows on the Sun", the Minnesota born rapper presented the issue with the track Forest Whitaker.

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So many years removed from the genesis of hip-hop culture in the Boogie Down Bronx, it's a wonder that anyone still tries to rationalize its explosion as some sort of deliberate advancement of a stringently defined discipline. It's not that a current MC like Minneapolis' Brother Ali should be slighted for taking hip-hop as such a literal set of rules and regulations. It's that those confines leave little room for anything we haven't already heard a million times before.

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