I’d half a mind to bill Sage Francis the Caucasian version of Outkast’s Andre 3000 before realizing that such a conflation was actually disservice to the former (a Providence, Rhode Island-born, dual-degreed, former battle-rapping emcee) and a compliment to the latter (the lanky, weirded-out half of Atlanta’s bohemian rap duo.) Andre 3000’s only a part-time social commentator-satirist whose melancholy seems derived more from boredom with music than from being blessed—or cursed—with the insight to lyrically chronicle a world gone mad—Iraq, Darfur, global warming, the prison-industrial complex.
For a long time, this mad, mad world has provided gristle for Francis’ biting rhymes (“Makeshift Patriot” should’ve been on the soundtrack to Fahrenheit 9/11). But with Human the Death Dance, the poet-activist backs off, ever so slightly, from being hip-hop’s Bill Maher and turns his incisive tongue on ... himself. His isn’t an Eminem-esque assessment of what ails him. Em said infamously, “I am whatever you say I am.” Conversely, Francis chooses to define himself over 16 tracks of beatific hip-hop.
Human the Death Dance is an opus through emo-tinged rap, shifting rhyme schemes, sparse but jazzy beats and the satirical sagacity that’s made him an icon and a tortured soul. “Underground for Dummies” sums him up well: “I’m a DIY artist with thick grass roots/I had a couple managers as a youth ... Now one of them, he saw dollar signs in my skin color/The other? He said to keep it under cover.” –Damon Hodge