If any good came out of Nas' Untitled, it's that Dead Prez ended up with their biggest and most unexpected career boost since their cold-blooded performance of "Hip-Hop" became a sinister turning point in Dave Chappelle's otherwise group-huggy Block Party. Not only was stic.man a major inspiration and vocal contributor to the far-superior The Nigger Mixtape, but upon hearing Untitled's witless failure at cross-breeding N.W.A. and P.E., it wasn't hard to think, "didn't Dead Prez's Let's Get Free do this way better?" Indeed, that was Let's Get Free's entire M.O., and near-misses rarely come more fascinatingly or glaringly flawed-- just listen to early run of "I'm An African", "‘They' Schools", and "Hip-Hop" and you'll be ready to forgive "Mind Sex". Maybe.
It's not like there's ever a bad time for Dead Prez to return to the scene, but with their own DJ Lantern-helmed mixtape, a lack of any label constraints, and white people in power fucking up even more than usual, 2009 just feels like the right time for a reintroduction. But "Don't Hate My Grind" featuring Bun B…I mean, "Hip-Hop" initially tricked you into thinking that these guys might have been a Dirty South act at the get-go, but is that what they've actually grown into? Sort of. Turns out Young Jeezy was on to something with The Recession, employing a Obama-derived power of positivty within an easily understood, catch-all framework in which concerns of the everyday street hustle can be addressed. "My grind's my stimulus plan," M-1 spits at the end of "The $timulus Plan" and it functions as something of a thesis for Pulse of the People-- "grind" gets employed with a frequency that rivals Let's Get Free's use of the word "exploit*.*"
That's not as much of a 180 as it sounds, since ideals of self-reliance and community empowerment have always been a part of the Dead Prez ethos. Pulse follows suit, dealing less with dubious conspiracy theorizing and Molotov recipes and instead painting characters with broader strokes-- the young, erudite revolutionary-in-training ("Runnin' Wild"), the ethically admirable street soldier ("Gangsta, Gangster"), the anti-authoritarian ("Warpath").
As with their previous work, it can be difficult to figure out whether to evaluate the message independent of the actual music. It's a thankless task to find fault with a song that endorses donating to clothing drives and mentoring the young, but "Helpful" doesn't offer much beyond PSA, being the rare point on Pulse where Dead Prez's unfortunate love for sickly neo-soul hooks manifests itself. "Afrika Hot!" welds surf-guitar to a get-buck, native tongue chant in the most sonically exciting track, but otherwise, DJ Lantern collects a gaggle of beats all generically synthy and bass-heavy enough to delude itself into Hot 97 rotation; "Refuse to Lose" masters the obvious with its sample and I keep on waiting Ron Browz to show up at some point in "Gangsta, Gangster". Exponentially more difficult to explain is "My Dirty Valentine", a hair-pulling, ass-slapping, freek'n you sex jam that's could only be more out of character if it featured Vampire Weekend.
By a pretty large margin, Pulse of the People is the most feel-good record in Dead Prez's discography, whether due to its eco-friendly packaging or that "Summer Time" leaves open the possibility that these guys know how to have fun (though wooing with cabernet and a musical gets perilously close to "futon"/"croutons" territory). But then again, you almost miss how their earlier work left it up to the listener to determine whether Dead Prez were looking to educate or entertain when they advocated robbing pizza deliverymen or the idea that the only thing that made them angrier than white people are white people bumping "Hip-Hop" and ignoring, say, "Police State". Pulse of the People finds a pleasant middle ground between those two posts, but listening to Big Apple big-ups like "NYPD", I just hope that Dead Prez aren't expecting to find soldiers for their revolution in the XXL Bangers comments section.
