It's ironic that so many rappers pay lip service to the idea of "flow"-- especially their own-- while settling for a string of unrelated one-line putdowns. Might all this talk about fluidity be masking a sense of helplessness when it comes to rhythm and phrasing? Are flow-obsessed rappers just dried up? Even as I ask, Diverse wipes the smirk off my mouth. Since his sleepy 2001 debut, the Move EP, the Chicago-based rapper has made a relentless stream of cameo appearances on albums by Rjd2, Prefuse 73, Mos Def, and others. At some point, his style just came together, built around an easy mastery of micro-timing, emphasis, and pitch. Diverse avoids insults, hype and one-liners, but doesn't even need to say anything interesting to get your attention-- his gift lies in a rare kind of self-possessed delivery that could move you hard even without a beat. It's all in his flow.
"A lot of MCs let the rhythm dictate how they rhyme," Diverse was recently quoted. "I'm a poet even before I'm an emcee, which allows me to dictate to the beat." It's true that Diverse has a poet's gift for turning words-- the abstract, segmented raw materials of daily language-- into a concrete, continuous stream. But I'd go farther: Diverse can make almost any beat better by weaving it through with little darting tendrils of words-made-music, leaving a sparkling trail of associations almost as an afterthought. In this case, he has his work cut out for him, since the production (by Rjd2, Prefuse 73, and Madlib, among others) leaves very little room for improvement.
"Certified" and "Uprock", whose hype hooks pull forward while Rjd2 leans back into a lilting cut, are crowd-movers, pure and simple. The production becomes mercilessly spare on a gritty Vast Aire collaboration, "Big Game", where Diverse shows his range by rhyming "disposable circumference" with "pump your fist." Then Vast Aire tosses red meat into the Can Ox fanclub's cage, dropping: "I got you thinking I'm an animal/ Kind of like Tarzan but raised by cannibals." Despite the potential, there's no jungle-of-cities concept here, just a string of rhetorical twists on "Big Game". Madlib produces "Ain't Right", a decent two-part story-song about sudden death claiming guilty and innocent alike. Diverse can tell a story, we learn, but the increase in continuity is barely noticeable: Flow alone will carry him.
"Jus Biz", a loose meditation on wealth and livelihood, features the first of three busy, diaphanous Prefuse textures, with trademark distorted Rhodes, vibes, and feminine ooh's backing a loping boom-clip. Diverse fights for space in this environment, but wins. But "Explosive", a thorough collaboration with Quannum rapper Lyrics Born, doesn't quite earn its name. When he's really on, Lyrics Born can produce a brilliant flood of phonemes that stays a few steps ahead of any paraphrasable meaning. But here, articulation is his downfall, as a river of unenunciated blabber just makes Diverse's consistent spitting shine all the brighter. In "Under the Hammer", Jean Grae's perverse ghetto portraits get a rise out of Diverse, who's at his most arch and bleak. Then, horns reeking of jet fuel, "747" flies low with a heavy load of funk, spewing a hazy trail of puff-ups and put-downs. Ill as they are, I just can't believe Diverse means harm, especially after hearing the next track, a nuanced and tonal apology for "Leaving" home. I wish I'd left, too; the last track is a forgettable jazz collaboration with Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker and drummer Ted Sirota.
Diverse's delivery is so beguiling that after dozens of listens I have yet to worry about absorbing the content of this album. Maybe that's because there isn't much, and next album, I'll grow impatient with the sheen of his immaculate delivery. For now, I'm still enjoying it: Nothing deep, but all delicious.
