In his breathless liner note blurb for Antipop Consortium's self-mythologizing, gallery-rap precursing 2000 debut Tragic Epilogue, Greg Tate referred to High Priest as having his "aorta on his sleeve," quoting the lyric "I'll play the part of the heart-torn rapper trying to reveal his feelings but lacking devices." Priest's soul-searching tendencies were more often than not subsumed to the good of the Anti-Pop whole, though; in space, remember, no one can hear you scream. On his first solo record Born Identity, however, Priest makes sure the blood is flowing vigorously and unavoidably.
Identity's rhythmic backdrop doesn't sound too different from the Anti-Pop records. Producer Earl Blaize is back, and his ominous piano plinks, synth blasts and skittering drum machines come with him, surrounding Priest's uniquely shapeshifting timbre-- alternately resembling MF Doom's suspended placidity and Ghostface Killah's avant-soul croon-- as well as they ever have. The beats are still fun, but Priest's overstretched, occasionally cringe-inducing lyricism is the record's breaking point.
True to its title, Priest is set to establish himself as a socially conscious rapper on Identity; he's making neo-soul heavy on the "neo" and without traditional soul signifiers. This leads to introspective track titles like "They Will Never See" and "Elevation", the latter containing the phrase "Can't say I never repped the hood," as if this record allowed him to check that off his list of career to-dos. "Holla Atta General" features a recurring omniscient voice intoning "He knows just what's going down/ Expanding his consciousness to one more level," and "Book of Keys" features the eyebrow-raising boast "I'm sorta like a young Ali, that means I'm sorta like a young Chuck D." Ahem.
That Priest is confident of his skill and place in rap's pantheon shouldn't be surprising, but it's hard not to be taken aback by Identity's constant tinfoil hat doomsday-raps, also known as unironic conspiracy theorizing. "Pitfalls", about returning war veterans, and "Through the Fire", about the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, come straight from the heart, but are pushed aside by, for instance, L.I.F.E. Long's verse on "Karma Movements", which imagines a post-apocalyptic America seemingly from the perspective of a crazy street corner doomsayer (yes, he does mention 12 Monkeys). On "American Prayer", Priest vainly tries to remember a newspaper article; you know, the one about the government injecting mind-control fluid into unsuspecting citizens. Then he wastes "Afro Horn"s skronky jungle sax by irresponsibly conflating police-related and gang/music industry-affiliated killings: "They shot Amadou, they shot Amaru, let's not forget they shot the son of Mrs. Wallace, too."
Priest began his career on Dan the Automator's space-rap vanity label 75 Ark, responsible for the imaginatively dystopic conceptual visions of Dr. Octagonycologist and Deltron 3030. Born Identity is most certainly cut from the same sliver lamé cloth, but suffers under the weight of Priest's ultra-serious polemics, replacing his predecessors' darkly creative humor. It feels like a missed opportunity, not least because of the wasted, nearly anonymous TV on the Radio cameo on the album-closing instrumental non-entity "Keep Time". If Priest is to push forward with the well-intentioned post-art school pastiche he's begun with Identity-- what Tate's blurb referred to as "downtown avant-pop"-- he'd most definitely do well to take more than a passing glance at TVOTR's comparatively brilliant and seamless fusion.
