Album: Ursula Rucker

Supa Sista, !K7

So, what do you expect from hip hop these days? What do you want from it? These are the questions behind Ursula Rucker's Supa Sista, surely the most articulate dissection of black American culture since the Seventies heyday of Gil Scott-Heron. Here's what Ursula wants: "No tricks, no whips, no weight-pushing/ And absolutely no platinum or ice/ No guns, no lies about your ghetto reputation/ And please, the term 'playa hater'?/ Well, I hate to tell you, but it's 'played out'." Ursula Rucker is Queen of the Poetry Slam, the most formidable of the black poetesses operating on the fringes of hip hop, a massive influence on younger peers like Dana Bryant and Jill Smith. Best known for her contributions to all three albums by her Philly friends The Roots, Rucker here recites her verses over open, spare grooves by such as 4Hero and longtime collaborator Robert Yancey III, taking on topics like childhood, womanhood and cyberspace with intelligence and imagination, only lapsing into melodrama in the lurid crack-baby scenario of "Song For Billy". She offers grudging acknowledgement in "Brown Boy" of the pressures facing young black males, but for the most part they provide her prime target, particularly those promulgating the gangsta-rap worldview: "Your mishandling of the mic and music's power is plain – I demand reparations from all the irresponsible fake-mogul crap music-makers and movie fakers/ Your bad example could kill my children". Sounds accurate enough to me.