Sage Francis - A Healthy Distrust

“I’ve got a water gun, I keep it in my mouth/it keeps me safe from the things I like to speak about/but words are leaking out/and all these smiles that are cracked/are like a dam on the verge of collapse/there ain’t no turning back/in fact, I can’t hold down my fluids/can’t retract statements without water displacement/flooded the basement and sought refuge/removed my waterproof vest then kicked off my wet shoes/made it to dry land, pistol in hand”

Sage Francis is too smart for hip-hop, too smart for music, and probably too smart for his own good. Take the “Gunz Yo” where the above quote was taken. He uses the song to point out irony of guns being a phallic object. He is the kind of guy who will watch an hour of TV and cry himself to sleep over the stupidity of pop culture, politics, and pretty much everything in between. Or take “Escape Artist” where magic is used as an extended metaphor for hip-hop. The concepts are brainy enough, but he executes them even better. In fact, it is pretty much impossible to keep up with barrage of witty bars.

The intro “Buzz Kill” really sets it off with lines like “color me confused when they paint issues black and white/resuscitate gray matter right back to life/its my destiny/she wants me, she beckons/she left me for dead/but dead didn’t want no sloppy seconds,” “I freedom kiss the French for their political dissent/like muah, I do it with tongue this time/and take that bovine blood out your wine/and take that statue back” and “I thought suicide was a suburban myth/I couldn’t see my own hands being the ones I’m murdered with.” Likely the finest offering here is the ingenious “Dance Monkey” which not only packs a PE’esque beat from Daddy Kev but Sage saying things like “she saw the future in a group study” and “I don’t have a god complex, you have a simple god.” It’s the breathtaking “Slow Down Ghandi” that really gives it a run for the money. Reanimator matches Sage nicely with the beat, who once again outdoes himself. With that, I’ll leave you with a few more gems and tell you to buy the damn album.

“I’m a soapbox, yelling into megaphones/killing hard rocks using carcasses as stepping stones/made a promise that I’d stop holding my marches/the day that Chris Columbus got crucified on golden arches”