Rating:
  Release Date: September 19, 2006
  Website: Jedi Mind Tricks Website
  Label: Babygrande Records

Jedi Mind Tricks “Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell” Album Review
I don’t really know how to come up with a cool introduction for this album review, so I’m just going to tell you what I think straight up: This album is spectacular. I rarely give a full five stars to any album, except those that I expect to listen to regularly for the rest of my life. This is definitely one of those albums.

From my perspective, “Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell” is Jedi Mind Tricks’ best album to date, and easily among the top hip-hop releases of the year. Lyrically, Vinnie Paz has given the best performance of his career, evolving from mainly battle raps and lyrical attacks to conscious verses, covering topics ranging from the state of hip-hop, national and foreign current events to modern day slavery, war and his own inner existential battles (see hip hop quotable left). And as usual, Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind’s production is stellar. I think his style of creating choruses with turntable mixes demonstrates not only a unique and creative style, but an example of true turntablism as the background of real hip-hop. I just can’t stop listening to this album.

Slavery Still Exists!
However, one topic seemed to stand out from all the points on this album: The existence of modern day slavery. Therefore, I would like to share some of Vinnie Paz’s exceptional verses that serve to raise awareness about world and national issues of major importance and significance. In these examples, Vinnie gives an inspirationally intellectual perspective of the respective issues of child labor, the prison-industrial complex and the externalized costs of war. And all the way through, I kept asking myself one major question: Does slavery still exist in the world and the United States?

China and Unfair Labor Practices
The People’s Republic of China gets a lot of press in the United States these days, mainly due to its rapidly increasing economy, vast workforce and expanding sphere of world influence. Vinnie Paz gives a different perspective on the country of China:

It’s a contemporary form of slavery they call it slave labor
But they don’t prosecute them cause it’s how they make paper
When you rockin that fly shit that’s made in China
By an eight-year-old child trying to feed his mama
He’s exposed to contamination and disease
And only fifty-five percent of them will get degrees
And the women have to try to placate the boss
Because there’s sex discrimination in the labor force
The slave master only lets them speak in sign language
And they’re suffering from lung disease and eye damage
Fourteen hour shifts seven days a week
Two shitty meals a day, very little sleep
Human life only worth three cents an hour
All human rights laws no sense of power
What did four hundred years in the grave pass us?
Only the improved cleverness of slave masters

As we all know, the United States of America was built on the backs of African slaves. It seems realistic that for another country to establish similar wealth, especially in today’s competitive world market, they would need cheap or free labor. However, slavery is now illegal, which might just cause slave masters to become cleverer. Could China be building an empire just like we did, but with a different and currently legal form of slavery?

Prison-Industrial Complex
The prison-industrial complex refers to a bunch of organizations that do business in prisons and jails that seem more interested in making money than rehabilitating criminals. Many people believe that the lure of big money and profits is corrupting our nation’s criminal-justice system, as it is becoming more and more profitable to build and maintain large prison systems. Similar to his ideas about slave labor in foreign countries, Vinnie Paz views this use of prisons and jails as another legalized form of slavery:

There’s 1.6 million people locked in jail
They the new slave labor force trapped in hell
They generate over a billion dollars worth of power
And only getting paid twenty cents an hour
The make clothes for McDonalds and for Applebee’s
And working forty hour shifts in prison factories
While we sit around debating who’re the wack MCs
They have to work when arthritic pain attacks the knees
Slavery’s not illegal, that’s a fucking lie
It’s illegal unless it’s for conviction of a crime
The main objective is to get you in your fucking prime
And keep the prison full and not give you a fucking dime
But they the real criminal keeping you confined
For a petty crime, but they give you two to nine
And ain’t nobody there to protect ya
Except a bunch of incompetent human rights inspectors

The United States continues to throw more and more people in prison, which more often than not creates a cyclical process of violence, crime and more jail time. Could our country’s continued development of the prison industry, including the implementation of laws that incarcerate people quicker and for longer periods of time (eg. Three Strikes Laws), be our attempt to continue to use slavery to build our empire?

The Cost of War
War has basically become a business in our country, especially since Reagan and the Bush family have been around. They seem to think that war is not only the way to secure our values and interests abroad, but also to build business and corporations at home, as companies like Halliburton get paid to rebuild nations after we’ve destroyed them. Unfortunately, our ruling class rarely takes time to, as Vinnie Paz would say, “externalize the cost of war.” In the following verse, Vinnie does a great job personalizing the effects of war with a first hand story of a soldier’s experience in Vietnam:

I don’t know why I’m over here, this job is evil
They sent me here to Vietnam to kill innocent people
My mother wrote me, said “The president, he doesn’t care”
He trying to leave the footprints of America here
They say we trying to stop Chinese expansion
But I ain’t seen no Chinese since we landed
Sent my whole entire unit thinking we could win
Against the Viet Cong guerrillas there in Gia Dinh
I didn’t sign up to kill women or any children
For every enemy soldier, we killing six civilians
Yeah, and it ain’t right to me
I ain’t got enough of motherfuckin’ fight in me
It frightens me, and I just wanna see my son and moms
But over here, they dropping seven million tons of bombs
I spent my days dodging all these booby-traps and mines
And at night, praying to God that I get back alive
And I’m forced to sit back and wonder
Why I was a part of Operation Rolling Thunder

It seems that the government and media do their best to hide the horrible aspects of war while glorifying the heroic and victorious aspects. And rarely do you get a first hand perspective. When you consider that the U.S. military is disproportionately stacked with the poor, Blacks and Latinos, it makes one think that, like foreign labor and the prison industry, our military is also based on a type of slavery … one which forces the poor into dying for our a position and prosperity they will never see.

I agree with Vinnie Paz and Jedi Mind Tricks that slavery still exists in new and modern day forms, whether through unfair labor practices, the prison-industrial complex, or military abuse and misuse. It is our job to educate ourselves about the reality of these practices, so that one day we might be able to do something to stop this modern day slavery. And check out Jedi Mind Tricks and their brilliant album “Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell.” It is another great example of hip-hop that could raise awareness about reality … if we’d just take the time to listen. Peace.