Rating:
  Review Date: June 12, 2007
  Website: Ohene Website
  Label: RAHM Nation Recordings

Ohene “Inner City Soul” Album Review 
I’m calling it now … independent album of the year goes to Rahm Nation’s Ohene! Ohene’s “Inner City Soul” is easily one of my favorite hip-hop albums of 2007 thus far, underground or mainstream, and is a masterpiece of poetic, lyrical and productive proportions. Every track on this album is dope; every verse is quotable; every song is both intellectually and socially significant. I just can’t stop listening to this album, and I guarantee that most fans of meaningful conscious hip-hop will feel the same.  

With “Inner City Soul,” Ohene offers a wide array of tracks that serve to inform, inspire and motivate while all offering something unique to the listener. Tracks like Hello Stranger and Devils are advisory songs that encourage people to see the positive in negative situations. Stupid Minded and Church Girl are storytelling tracks the grab the listener’s attention with a firsthand account of events and real life situations. Move and They Killed Jesus are gospel-flavored tracks that successfully blend hip-hop with a preacher-ish mentality and advice for struggling people.

We the People and What Will it Take contemplate social and political norms in society from an everyday perspective, while Apologize and Those Who Have Not examine current events and foreign policy from the eyes of poor and disadvantaged people. And My Piano and Say A Little Prayer, which showcases perhaps the album’s tightest beat, allow Ohene to demonstrate his skills as a producer and emcee, with quicker rhymes and a variety of sounds and samples. Add on two interludes and a remix, and “Inner City Soul” becomes my personal must-have album of the year.

Normally, I try to pick out some topic present in an album to talk about in the review. However, Ohene’s “Inner City Soul” contained so many interesting topics for discussion and quotable verses that I couldn’t pick just one. Therefore, I would like to share with you three of my favorite verses from this album.

Hello Stranger
The opening track of “Inner City Soul” is Hello Stranger, a brilliant song that blends the soulful chorus of Nasheeda Shockley with three inspirational verses. Although the second and third verses were dedicated to women and disadvantaged people, the opening verse allowed Ohene to reflect on the things he’s overcome to get here:

It’s been a long journey
And I don’t feel no way tired so there’s nothing that can turn me
Back around I been smacked around
But the pain has propelled me and that’s the crown
Once bound by the shackles the world provides ya
I try to prosper as a fatherless father
I was raised on the streets of North Philly
It cost me by childhood and tortured me
Witnessing many homicides
I tried to keep it together cause mom was high
I got a secret to weather the crime inside
And it’s called the future so I’ma strive
I feel like the savior that came with atonement
To find most men only live for the moment
Moses was an honest man
Who never got to live in the Promised Land

This verse immediately jumped out at me due to its overly positive vibe. It’s got to be hard for a “fatherless father” who witnessed “many homicides” living on the streets of Philadelphia to be able to view life as positive. Yet Ohene managed to “weather the crime inside,” and the passion and dedication he gained from that clearly reflects in his music.

Those Who Have Not
My favorite song on this album, as difficult as it is to choose just one, is Those Who Have Not, a heartfelt track that contemplates society, politics and foreign affairs with a dedication to “those who have not.” This song contained my favorite verse on the entire album . a verse that speaks to drug dealers on behalf of those who were affected by knowing an addict:

Y’all brothers rapping about crack need to know the truth
My mother was the one you probably even sold it to
I owe it to you those nights she was missing from trickin’
Slittin’ her wrists in the kitchen and wishin’
That she was deceased, Denise was here name
But Denise is your sister so you should be ashamed
Denise is your auntie so you should be to blame
Since Denise is your people with needles in her veins
And I’m your brother, I’m Neecee’s son
I know what it is to be broke believe me son
I know what it is to think coke can feed me son
I got truth I don’t need these ones
Or need these guns to feel safe when I walk the streets
I got peace why I need a piece?
Y’all need relief you can’t find inside of a crack rock
And this is for those who have not

The brilliance of this verse lies behind Ohene’s thought process that draws upon a familial relationship between drug dealer and drug addict. From his perspective, they are family, so the crack dealer that supplied his mother should be to blame for those nights he spent alone and scared as a child. This verse makes a lot of sense, especially in regards to hip-hop artists who brag about slangin’ crack cocaine like it’s something to be proud of. Instead, they should recognize the people they hurt and the families they tore apart in their selfish quests for money.

We the People
“Inner City Soul” closes with a couple tracks that are more politically based, one being We the People. This song speaks to our governmental representatives and criticizes their inability to truly represent their constituents. Ohene uses the following verse to speak directly to our country’s politicians:

We the people are sick of your politics
Cause we know it’s a pile of tricks
Y’all smile at kids and shake hands just to win our vote
But we ain’t seen you in the hood before
You need to be more honest and don’t come with that false promise
This time if we choose you then stick behind us
You need to pay a visit to the place you govern
But you won’t cause you covered everyone but the colored
But in the name of the slums and the villages
Where either hunger or firearms kill my kids
I’ma man up and stand up with my crew
The Rahm Nation new patrons of truth
You can see us on the block or the shelters y’all
In the bar or the church where we help the lost
Ain’t no wealth involved only universal laws

This verse made me think about the all those cats out there campaigning in the 2008 presidential race. They travel all over the country trying to get people to vote for them but, as Ohene would say, “we ain’t seen you in the hood before.” It’s amazing that politicians try to act like they represent us when they don’t make the slightest effort to learn about who we really are or what we care about. Then when they’re elected and break all their promises, they’re not even held liable. And they wonder why most of us don’t fuck with politics.

Ohene’s “Inner City Soul” is filled with just this type of heartfelt introspective verses and songs. I could go on and on quoting verse by verse if I had the time. So pick up a copy of this exceptional album and listen for yourself. You will be glad that you did. Even if you’ve never listened to one single recommendation from Hip-Hop Linguistics, listen to this one: Cop this album! It very well could be the hip-hop album of the year. Peace.