Rating:
  Review Date: June 23, 2008
  Website: Prolyphic & Reanimator Website
  Label: Strange Famous Records

Prolyphic & Reanimator “The Ugly Truth” Album Review
Prolyphic and Reanimator don’t make music that has what you might call “popular appeal.” You’ll probably never read about them in that hip-hop magazine you pay $12 a year for. You won’t likely hear one of their singles on your local hip-hop station – even if you’re a baller with XM. And you’ll definitely never turn to MTV and see them featured on any top video countdowns. Well, that’s too bad, because despite its lack of pop appeal, Prolyphic and Reanimator’s “The Ugly Truth” has made the most memorable impression of any album to drop in thus far in 2008.

Lyrically, Prolyphic is a beast. His forays into his own internal struggles, analyses of the commercialized materialistic world that surrounds him, and philosophical interpretations of his past experiences within the culture of hip-hop make “The Ugly Truth” an incredible listen from beginning to end. In fact, I spent so much time rewinding, replaying and breaking down Prolyphic’s individual verses that I must’ve listened to this album a hundred times over the past couple of weeks – and I still have barely scratched the surface. There’s that much lyrical content to decipher.

And musically, Reanimator is nothing short of groundbreaking. His darkly eclectic beats fit Prolyphic’s rhyme style almost perfectly, while the subconscious nature of his multi-dimensional tracks go hand in hand with the depth of Prolyphic’s lyrical content. Overall, this album plays out much more like a flowing symphony of sounds and words than just some normal hip-hop record.

My favorite verses are those in which Prolyphic analyzes American society as a materialistic rat race where people are basically carbon copies of one another. From what I can tell, that’s what his “ugly truth” really is. This can be seen in many tracks, including Dick and Jane, Flashlight, The Ugly Truth, and Sleeping Dogs Lie. In Box Within A Box, Prolyphic likens our consumerist obsessions with a slave mentality:

I go through these motions like these other motorists/
Rush into this traffic and it’s like nobody notices/
We’re stuck inside the boxes of our cars/
As we flock to our jobs/
And can’t stop ‘cause the clock is our god/
It’s that way slave mentality/
They gave men gradually/
So we behave and fear they’ll take away our salary/

Other tracks allow Prolyphic to share more intimate and, at times, philosophical thoughts. The Way That I See It and Two Track Mind both suggest a belief in relative truths, while Born Alone, Slow To Get Up, and Easier Said Than Done all demonstrate a existential disconnection with the monotony of daily life. In Born Alone, Prolyphic talks about how writing rhymes helps him deal with all this:

‘Cause it’s a shitty thing to say, and a sad way to think/
So I write inside this pad until my pen runs out of black ink/
Spilling my soul until I run out of things to say/
‘Cause some times how I feel ain’t the right thing to say/
The truth stings when it’s swung like a sling blade/
The beautiful strokes, the ugly ink’s on this page/
It’s like serving what’s in your heart and soul on a cold dish/
It’s cliché to say it’s therapeutic, but I know it is/

My favorite track on the album was On The Side, and the following verse from that song will show you why. It sums up Prolyphic’s view on the state of hip-hop, as well as his role within it:

I don’t do this on the side, I do this in my spare time/
So spare me the canned laughter after every punch line/
Hustle and find the troubles to mind/
You stumble and fumble and mumble your rhymes/
I hate when crowds are easily impressed by double time/
You can’t please ‘em all when you feed it to ‘em raw/
Maybe I’ll get some respect when my CD’s in the store/
But I won’t believe the hype from reviews and magazines/
‘Cause most critics are failed artists who take it out on acts like me/
Take the show on the road with no circus/
The only thing my words served was a purpose/
The double-edged sword I walk along like the shoestring budget/
That I work with and wear these clothes like closed curtains/
A college grad with a film degree and no insurance/
With eyes darker than Clive Barker’s and Tim Burton’s/
I stare into the audience and tell it like it is/
And kill ‘em softly with a million cuts and slices I give/
Gotta lot of nerve saying hip-hop’s dead/
Made a living off your fans who think you understand ‘em/
It’s pathetic like suburban emcees who pack up and are headed/
To the ghetto just to get some street credit/
Fuck that – where’s your statements at to stop the burning?/
The end paradise living off your hard earnings/
‘Cause I never sold drugs and I never sold out/
Just want my music heard – word up and no doubt/

Pretty much every verse on this album is quotable in one way or another. If you’re the type of hip-hop fan that is into lyrical content, especially when it’s laid over fantastically subconscious backdrops, Prolyphic and Reanimator’s “The Ugly Truth” is for you. I highly recommend picking up a copy. Peace.

Album Track Listing:

1. 99 Bottles
2. Born Alone
3. Artist Goes Pop
4. Dick & Jane feat. Macromantics
5. Flashlight
6. Survive Another Winter feat. Alias, B. Dolan, Sage Francis
7. Way That I See It
8. Ugly Truth
9. Box Within a Box
10. On the Side
11. Slow to Get Up
12. Two Track Mind
13. Easier Said
14. Sleeping Dogs Lie
15. Playing with Old Flames