Knowdaverbs

Item: The Syllabus
Author: Treble Bandoppler

The Syllabus

(1999)

Reviewed by Treble Bandoppler

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Spotify YouTube Music

Label Gotee RecordsBandoppler1999

hip hop rap

Silage's latest release, Vegas Car Chasers, has a very groovy song on it called Verb, featuring a very cool rap epilogue. In fact, the rap portion of that song impressed me so much that I actually checked the liner notes to find out who performed it. The gentleman's name turned out to be Knowdaverbs.

This review is going to start more like a personal reminisce than a journalistic write up, but please bear with me for a minute, and I will get to the raw details. You see, I used to listen to a lot of hip hop back in the day, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Fresh Prince, and the Fat Boys mainly, but I eventually became disenchanted with it, and mostly due to the emergence of gangsta rap. I liked the style of modern rap artists like Pharcyde, Bone, Scarface, and Coolio, but I just couldn't ignore the hedonistic lyrical messages, and just couldn't listen to them in good conscience. I tried to find some Christian hip hop artists, or even some moral or benign ones, but they all came off as corny, cliche, and just plain 'blah'. So, I gave up on hip-hop altogether for many years. But, hearing the fresh, refined, innovative stylings of Knowdaverbs on that Silage song got me pretty excited, and I decided that maybe it was time to sample some more Christian hip hop offerings again. And I definitely wanted to find a full length from Knowdaverbs. I ran across a couple groups that showed some promise, Grits and the Labbadics, and they seemed pretty cool, but I couldn't find anything from Knowdaverbs. However, I soon ran across a small newsbyte somewhere that mentioned that he was going to be releasing a full-length soon, and my excitement was renewed.

The title of the release is The Syllabus, and I stumbled across it quite by accident, initially attracted to the stellar cover art, a cropped headless man with frosted dreads jiving through a glowing library aisle. When I realized who the headless man was, I grabbed it up without a second of hesitation. Anyway, enough of the personal musings, here's the straight up review.

The Syllabus is a smart rap album produced by the Gotee Bros, which includes Toby McKeehan of DC Talk fame, who also does some BGVs on at least one track. It has intellectual lyrics, smooth vocal styling, and groovy beats, but manages to stay down to earth and fun, a hard thing to pull off with any type of music. Knowdaverbs says things straight up, minus the usual rhetoric and cliches, and touches on a lot of spiritual topics in a fresh and genuine manner. There is an incredible amount of stylistic variety on this album, especially in the song, Roam, which features a menagerie of sounds, from Bonish thug-speed-rap segments to old school shades of Run DMC, 2inaRoom, hip-hop-hooray. The other standout tracks are Equeena, a touching account about the joys of running across a Godly woman, and Good Measure, which features some tag team rapping and a very powerful message about thanksgiving and trusting God as our provider and supplier of blessings.

The most striking thing about this album is the humility that pervades every song, a welcome break from the bragging and self aggrandizing common to most rap music. The meekness in Knowdaverbs' approach makes his messages very powerful, and, like he warns in the intro of the album, by the end of the record you may just "learn something." There are a few tracks that sound a bit silly and mundane, but for the most part, this whole album stands as a strong offering of exceptional Spirit filled hip hop. And I stand ashamed, but pleasantly surprised, for writing Christian rap off as too lame to take seriously. It would seem that there is a new generation of legitimate Christian hip hop on the rise, and Knowdaverbs is leading the attack in my book.

Three and a half cows, and I would have given it four if it weren't for some of the weaker tracks, but don't let them stop you from picking this album up. For the most part, it kicks. Very smooth, very refined, very powerful, and very, very groovy.