Artist: Psalm OneTitle: Death Of Frequent FlyerRating: 3 1/2 StarsReviewed by: Sidik Fofana
Geez, what a rapper gotta do to get in your CD changer? An MC like Psalm One could give you a year of her work for free, and still that joint would be a coaster on your dining room table. It’s pure casino statistics but CDs don’t have a good probability of not being played. Why though? Face it, we as humans are less particular about what we put in our mouths than what we put in our ears. Ridiculous.
If Psalm One’s Death of Frequent Flyer (Rhhymesayers) ever were to make it to your speaker boxx, this would be the story you would get. One, you would be that much more aware that there are female rappers out there who have bloodthirsty rhyme skills and who don’t have to Jenna Jameson themselves to sell records (besides Jean Grae). Two, you would get another fine representative of the Windy City which has churned out Twista, Kanye, and Lupe. Three, she lost 60 pounds. Four, she makes a mean bowl of Macaroni & Cheese.
That’s the sort of listener intimacy that comes with femcees not driven by sexual prowess. As Psalm One tells you herself in the R&B drenched “Rapper Girls” which is the CD’s strongest track, “Rhyme two words hyphen and a hymen and your sick/ You sound like garbage on the spot but your outfit is gorgeous”. Psalm One is not another girl who holds the microphone on her “breastisses”. Shorty is hungry, and has more than paid her dues in cipher heaven. For Psalm, them 48 bars ain’t just something you do on the steps to chase away the boredom bugs. This sh*t here is a lifestyle. The world has not heard a female flip a double speed verse like Psalm One does in a display of limber lyricism on “Beat the Drum.” Plus it’s all playback love when you have producers Thaione Davis and Overflo keeping pace.
Aight, maybe there’s some fluff in Psalm One’s lexicon. She does show some symptoms of filler rhyme syndrome, but her mind can only grow stronger. The only other flaws of this album are external like how is she going to convince the greater consumer to listen to a lyric spitting tomboy. But, trust, she is an MC that can potentially paint as marvelously as Hip-Hop’s most cherished Van Goghs. On the track “Rest Peace”, she poetically asserts, “I watch the sky fall with a blindfold and knifes on/At night I talk to him and ask him to give me the right song.”
The moral is clear, make friends with this girl from the Chi. Invite her to your living room. Play scrabble with the Rhymesayer. This might be sappy but all a lyricist really wants to be, is heard.
