Dead Prez’s stic.man wasn’t wrong when he described his duo as “somewhere between N.W.A. and PE [Public Enemy]” on the blistering pan-African primer “I’m a African.” Their debut album places them squarely in the lineage of activist rap groups, touching on everything from Orwell’s Animal Farm (“Animal in Man”) to vegan diets (“Be Healthy”). On the breakthrough hit “It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop,” Dead Prez rail against the music industry’s commercialization of a radical black art form.