Troy

iTunes Review

For years Pastor Troy has been perfecting his own brand of semi-industrial crunk, and with each album the recipe becomes more deliciously caustic. In the tumultuous year of 2008 Troy delivers emotions at both extremes. The album displays his angriest music to date but also features songs that show him at his most contemplative. The seething and often abstract, atonal backdrops of “Putcha Sign Up,” “Bad Guy,” and “Ball Ya Fist Up” offer Troy the ideal noise in which to bathe his unrelenting yet glorious rage. But just when you expect Troy to explode in a ball of fire, you get “Bodyguard,” an almost ethereal love song that expresses PT’s tender and protective nature. Fans have long known that Troy’s emotional composure is delicately balanced, and while upsetting that equilibrium can result in some of rap music’s most hellacious songs, it also works the other way. Who but Troy could take a song about cell phone messages (“Textin’”) and turn it into something with a genuine sense of worry and foreboding? The storm in Pastor Troy rolls on and never fails to make for interesting and unexpected weather.