M1 of Dead Prez and Bonnot face an uphill battle in 'Between Me And The World'
by
Alex Dionisio
BK emcee M1 (Mutulu Olugbala) of sociopolitical hip-hop duo Dead Prez (with rapper stic man) once again has plenty of reason to speak truth and spread awareness to the people with his awakening rap bars. Pockets of society are still in perpetual decay, marginalized peoples are being further marginalized, environmental issues remain very much real and the cloaked menace of hegemonic business-ideologues maintains its grasp on the globe to this day. This time, for Between Me And The World (May 6), his second studio album outside of Dead Prez and the followup to his 2006 solo album Confidential, he has the music help of his close friend, the talented Italian producer known as Bonnot, or Walter Buonanno. Their common values are rational but their sounds are raw. If the mainstream lags, these guys can be counted on to boost the industry with lots of much needed consciousness.

With guest appearances from Prodigy of Mobb Deep, Divine RBG, Jahdan Blakkamoore, Aktar, Asian Dub Foundation and Grenique, Between Me And The World has great alternative artist-help from these fine ladies and gents, but it also just goes to show that there are folks out there besides M1 and Bonnot who share the same progressive thoughts and ideas. Prodigy, sounding very renewed with his expressed anti money-power mental-notes, brings that great side of him to the album's first track "Number One With A Bullet." Rebel rap fans can one-stop-shop for the good teachings they need in "Fill in the Blanks," where they can stock up on reminders of at-large racial profiling and racial injustice in the world, bashings on the two-party political system and public surveillance plus other hearty media-hidden facts about our paining planet.
Other tracks allocate just one concept to their time slots. "Tobacco Inc." takes on the dirty side of the tobacco industry as you could probably tell, and "Relapse" shows the destructive effects of drug addiction through story and depicts it like a love-affair in respects, such as in how M1 compares it to a romantic attachment and how Bonnot's slow swanky samples run the song through a hip, pleasurable texture of sounds. "Real OG" follows the path of a jail-held gangster as he educates and reforms himself into an activist fresh for a new life in front of bars, on the outside. The end touches on a mixed bag of themes once again, subtly and directly: fleeting life and diminishing chances plus the importance of seizing the day under the oppression of corrupt politicians in "Sacrifice 2" and black lives matter and police clashing with blacks in "Between Me And The World."
It's very fitting and helpful that the great activist in M1 would come back with another strong album for these tense post-Ferguson times, and he couldn't have picked a better beat-maker for the job in Bonnot. Between Me And The World contains nice songs dealing with relevant discussion-spurring topics, some of which have been hit upon previously by other rap artists, but by no means have these topics reached a long dry run like those already arrived at by gangsta, bling and mafioso rap. In that way, M1 and his compadre Bonnot definitely stay fresh here.
