Akrobatik

Making good hip-hop is a difficult business and making good hip-hop that stands out is even more difficult. Most of the music coming out of the mainstream community today is over-produced and generic to say the least and when you look into underground hip-hop, you bump up against a lot of unnecessarily inflated egos. In this respect, Akrobatik’s latest album Absolute Value is an interesting aural experience, but nothing to get excited about.

As far as artists in the underground go, Akrobatik (nee Jared Bridgeman) is a moderately established presence, having enough connections to garner some interesting collaborations within his own work from the likes of Mr. Lif and Talib Kweli (although Kweli seems to be popping up all over the place these days). Hailing from the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, he has garnered respect with in the Boston hip-hop community for his aggressive style and politically conscious lyrics. In addition to his solo project, Akrobatik recently formed a hip-hop collective named the Perceptionists with Lif and Fakts One.

Absolute Value is an album not without its merits. Akrobatik’s music is littered with some very strong, politically inspired lyrics. Take for example the song “Kindred,” detailing the plight of slaves in early America and the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the black community in the south, where he makes reference to Maya Angelou when saying “Now I feel I truly know why the caged bird sings, he sings to keep his mind off the pain of things.” Or the song “Front Steps II,” where he talks about the oppression of low-income blacks in the ghetto. “They make us hate each other by keeping us poor,” speaking to the issue of violence and conflict within the community that takes energy away from fighting for a better life.

Akrobatik runs up against a problem in his serious songs like “Rain,” featuring Brenna Gethers on back up vocals, crooning “but I fight and stay strong, no matter what’s going wrong” while he raps about various life issues like cancer and death. His message in this song is unfocused and insincere and the whole thing seems played out.

When he’s not trying to be serious, Akrobatik spends an awful lot of time talking about how great he is, which works all right if you’re a highly reputable artist. Otherwise you end up sounding like a little kid wearing his big brother shoes: cute, but ridiculous. This is exactly where we’re left with Akrobatik. His rhymes are tight and his beats are fresh, but he just isn’t there yet. He uses a lot of filler words and instrumentals feel cluttered after awhile.

Like a fine wine, its safe to say that time will only tell with Akrobatik. For now however, he’s a decent artist on his way to better things. Absolute Value is enjoyable, but nothing to be taken too seriously. Roll with the beats, but try to disregard the embarrassingly forced seriousness that pops up every now and then.

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