Truth Universal’s Move the Crowd Mixtape starts powerfully, with a turntable scratching before letting a talking head say, “God did in one weekend what we’ve been trying to do for 20 years, which is close public housing. This is an opportunity for developers, for speculators, for real estate folks to come in and take some very valuable property and turn it into middle and upper income property.” Laid over what sounds like a sample from a ‘70s soul ballad, the piece is chilling in its callousness. The next track, “Something Awful,” begins with a voice that says, “I don’t want to see short-term housing because of Katrina turn into long-term housing for a bunch of thugs and trash that have no business in St. Tammany Parish…. If you’re going to walk the street of St. Tammany Parish with dreadlocks and chee-wee hairstyles, then you can expect to be getting a visit from a sheriff’s deputy.” Producer Nick the 1da lets the soundbite make it clear that some people’s vision of post-Katrina New Orleans doesn’t include the poor and the Black.

 

After that, the disc loses impact, never returning to the interplay between Truth Universal’s rapping and the voices of those he’s confronting. The lush, ‘70s soul sound unifies the disc, and on “I Shot the Sheriff,” it recalls the way Kanye West has successfully mined that era for samples. The beats are pedestrian, though, and Truth’s rapping could use a little more character. Still, he embraces traditional hip-hop values, putting the emphasis on rhymes, flow and purpose; when he gets something to sink his teeth in, they’re all clearly present. “Work,” a track calling for the release of the Angola Three, features him at his verbally athletic best, and he shifts gears between storytelling and dropping knowledge. Some lines are dense with rhymes that come at improbable moments and he makes them work. After almost three minutes straight without a chorus, he returns to his conversational voice to urge listeners to action, and once again, the interplay of voices works to his advantage—even if the second voice is his.