The indie hip-hop of Mista Alien is a very different animal. He seems to recognize that hip-hop has become yet another a pop genre, and it’s the genre that suits his talents best. Alien and World Leader Pretend’s Arthur Mintz have created spare music, often with dramatic, fragmented keyboard lines providing the musical accompaniment to Alien’s tense delivery. There’s good musical sense behind the album so almost everything catches, and it would be nice if the same could be said for the words.

 

Alien’s imagination seems to be defined by what countless rappers before him have said, and after a good start—”Still Got Love” and “The Crescent”—the CD bogs down in lines about being hard and being persecuted. Kool Keith and Outkast have demonstrated that hip-hop doesn’t have to be about tough guys any more than pop has to be about love, and being conventional is just another artistic decision—albeit, not a good one. Alien’s style is interesting and the album’s sound is engaging, and when he gets something to say we haven’t heard before, he could be somebody.