By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Injury Reserve (2021)
a run through four decades of the hip hop underground
I entirely missed out on Injury Reserve. By the time I first came across them on people’s “best of 2021” lists, group member Stepa J. Groggs had already died and the group had essentially already wound down.
But holy shit, this is a great album.
Some of it is pure anger and dejection, like anyone might feel or rap about. But there are also flights of fancy that stretch higher than you might expect. The lyrics are always poetic in their chaotic, apocalyptic way. Nothing is simply stated, but there’s a lot of meaning buried in there to find.
The music goes as hard as the lyrics. Endless caverns and fissures of noise and distortion and manipulation open up along the way, keeping you disoriented in constantly churning ways.
It’s a frankly amazing collection of the thoughtful, the literate, the rageful, and the resigned.
Tracks I Liked
SS San Francisco - a great lyric also featuring the highly-interesting-in-his-own-right Zelooperz
Footwork In A Forest Fire - you are what’s left when everything else is on fire
Top Picks For You - I imagine this documenting the depth of Ritchie with a T’s sense of loss after Groggs was gone. This record was started with him, but finished and released posthumously. Note the post-modern effect that a suggested tracks playlist has on the person listening; the continued influence of the shape left behind by someone who’s gone. I don’t know if he ever read this particular book, where the author dwells in detail and with great depth on the loss of his wife, but it struck me as having a lot of similar themes.
