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Noir - For The Kids (Produced by Benjammin', Directed by BMike)
Looking back on the past decade, what seems to have been its defining characteristic is the cumulative toll of disasters and catastrophes, both natural and man-made, that the world suffered through. Undoubtedly one of the most memorable incidents, as much for the images associated with it as for the actual damage that was caused, is the wake of destruction left behind by Hurricane Katrina. The media spotlight on the government's incompetence in the immediate aftermath generated well-deserved outrage, but some five years later the public's attention has moved on to other matters. Yet the level of disrepair in New Orleans on the eve of 2011 remains disgraceful, with a significant percentage of the city's poorer areas still utterly neglected and many of its residents still displaced.
With the current state of the city serving as a backdrop, Louisiana emcee Noir delivers a rather memorable series of tracks on his new album Some Better Answers, featuring production from, among others, longtime 33Jones friend (and one of the best independent producers out there) Bless 1. Noir's delivery - which is so laid back as to resemble Lil' Wayne's after a long night of sipping sizzurp, minus the outer space lyricism - takes some getting used to, but his almost Spoken Word-like approach gives the album a sound unlike much else out there. Alongside less competent production it might have become a distraction, but fits quite well over the tremendous collection of beats he's pulled together. Noir offers up a view of the city that is stark and, more often than not, depressing, but even at its bleakest the lyrics serve up some great poetic imagery ("They lock us up with no periods to end our sentences"). David Simon's HBO series Treme earlier this year did a great job of showing post-Katrina New Orleans from a variety of viewpoints, but Some Better Answers is the only recent project that gives a status update on the city from a purely hip hop perspective.
The above song and video, For The Kids, is a perfect encapsulation of the type of imagery that you'll find on the album. It opens with Noir looking out onto an amusement park, gripping a handful of balloons; as the camera follows Noir walking through the park, a closer look reveals that what was once a place of festivity has long since been abandoned and left to decay (or from a more cynical point of view, perhaps the decay had always been there and it was never that festive to begin with). Noir's release of the balloons at the end of the video seems to be a rather literal letting go of any hope for reclaiming the past. Though bleak, it serves as an apt metaphor for the current state of New Orleans and it's a sentiment that runs throughout Some Better Answers. I asked Noir about the choice of location for the video, and here's what he had to say:
"The park is called Jazzland; it was owned by Six Flags and destroyed by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It was abandoned after the storm and never reopened. The kids need a positive place to have fun besides the streets and violent basketball parks, which is why we decided to shoot it there. It's an outcry towards the corrupt politicians in our city that neglect the youth."
(To be fair, I should point out that the entire album isn't all gloom and doom. It has its fair share of uplifting tracks, and tracks that cover the give and take of all relationships. I don't mean to give those songs short shrift, it's just that the album's perspective on the city of New Orleans is what makes this project unique from everything else out there.)
For the cover of Some Better Answers, Noir used a painting that depicts the parable of Daniel in the Lion's Den. From what I remember of my Catholic school days, Daniel was a prophet who was thrown to the lions as a test of his faith in God. Though Noir does scatter themes of faith throughout his lyrics, the artwork in this case has more to do with New Orleans. As Noir explained to me when I asked him the meaning of the album cover:
" [There are m]any interpretations, the underlying idea is that we should have faith no matter how hard life gets. When one attempts to do something different from the norm, one risks having a target on one's back, that's the lion's den. In New Orleans racism is a huge problem, in the past 5 years multiple events have happened in which the police force have killed innocent black men, hell 6 of my cousins are locked up doing at least 15 years, not to mention they're all under 25...so I'd say being young and black in a hypocritical society is like being in the lion's den. That's why I changed Daniel's skin to black, in the original painting by Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel was painted with white skin. I just flipped his painting.
Getting back to Bless, he had mentioned to me previously that he had been working with an emcee from New Orleans, but this is the first time I got a chance to hear any of their work together. I asked Noir how he hooked up with Bless:
"Bless and I have done songs together in the past. I heard his album Starving Artist and since [then] have been in close contact with him. Bless 1 is the only emcee that I've worked with; I don't work with many other people. All the producers that I've worked with on the album are people that I've known for some time. I look at everyone on the project as family, especially Bless; he produced 3 joints on my album."
Below are the three songs that Bless produced on Noir's album:
You can stream Noir's album Some Better Answers in its entirety, as well as purchase a copy of the album, over at his bandcamp page.
And if you're looking for more conscious rap from New Orleans, be sure to check out Bilal Abdul-Hakeem's A Playstation Costs More than a Choppa.
12/15/2010 5:00:00 PM posted by Fresh