Album Review: REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE by Genesis Owusu
The Ghanaian-Australian rapper’s third album names every villain by name and dares them to respond. Dann Hume’s production holds it all together with duct tape and church reverb.
Struggler made Kafka’s cockroach a survival manual. Two back-to-back ARIA Album of the Year wins, the second in 2023, made him the rare hip-hop act to hold that title twice, and a Paramore tour put him before arena crowds who knew him from Triple J. REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE was built in a converted church in South Wales, where Owusu and producer Dann Hume jammed ten hours a day for weeks, sleeping in the pews, tracking vocals in the nave, letting the building’s reverb dictate how loud anything got. This time, Owusu goes by the Redstar Wu alias, which Owusu calls “me seeing the world as it is.” Elon Musk gets called a weirdo by name before even the first chorus of “Pirate Radio” ends. A messy, necessary album that screams in punk, dances in house, and prays in gospel, sometimes on the same track.
On “The Worldwide Scourge,” a white woman crosses the street out of fear, rappers degrade women in the next bar, BLM shirts get stitched in sweatshops, the CIA earns a namecheck beside the halls of the Bastille. “Should I blame her for seeing me and picturing a threat/Or the centuries of whipping that’s keeping women in debt?” Owusu asks over Hume’s industrial kick and liturgical organ. Yet his own solidarity merch was made by exploited labor. Owusu confesses it mid-verse. On “Blessed Are the Meek,” stripped to bass and rimshot and gospel harmony, he tells a shooter to point his anger at the billionaire toxic food corporation, the magistrate, the candidate blaming foreigners. Rage aimed at systems is alive; rage aimed at the nearest body is just wasted.
The church sessions left Hume’s fingerprint on every frequency. A church organ opens the title track; an industrial stomp buries it. Breakbeats snap underneath “Stampede” while a neo-soul bass walks through “Hellstar.” The four-on-the-floor kick on “Life Keeps Going” shares a low-end weight with the breakbeats, the neo-soul walk, the industrial stomp, where a bass thread stitching fourteen tracks into one body even as drums swap from programmed to live to programmed again between songs. Before, having one producer for all fourteen tracks meant monotony. Here, it is a much different case. Compared to Hume’s previous work with Owusu on Struggler, church acoustics here give a six-second delay to the bass for each note.
For “Falling Both Ways,” it has a repetitive dance-punk idea until the energy levels start to drop. Compared to just one verse on “Pirate Radio,” neither image of “Slum Socrates,” nor the Palisades fire, come close to hitting with that same force. Due to the outbursts, “Situations” is much more tolerable, along with the rest of the tracks, given the context of the album. “4Life” does a countdown of years of 2014, 2018, and 2022. Compared to Struggler, which is just angry, Owusu’s exile is more private, with pace and quietly watching friendships decay due to failed success.
Most political albums usually stick to the satire, preaching, or reporting styles. It’s interesting to see that Owusu manages to weave in and out of all three and creates the shifts seamlessly. “Most Normal American Voter” has Owusu writing in character. There are multiple vocal tracks that argue with each other and contain Sean Hannity references and fluoride rants. In “Death Cult Zombie,” there is a takedown of a self-described master-race follower with a GED, which then leads to a brief diversion including a Home Alone 2 and orange man comment. There is a more serious tone on “Death Cult Zombie” with the line, “Still free Palestine, my brother, ‘bout that you won’t catch me stutter.” “One4All” includes Akon and has references to Waiting for Godot and a gospel choir. There is also a phrase from Owusu, “we gon’ be alright.” After the rage of the first twelve tracks, this ending is much needed.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “The Worldwide Scourge,” “Death Cult Zombie,” “4Life”