Album Review: The Premise by Ill Conscious & Finn
A Baltimore rapper writes a sermon disguised as a rap album.
A Baltimore MC whose sixth LP this is, Ill Conscious never reads the etymology himself. Thirteen tracks of rap arrive at a sermon, yet the opening bars were already carrying its weight.
“De- deoxy, see, that’s a Latin root
If you trace its meaning, it means God
So deoxyribo
In the Semitic languages, ribo is the same as rabbi, or in Arabic, we say rabba
It means the master, the lord.”
After the rapping, someone is reading this near the end of the closing track. “So deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, what does it mean? God, Lord, and master with fire at the center of my being.” Ill Conscious gave the verse above.
“Receiving these praises ‘cause the cadence is cohesive/I was scheming, reading the pages of Flavius Josephus,” he raps on “Tuthmosis” over a steady piano motif that Finn loops yet barely lets settle, with a crisp drum switch underneath. A first-century Roman-Jewish historian still drops into bar two as casual reference, and only widens the stack from there. “Be visiting Pyramids where they lineage is a cause.” “Flow like the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates/We cracking things through the ‘80s, dapper dan in Mercedes/With African fans in Pakistan to the land of Kuwaitis.” Continents plus eras travel across one verse while the piano holds steady underneath. “But instead they stuck in themselves like mitochondria,” he says of brothers who want justice from rival conquerors, completing a cellular metaphor that finishes the same thought Tuthmosis the Egyptian pharaoh started—lineage written as a trap inside the body itself.
Ill’s voice hardens on “Pupils Become Rivals.” “This what happens when shit get out of alignment/Your pupils become your rivals,” he raps over a heavy descending bass figure plus a vocal sample that floats half-buried in Finn’s mix. “The slightest disapprovals’ll have your funerals arranged to entertain.” “Had a fickle partner used to domestic and civil charges/ Now he made it reckless to disrespect me so indirectly.” Then arrives the bar that gives the album its name: “Clean up the premise for you wicked niggas, handling the constituent predicament.” Two bars later: “This Mr. Miyagi verse Ricky Bobby in Talladega/ Get hit in the lobby, Tupac in the blood decorated.” A betrayal record dressed up in punchlines, but the bass groove keeps every line tight.
The luxuriant sample opens “Prominent Sunz” once Ill Conscious starts rapping about his daughter. “Wickedness, but my daughter, she see herself in ‘em/Emphasis on more concerned with growth on my seed/Strong and ready to give, so making sure the passport equipped/With spontaneous trips, mom blended us quick.” Then Rome Cee answers from the same Baltimore over Finn’s regal rhythm: “Just to make it in Baltimore like the desert for forty years/Yeah, nigga, take tears to face fears.” Two rappers walking the same wilderness, only landing on “we shine together ‘cause we prominent sons”—sons spelled not suns, with the spelling already carrying the lineage work each bar argues for.
On “Pineapple Mimosas,” the fatherhood thread cracks open. “Four baby mamas, the Lord was calling us whore mongers/No remorse coming, no tour buses, just court summons,” he raps above the cascading guitar loop and snapping snare Finn keeps coastal. Three lines after that he is throwing “a dozen roses that I throw you, pineapple mimosas in Miami and Moza/Taking trips that we spend in Mendoza.” Court summons sit beside roses inside identical phrasing; the breezy production holds both readings in one frame. “They see the posts, but not the miserable parts/Dealing with instability like juggling congenital hearts.” A follow-up section arrives meaner. “My penis in a Venus, she called it art, the extravagance.” “Am I a victim when she suck me ’til my vision is warped?” Whatever growth was claimed on “Prominent Sunz” still gets contradicted line by line here, yet the song delivers breadings simultaneously.
Beneath the looped pitch-shifted vocal sample of “The Allegory,” Ill Conscious drops his one direct line about contemporary scandal inside a parenthetical clause: “Heavy stipends, we away from Kelly and Diddy indictments.” Even the next bar pushes outward: “They see this Black man clearly dripped in a suit and tie/Break it apparently as they now tell theories of bloomin’ rock.” “Still holding on to non-words so my granny the allegory” closes that verse, where his grandmother and a Pentecostal feast and Harry Truman’s atomic bomb only barely fit inside the same nostalgic loop. That same impulse stretches further on “Carbon Traces.” “We Cain and Abel, his siblings played in remnants scattered through plains and the ribbons” leads two bars later into “Recording, I hit harder than Peyton and Kemp swarming sonically.” Inside the same extended verse Pernell Whitaker rhymes with stealth mission, every reference pulls back to “shit is wicked, wicked inside of the carbon traces.”
Finn narrows the melody on “Bass Drum.” Only an isolated heavy bassline carries the song while three rappers fight. He works through “We taking flights to another climate, providing the coca leaves/Stuff gorilla ganja inside of the polypropylene,” with “fake thug, no love, rough from the bass drum” returning between verses. Mandriq earns his slot on “I put the raw on the bun/And had the competition mad, we almost went to war over funds.” Asun Eastwood aims his at the rap-as-research crowd:
“A lot of suckers rappin’ is sad, it’s a setback, it’s a fad
Corny niggas writing scripts on they pad
Put the source, Googling the slang, YouTubing through ads
They looking for clues on how to be bad.”
Over on “Pressure,” Recognize Ali drops in with “All praise due to Allah, the most high/The most fly like an eagle, always rose high/I walk live, speak a nigga with the most vibes/Light skin, but I’m super black on both sides.” King Magnetic ends that same song on “PA nigga with Jersey shooters like Kerry Kittles.” Snook Da Crook had opened “Consortium” already with “the forty-four was contorted, them shots in your pores is corium.” Six different vocal weights cross the same producer. Ill Conscious himself only hones against the lineup.
The unorthodox hammer “11th Commandment” into a chaotic political-thriller motif, and Ill Conscious matches the volatility with a heightened cadence: “Palestinian soldiers, rogue code and they paraglide/Genetically modified mosquitoes released, and it’s merely crime/Capital gains from the Hebrew distribution in prisons/Children of Israel, the Bible interpretation/The sacred is one, the offices pawned to the skull and bones.” Conspiracy tracked from naval history through Hebrew prisoners into Masonic undertones, with Finn matching the agitation by way of an orchestral break that hammers minor-key horn stabs against the boom-bap pocket until it splinters. Then last song arrives. “God molecule, deoxyribonucleic acid/We the copied lineage from the Bible pages and chapters,” runs the verse on “DNA,” after which the spoken section takes over.
“Every molecule, every protein, every substance in your body was coded for
Programmed for in the DNA
But how did it get expressed as a protein, say, in muscle or bone?
How did it manifest into rabbi?”
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Tuthmosis,” “Pupils Become Rivals,” “Carbon Traces”