T-K.A.S.H. - Turf War Syndrome - 3 Out of 4

By Jane Dark, Blender

The Coup's compadre puts Black America's CNN back on the air. The flipside of Oakland's Too Short super-hedonistic pimping has always been politics & bass movement music, starring the children of P-Funk and the Black Panthers. Grandchild T-KASH takes fellow agitators the Coup's heroic feel for sweet guitar loops and detail-heavy localisms, his seen-it-all drawl lingering just behind the beat, then adds the misapprehension that most everything is the President's fault, surely learned from his label boss Paris, Mr. "Bush Killa" himself. Not the most sinuous rhymesayer, T-KASH has the hypnotic appeal of a talking head from a missing channel‹sometimes mimicking newscasts ("Turf War Intro") and starting and ending with versions of an elastic, upbeat fight song promising the return of the "American Nightmare," in which intelligent hoodlums are "mobbin' in the whip with camcorders to follow pigs." Delivering surveillance where it's most needed; isn't that patriotic?