One Basquiat x H&M collection at a time, the capitalist state warps radical art to its own ends. Consider the CIA front that, in 1961, sent Nina Simone overseas for a concert in newly independent Nigeria. The high priestess of soul, famously fond of referring to her country as the “United Snakes of America,” had temporarily become a patsy in the war on communism. On “Black Opps,” the opening track of his new album, LOWER, Benjamin Booker pays sneering homage to the U.S. government’s history of covertly undermining African American liberation. The message: This game wasn’t winnable then, and it certainly isn’t winnable now. Booker has seemingly spent the seven years since his last record swallowing down all the hopelessness and dread he could hold. Now he’s spitting it back up like bile.
Even as it grappled with systemic racism and police brutality, 2017’s Witness was warm and hospitable; steeped in blues, soul, and R&B; all well-trod wood and candlelight; rich with the humid air of Booker’s adopted home of New Orleans. On LOWER, night has fallen, and there’s a cold wind blowing. “Give a little love,” Booker croons—shivers, really. “They’ve bugged the house again/Give a little love, they’re on the lawn.” To make this record, he sought out producer Kenny Segal, known for his work with rap acts like Armand Hammer and billy woods, and together they systematically drained Booker’s work of color, light, and heat—in a good way. “Black Opps” renders a hi-fi blast zone littered with 808 rubble. An irradiated guitar riff, both funereal and militant, accompanies Booker as he surveys the wreckage, delivering his black mass: “Hallelujah, dying fighting for a life I ain’t had yet.”
Segal comes from underground hip-hop and Booker from retro-leaning rock’n’roll, but LOWER doesn’t sound like any of those genres’ past collisions. Instead, it takes the basic textures of rap rock—boom-bap beats, Deftones’ icy ambiance, the corroded shredding of “She Watch Channel Zero?!”—and fashions them into a new strain of beat-centric grunge. Lead single “Lwa in the Trailer Park” submerges Booker’s voice in a pool of shoegaze that ripples around the steady pulse of a kick drum. Later in the album, “Same Kind of Lonely” features a provocative juxtaposition of samples: real audio from a school shooting, followed by the laugh of Booker’s baby daughter. Call it poor taste, but courtesy isn’t worth much when you’re living with the fear that one day, your child might not come home.
