Live-band hip-hop has cycled back into the mainstream again after more than a decade in the cold behind acts like Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper. Louis is also a gifted vocalist-during “Rain Dance,” a glittering, four-minute head-nod symphony, he tumbles into the track from above, shaking the walls with a wail that nods to the Temptations in the early ’70s. Louis flash through The Iceberg, and the programmed drums hit with a human player's snap. Limber runs from bassist Dennis Turner and quicksilver riffs from Olivier St. The backdrop for Oddisee's cutting analysis is a continuation of the funky sound honed on his recent records. “How you made a film about Egypt with all lead roles caucasian?” Sexism gets a similar treatment in “Hold It Back,” the idea of which “annoys more than cargo shorts.”
“Why a brother get three for a sack while your brother go free for raping?” Oddisee wonders. “What is there to fear?/I'm from black America, this is just another year.” “Like Really” also calls attention to pervasive, systemic inequality. That song provides an easy bridge to *The Iceberg, *a focused beam of hip-hop soul that rattles loudly in our present political moment. On “NNGE,” Oddisee reckons with the election of the new President from the perspective of someone familiar with government-sanctioned antagonism.