Brainchild

The lineage of Southern hip-hop ran through some locales that either get taken for granted or outright forgotten nowadays. For instance: hot on the heels of OutKast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and practically concurrent with the recording of Goodie Mob’s Soul Food, Organized Noize backed poet/Dungeon Fam voice-of-god Big Rube and soul singer Espraronza “Roni” Griffin on a blissfully mellow yet unapologetically funky and philosophically reflective neo-soul album that’s steeped in the same contemplative-player mode as those two Southern rap classics. It’s just viewed at a different angle: think their euphoric “Funky Ride” showcase on OutKast’s debut, but stretched out into a series of poetry-jam sermons and half-throwback/half-eternal soul vamps that touch on everything from relationship drama (“Changes”) to underground-economy work ethic (“Pushin’”) to the contradictions and conflicts of organized religion (“Migratenation”). If the message occasionally skirts preachiness, it’s in the necessary service of figuring out all the entanglements and contradictions that come with Black existentialism, and Organized Noize’s other sonic priorities — building off their Mayfield-ian sense of funk as a music of deep emotional uplift, whether it’s aquaboogie psychedelia (“Blac Mermaid”), classic Eldorado opulence (“Ghetto Fuh Life”), or dubby, trip-hop-simpatico futurism (“Peaches N ‘Erb”).