Reimagining hip-hop

Maybe punk and hip-hop were meant to be together. Clearly P.O.S. thinks so.

On his newest album, Never Better, out yesterday, the Minneapolis rapper expertly mixes the pounding speed of punk breaks with the boom-bap nod of traditional hip-hop. It’s a propulsive blend, and the album is at its most original when it races along at a breakneck pace, such as on “Drumroll” and “Purexed.”

However, these aren’t necessarily the best tracks. Better are the songs that lean more on traditional hip-hop and raw lyricism. For example, the topical stream of anger from album-opener “Let it Rattle,” which touches on the end of the Bush era, the recession and questioning suspicion that maybe, just maybe, Obama doesn’t actually represent everyone. P.O.S. embraces the tangents of his writing, cramming additional ideas and textual responses in between rhymes where other MCs might leave some air.

And in keeping with his Rhymesayers label mates, P.O.S. isn’t afraid to sing his choruses and explore topics close to the heart with his staccato flow. From the societal alienation that led him to punk rock (a pretty standard tale, really) to, y’know, relationships, he covers a lot of personal territory.

Never Better is a strong, remarkable sonic statement. It grinds and shakes in some really odd ways, but it is still a hip-hop album, bruising and seducing all the same.

More fascinating than P.O.S.’ musical palpitations, which have been mixed in various forms before, is the cross-pollination of ideologies. Punk rock was (mostly) a rageful response to White suburban ennui, embracing an ethos of independence that has been boiled down to the phrase D.I.Y.—Do It Yourself. As punk developed it changed and was co-opted, but the basic premise of anti-authority screeds and righteous anger persists.

Hip-hop came from the inner city, as an extension of Black culture and music. As it developed and popularized, the message shifted around, but by the mid-’90s, the most popular form of rap focused on money, women and violence. In response, the growing rap underground took its ethos from punk, focusing on independence and topics both political and personal.

I bring this up because P.O.S. is basically the logical endgame of the conflation of punk and hip-hop.

According to his press materials, the general narrative of P.O.S. goes something like this: As a teenager, he found punk rock, an unusual thing for a black youth. He played in a bunch of hardcore bands.

At some point, probably in the ’90s when underground hip-hop was just defining its place, he pursued hip-hop as an outlet of his artistic vision. He formed the Doomtree collective, put out an album, and was promptly picked up by independent hip-hop powerhouses Ryhmesayers.

Besides the obvious influence on P.O.S.’ actual music—references to Fugazi, speedy breaks, the in-the-red production—his common aesthetic hews closely to generalist punk.

This conflicts with the generalist hip-hop aesthetic, where even in the underground, rappers are comfortable with the capitalist grind. They want to sell units. (Example: P.O.S.’ album has a special price at all Target stores. Good for sales numbers, bad for punk truism.)

So maybe this is what P.O.S. and similar rappers signify: the final refusal of literal punk ideology, and the acceptance of a career mentality for music.

Or maybe not. Perhaps P.O.S. is, finally, just the sum of his unusual influences.