While Pharoahe Monch has been collecting camp-overlapping props year in, year out since the Rawkus-era and has delivered record after record with fair regularity, Prince Po has always been a bit hidden by the shades of the Godzilla screaming »Get The Fuck Up«. The respectable solo-record called »Saga Of The Simian Samurai«, released by one half of Organized Konfusion in 2012, is mostly proving one thing: Prince Po has always been a team-player. Oh No seems to have known this all along, which is why him and the poet-prince have come forward with the collab-project »Stress: The Extinction Agenda«, just in time for Organized Konfusion’s 20th birthday. Without being window dressing, one has to admit that this might be one of Oh No’s best musical works since Gangrene. »Animal Serum« is aggressive, undergroundy and pulsating, and still doesn’t get lost in musical one-dimensionality. Madlib’s brother has created a typically bizarre, yet properly in-your-face-like soundscape, ranging from being unpredictable to unsettling, giving Po the perfect basis to demonstrate his clear connection to the – unrightfully overlooked – golden-era-heroes. Take the attic-dusted piano-loop track »Toxic«, for example, or »Vizions«, a dramatic prog-hop-demon, and you’ll find a 45-years-old (and surprisingly agile) Superflower in the center of an atmospherically oppressive fantasy of violence, stirring you up as much as the last season of »Breaking Bad« did. Oh No hasn’t just re-vitalized Prince Po – together they’ve produced a sample-chopping-serum, which couldn’t have released the animalistic energies of one of the »most underrated MCs« in any better way.
Animal Serum
