Brother Ali - Secrets & Escapes


Ug, Brother Ali's 2019 album entitled Secrets & Escapes. At least we're getting the shock of point 6 out of the way early (now that is a truly coincidental My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult reference). Don't get me wrong, i don't actually dislike anything about Brother Ali, but everything i've heard from him feels so steeped in preachiness that my reaction is almost immediately "yes, i know, stop automatically assuming i disagree with you!"

I'll fully admit that i'm unfairly biased against any overtly faith-based message, but i don't think it's entirely unfair of me to expect more than dogma from musical expression, and i am completely willing to give this album fresh ears on that account. The album is a collection of California recordings with producer Evidence, improvised as they made them for fun with no larger goal or concept in mind. Secrets & Escapes is a perfect title for it, so let's just hear what he has to say.

I'll tell you this, he's absolutely right about the contradiction: if you're just tuning in to be a hater then don't, but at the same time all the compliments in the world aren't going to feed your kids. I'm not here to hate at all, i'm here to figure out why it pushes me away rather than draws me in. Sure, i definitely prefer humor (the more gallows the merrier), but it's not that it's too serious, or whiny, or heavily Gospel. I think it's his mode of delivery; he uses the breathy, introspective voice for the heaviest subject matter, and the aggressively hard voice for more everyday ideas and sentiments. That's weird to me, it feels like it should be the other way around. 

At the end of the day, Brother Ali's experience is heavily informed by being dehumanized for his physical appearance, his mission is to directly confront that type of systematized prejudice, and i think the honest truth is i don't have a good reason why this doesn't excite me. It's a good album, just not my particular thing, and that's nobody's fault but my own. I think it's supposed to challenge me, make me confront my own secrets and escapes, and i'd like to think it would hit harder if i hadn't been sniffing my own bottle collection for the last 4 years. 

See what i mean, though? I feel like a jerk for trying to not be a jerk, and i don't even know what i did wrong. Maybe 6 or 7 more listens will straighten me out, or maybe that's exactly how i'm supposed to feel. I don't know, and i guess we'll leave it at that.

LP 3

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