Ink

thePhantom
Destroy & Rebuild

If you’re looking for engaging music by a rapper with a slick sense of humor and timing who spouts philosophically, I guarantee you can’t do better in Kansas City than Destroy & Rebuild by Kemet Coleman, aka thePhantom.

It’s the whole package — solid writing, lyrical acrobatics, fantastic production — combined with a style that rewards continuous and multiple listens that makes Destroy & Rebuild so memorable.

But it starts with the music. Coleman proves you can find rhythm anywhere, everywhere, as he calls on a multitude of influences to build the spine for this album: pounding hip-hop drums, gangly guitar riffs, synthesizer samples, rapid-fire vocals, electro keyboards, breakbeats, layered vocal harmonies, massive poly-rhythms, syncopated lines of poetry, tweeting birds.

Each song feels more explored than produced, like an HBO drama in a world of reality television. This “journey into sound” (the title of track No. 1 and a memorable sample in hip hop) is punctuated by the song “Story Through Beats,” which features Glenn North’s spoken-word exploration of how beats have always defined black culture.

Of course to look only at the beats, no matter how great, would be a disservice to the lyrical content.

Coleman’s a gifted rapper. He’ll remind you a bit of Lupe Fiasco mixed with Tech N9ne as he often showcases his breakneck speed, most notably on “The Omega.” And he’s a gifted writer who can pack layer upon layer of meaning into each track. Like a rapper-philosopher, he uses his soapbox to explore his place in the world (both literally and in a music sense), where he came from and where he’s going, missions from God, and how beats can explain the journey of an entire race of people.

On “Step Child” he ponders his place in the competitive and engaging world of KC rap (with a humorous jab at the Tech comparisons). “Freeze” is a meditation on poverty, war, politics and disinformation. “The Omega,” the highlight of the album, is about a mission thePhantom’s been given by God (he’s “The Omega”) to purge society of its ills. Or maybe it isn’t, but I’ve never wanted to read and study rap lyrics this bad since Tupac’s “Hit ’em Up.”

But thePhantom also stretches into the more abstract world, posing a somewhat humorous, somewhat serious question on the song “God’s Music”: Would God cut a rug to hip hop? Or more specifically to the music on Destroy & Rebuild?

Like Coleman, I won’t profess to speak for God, but I’d find it hard to believe God wouldn’t at least let his head bounce if this album cropped up on his iPod.

— charles gooch { special to ink }

Find it
Buy Destroy & Rebuild online at http://music.phantastic.me.
See him
Catch thePhantom at 8 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Joe-College Jamfest benefit show at the Granada, 1020 Massachusetts St. in Lawrence. Tickets are $10.