P.O.S. - Never Better

P.O.S. didn’t grow up straight b-boy in the Bronx, he grew up a punk kid in Minnesota, and it wasn’t until he was older that he realized the potential of hip hop to express himself. It took a while for him to find a balance in his personalities and his music to find a good balance of punk and hip hop. His previous albums on Rhymesayers, Ipecac Neat and Audtion, both felt like a struggle between the two worlds that occasionally hit, but also missed. It was frustrating, because you felt like he was almost there. Now, he is. Never Better does everything right - the music, the lyrics, the production, the packaging, it all hits together and nothing feels out of place or off-kilter. P.O.S. handles the majority of production on the album, with Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, and MK Lareda providing the rest of the tracks. Drums and heavy, fuzzy gutiars drive the album, but where the album truly succeeds is the lyrics that P.O.S. lays down. It is finally on this album that P.O.S. emerges as a great storyteller and lyricist, as he mixes clever wordplay with poetry that unfolds to tell personal stories. Troubled youth, domestic relationships, race, it’s all in play. This is no small feat. Take a quick listen to “Out of Category,” and you’ll see what I mean.

While this album is truly where P.O.S. comes into his own, I’d be remiss not to mention the guest spot by Dessa on “Low Light Low Life,” where she comes in and kills her verse and immediately made me ask, “Why don’t I know who this is?” Hopefully she will have her own album out soon. We need more female voices in the mix.

Also, no review of this album would be complete without mentioning the artwork. In an era where major label releases spend less and less time bothering with packaging, figuring that everyone will just download it, P.O.S. rewards those of us who appreciate the album by giving us a choose-your-own-artwork record. You’ve got 16 pictures and six plastic overlays to make this your copy of Never Better.

In conclusion, I’ll say this - If you told me two or three years ago that a guy that grew up on Bouncing Souls and Fugazi was making a hip hop album, my reaction would have been, “Really?” Now I can tell everyone that a guy has made an album that punk teenagers and hardcore hip hop heads can both enjoy, and its one of the best albums that’s going to come out this year.