Most people still probably think of Bigg Jus as the other emcee from Company Flow, even though it’s been fifteen years since the release of Funcrusher Plus. That said, it’s also been seven years since his only solo album, so he hasn’t made a lot of noise since then to establish his career as a solo artist. On the other hand, that record, Poor People’s Day, held a lot of promise. So when I heard Jus had finally surfaced again with a new album, I was excited and curious to see what he had to say and how he had developed.

If you’re familiar with his previous work, you’ll be well prepared for the sound of Machines That Make Civilization Fun. It’s loud, aggressive, dystopic, and noisy. It’s an album that was made to work through the terrible things he’s seen in the past decade living in New York, from the twin towers falling to materialistic rappers achieving fame and fortune while the nation’s economy falls apart. The album opens with “Crossing The Line,” which bleeds into “Game Boy Predator,” a commentary on not just the violence in video games, but the particular context of the violence of military-themed games like Splinter Cell. It’s a fuzzy, confrontational sound that confronts the listener, which also leads to my biggest problem with the album. The entire record is self-produced, and while I really like Jus’s overall style, I have a problem with the way the vocals are mixed for the majority of the record. It seems like there’s a lot that Jus is getting off his chest with the lyrics he wrote for this album, and he confronts some really big picture issues. He also uses some interesting imagery, but so often the vocals are put in the middle of the mix and even given some recording effects to make them sound distorted, so it becomes really hard to catch everything that’s being said. Esthetically, it’s not a terrible decision, but at the same time it really feels like a waste to spend any time discussing issues like U.S. involvement in the Middle East if you have to strain to hear the vocals. On top of that, Bigg Jus also suffers from the same problem that plagued Poor People’s Day, which is that he doesn’t spend much time developing any memorable hooks, musically or lyrically, so it becomes more difficult to remember the songs after the album is over.

For my complaints about this record, there’s still a lot to appreciate about Machines That Make Civilization Fun, and I’ve always been routing for Bigg Jus to have his moment to shine. I certainly appreciate that he wasn’t interested in making a pop album, that he wanted it to be weird and challenging. A lot of my favorite hip hop records fall into that category. My disappointment is that Jus took it too far in one direction with the production, and that the bigger picture is going to be lost on a lot of potential listeners and therefore won’t inspire people like it could have.