Less than a year after One Be Lo released his ambitious LABOR album, he’s come right back with another full length effort. Coming out of the recording sessions of his last record, Lo assembled a production team called The Autocons, who then laid down the foundation for this album. While LABOR was grand and ambitious in it’s scope, K.I.C.K. P.U.S.H. (which stands for “Keep It Cool Kid, People Usually Show Hate”), is much more personal and intimate. One Be Lo grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, and has seen first hand the highs and lows of the auto industry, and how it’s affected his community and his loved ones. It’s with this focus that the former Binary Star emcee delivers some of his best work.

The album opens with “Born and Raised in Pontiac (Intro),” a passionate description of his home town - it’s history, it’s economics, and most importantly, how it affected Lo and his family as he grew up there. It features a great urgent beat with a sparse piano chords spread out over aggressive drums and bass, all juxtaposed with some well placed samples of a recording obviously made a long time ago, selling the benefits of the industry being in Pontiac. This theme carries over into “The Assembly,” with Kodac, which plays a sped up vocal sample singing “I believe,” over really prominent and funky drums, as Lo continues to examine the specifics of his hometown, bringing light to how a smaller town outside of Detroit becomes even more devastated when the main industry in town collapses, and how hard it is to stay on a straight path when your entire town is suffering economic hardships. The album continues in this vein for several more songs, and it’s hip hop that really speaks to it’s time and place. However, there are a few moments on the record where things don’t come together. The first slip up comes on “Pontiac’s Rebellion,” featuring Gwaii. The production is too busy and condensed, really getting in the way of Lo’s vocals. The lyrics of the song aren’t bad, but come across as unfocused over the course of the song, leaving me to wonder how the first verse, bridge, and second verse are supposed to connect to each other. “Hayes Jones” gets us back on the formula that was working for this album, but we get right back off track again with “Saturday,” with Charmaine Gibson. Again, the production gets in the way of the song, with the keyboards and female vocals clogging up the track, and Lo’s vocals getting lost in the mix, all over a fairly generic beat. It’s not bad, but given how strong the album started, it’s a little disappointing to get to this point. The good news is that the album more than recovers on “Oakland Press,” with RoSpit, which features a great hard rock guitar riff and strong-yet-simple drums beat that gives plenty of room for both emcees to paint a portrait about the different ways you can be held down when you’re growing up in a disadvantaged environment. I also have to give props to Lo for including “The Blacker the Berry,” a bittersweet love song that samples “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” by Bonnie Rait, all while managing to not come across as corny, which is no small feat. We get one more solid song in “New Yak State of Mind,” before the final song, “My floW in the Mirror,” the last time we experience the production getting too crowded and busy to find it’s groove, and the vocals once again get lost in the mix.

While there are a few songs don’t quite click, the majority of the album is really strong, especially in the first half, and features some songs that I would rank amongst the best of his career. At it’s best, K.I.C.K. P.U.S.H. is both outwardly political and deeply personal. When it all comes together, you get some deeply moving hip hop.