Back in the late ‘90s, a group of young men set up shop in the Bay Area and established an experimental hip hop collective known as anticon. Some of the members became fairly well known, such as Sole, Doseone, and Why?, and some became esteemed producers, such as Alias, Jel, and Odd Nosdam. One member in particular, though, has been a lot more elusive than the rest. Emcee Pedestrian released one album in 2005, Volume One: UnIndian Songs, and remained more or less silent since then, outside of some songwriting credits random Sole albums. Now, after a very long wait, he’s finally back with an new album on Sole’s Black Box Tapes Trading Company, unIndian II.

It’s interesting to listen to unIndian II, because even though it’s been twelve years in between albums, when you press play, it almost feels like no time has passed at all. For one, the gang’s all here as Jel, Odd Nosdam, Sole, Josiah Wolf, Walter Gross, Bomarr, Telephone Jim Jesus, Robert Werner, and Paperbark all contribute to the album. Its sound finds a way to put old blues and folk in conversation with psychedelic and alternative rock, and then filter it all through a hip hop lens. It’s an album that at one moment could sound funky and rock really hard, but then another moment could get really noisy and play with static and distortion. It could groove on a funky drum beat for a second, or it could get sparse and turn into a spoken word piece for a bit. There aren’t a lot of rules here. It’s an ambitious album, with only five songs to it, but clocking in at over thirty-eight minutes long. Many of the tracks feel like they are classical pieces written in movements, with motifs and lyrical themes tying everything together. Lyrically, Pedestrian is just as interesting and hard to pin down. He’s a student of history, and not only includes references to the past to explain the present, he also refers back to artists like Woody Guthrie and Blind Willie Johnson to lay a foundation for what he hopes to accomplish with his music. He also has a wry sense of humor and a sense of political urgency to his lyrics, as you might expect from a guy who has called Sole a close friend for years. There’s also a bit of catching up to do with the album, as Pedestrian looks at how Oakland has evolved, and not necessarily for the better, or his personal take on Post-Katrina New Orleans. It’s a complex and sprawling album, and sometimes it might get just a little bit messy, but I ultimately don’t mind. After twelve years, there’s a lot of catching up to do.

Pedestrian is one of those artists that people either don’t know, or they’ll speak glowingly of the one album he made and then disappeared. Well, now we can talk about the second act of his career, as unIndian II is a very rich text to discuss, both musically and lyrically. Hopefully we won’t have to wait until 2029 for the next one.