If you’re familiar with Sole, you shouldn’t be surprised that the Occupy Wall Street movement would elicit a response from the emcee. He’s been making music filled with critical discourse on politics, economy, and other issues for over ten years. Just earlier this year, along with Hello Cruel World, his album with the Skyrider Band, he also released the mixtape Nuclear Winter Volume 2: Death Panel, a project were Sole re-appropriated pop songs to discuss current events. While he’s participating in the protests in Denver, he drops Dispatches From The American Fall, a mix featuring a few new songs, a few remixes, and a lot of songs from his back catalogue that still resonate today.

The mix opens with “I Think I’m Ben Bernanke,” a rewritten version of “I Think I’m Noam Chomsky,” which appeared in NWV2, with the lyrics now focused squarely on the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Other new material includes a remix of “Bad Captain Swag,” and “Living in the End Times,” which borrows the beat from the Nas/AZ song “Mo Money, Mo Murder,” and deals with the Standards & Poors downgrade. In a way, this mix is sort of a “best of” collection - except of giving off a “Aren’t I great?” vibe, it instead delivers the message of “The world is broke and it’s up to us fix it!” To a certain extent, it’s a little depressing to know that some of these songs are eight-years-old, but the flip side of that is that Sole has not softened in his aggressive approach to his musical career. If anything, he’s as pissed off and strong willed as ever. Stylistically, you can see how he’s experimented with different approaches, but the message is always on point. He’s not happy with the way things are going, and he wants you to think long and hard about how you’re living, and what we can all do to make this better.

I don’t know what’s to come out of this current period that we’re living through, but I do know that it’s not going to get better until we make some drastic changes. Part of that comes from people voicing their frustrations with the status quo. Sole has done that with Dispatches, and I’m glad for it.