Four years have passed since Sole first collaborated with The Skyrider Band. In that time, their sound has evolved, striking an interesting balance between electronic music, post-rock, art-rock, and mainstream hip hop. It’s a fascinating combination of influences. They’ve covered a lot of ground since they first started collaborating together, and they are certainly a great distance away from Sole’s early work. I can’t say a lot of albums sound like Hello Cruel World.

On this album, Sole made the decision to make his delivery more deliberate than rapid fire rhymes he’s dropped in the past, so that his words would have more impact on his listeners. This decision has been effective, as lines and hooks embedded themselves in my brain upon repeated listens, and the ideas presented across the album made me reflect on how I feel about the subject matter, whether it’s where my food is coming from or the state of the music industry or the possible meaning behind natural disasters. Lyrically, I think this might be Sole’s most focused work to date. He brings a few guests to the album, including Xiu Xiu, Lil B, Pictureplane, Ceschi, Noah23, Isaiah Toothtaker, and Mestizo, but none have as strong of an impact as Sage Francis. The others add flavor to the tracks they are on and compliment the album well, but “Progress Trap” showcases two artists in Sole and Francis who are such strong personalities and take their art so seriously, you can hear them push and challenge each other. The result is a moving track that is musically beautiful and pleasant, but lyrically makes you take a hard look at how hard it is to do the right thing in face of progress. This album really gets to the heart of what I appreciate about Sole, which is how he always makes me evaluate what my thoughts and opinions are, and why I feel the way I do.

Last year, Skyrider released a seventy-five minute instrumental album called Aux Send Vol. 1. As soon as I listened to it, I knew that not only was that individual release strong, but that they were prepping for something special with Hello Cruel World. The good news is that they delivered an album with Sole that is better than anything they’ve done seperately. Upon first listen, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the record, but I knew that I needed to listen to it again and let my ears figure out what was going on. It’s the result of an independent politically-minded emcee who loves gangsta rap and works with a post-rock/electronic band. You get plenty of sung hooks, bass drops, and drum machine shuffles that you might hear from Lil Wayne or Young Jeezy, but you get it mixed in with dissonant strings, eerie keyboards, acoustic guitar, piano, and other instruments, creating a sound that demonstrates how interesting the music on our radio could sound with just a little tweaking.

Hello Cruel World is an album that has completely snowballed for me. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but now I can say it ranks among the top albums of the year. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell at the time where a certain album fits into the larger picture of an artist’s career. But this is a landmark album in Sole’s career. He’s managed to make a cohesive work that inspires deep thought about serious issues, and manages to be compositionally subversive while not sounding alien to the contemporary mainstream. By injecting this sound with an outsider’s perspective, we can see how much potential there is in this music that normally comes across as shallow and meaningless. I can’t say that Hello Cruel World is anything but a success.