Sole & The Skyrider Band: Hello, Cruel World (Fake Four, 7/19/11)
Sole & The Skyrider Band: “Hello, Cruel World”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Sole__the_Skyrider_Band_Hello_Cruel_World.mp3|titles=Sole & The Skyrider Band: “Hello, Cruel World”]As one of the co-founders of the Anticon rap collective, Tim Holland (better known as Sole) has spent his career pushing the boundaries of alternative hip hop. Hello, Cruel World is his third album with The Skyrider Band, and it’s another reinvention.
Skyrider, which has been the force behind Sole’s sonic development over the past few years, now sets a surprisingly mainstream and orchestral backdrop for Holland’s rhymes, which have slowed and become more decipherable — but no less potent in criticism. Holland wanted Hello, Cruel World to sound more like a “big rap album,” and it accomplishes the feat with club beats, vocoder-inspired choruses, and a posse of collaborators (Sage Francis, Xiu Xiu, Lil B, and many more). But the musical backdrop also is more cerebral and beautiful, thanks in part to the talents of band member and film-score composer William Ryan Fritch (a.k.a. Vieo Abiungo).