Sage Francis - Sick of Waiting Tables - Still Sick... Urine Trouble - The Known Unsoldier: Sick of Waging War - Sickly Business
MusicMash Rating: not rated yet
Pitchfork Media Rating: 6.4
Sage Francis is a victim of circumstance. Though he initially rode high on internet buzz as one of the
harbingers of the new face of hip-hop, his emotional Anticon debut led to a severe backlash among the
independent rap massive. Soon enough, Francis' breed of confessional emcee would become as defunct as
the Hip Hop Infinity website that fostered his development, and the notion that to be white was
no longer to be right in underground hip-hop would face him with a serious obstacle.
Fortunately, by that point, Francis had built up a strong following on the strength of the Sick Of
CD series he'd been promoting as tour-only compilations of live, rare and spoken word tracks. The earliest
volumes still contain some of his most accessible and highly regarded work, and have recently become more
widely available through online outlets.
His first salvo, Sick of Waiting Tables, hit hardest. This collection contains most of Sage's work
from 1997-2000 and also houses his best overall songs. "Rewrite" is both his best-known track, boasting
deeply personal and emotional lyrics that never overstep into the domain of pretension, while "I Apologize",
featuring Anticon cohort Sole, seems in retrospect to have been the anthem for the bearded white emcee
explosion. The mixtape format tends to limit an artist's impact, but Sage's mix of impressive freestyles,
tongue-in-cheek battles, and an interpretation of Devo's "Whip It" make for his best and most enjoyable
work outside of Non Prophets' 2003 debut, Hope.
Still Sick... Urine Trouble draws its material entirely from 2000, and comes close to capturing the
strength of the first disc. The songs boast a much more conceptual slant than Waiting Tables, with
Sage personifying a newborn baby ("The Time of My Life"), stalking Natalie Portman ("Her Shlag"), traveling
through time ("Majority Rule"), being patronized by armchair quarterbacks (the hilarious "Eye of the Tiger"),
and attempting to fake his own death ("Andy Kaufman"). Yet, while most of these songs are incredible, the
supporting freestyles and other oddities aren't nearly strong enough to compete with the previous collection,
or to pad the nine actual songs the disc contains.
The downward trend continued ever so slightly with 2002's The Known Unsoldier: Sick of Waging War,
despite its comparative lack of filler tracks. The standouts stick out more than ever, with "Narcissist"
ticking and humming its way into the spot of best Non-Prophets song ever, "Makeshift Patriot" taking aim
at the political mechanisms behind the 9/11 aftermath, and "I'm Gonna Getcha" dubbing and skanking the many
ways that society's commercial structure can harm you ("B-b-bad to the bone, like the Coca-Cola you sip/
I'll get you, baby, giving you only soda to drink"). Still, some weak cuts ("Embarrassed", "Inner Conflict")
and lame extras ("Mermaids Are Seasluts") bog the record's continuity and conviction.
However, Sickly Business, this year's pileup of odds and ends, marks the first real disappointment
in the series. I understand that one motive behind these kinds of releases is to offer exposure to unknown
artists, but Jared Paul's "Jesus in a Bowl of Germs" is painful, overlong, pretentious and, if meant to be
funny (or not), a complete failure. On the positive side, the Danger Mouse-produced "Garden Gnomes" is a
biting critique of the generic bedroom emcee and his fair-weather listener ("Fuck a fickle fanbase, stuck
a middle finger in their damn face"); DJ Signify's "Cup of Regrets" is Sage at his esoteric best; and
"Doomage", featuring Slug, Brother Ali and MF Doom on the beat, is an instant...
Read the complete review here