Brother Ali: Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color – review

While ostensibly an attempt to address contemporary social issues, this fourth album by Minnesotan white Muslim rapper Brother Ali is more clearly an exercise in nostalgia. The consequence may not be intended, but it turns out to be Mourning in America's main strength. With production by Jake One that's heavy on the drum fills, horn flares and rolling piano hooks, you can occasionially mistake a song for late-noughties Jay-Z. Ali's flow, meanwhile, is reminiscent of early Kanye or, better yet, Pharoahe Monch. It's mellifluous and clear in its delivery, but this points up Ali's limitations at the same time; the inflexibility of his style and the limits of his vocabulary. As for the politics, the subjects may be job insecurity (Work Everyday) or sub-prime property (Fajr), but there is little in the way of insight that couldn't have been gleaned from the news, while specificity is usually ignored in favour of familiar generalisations. In this, Brother Ali sounds like even older hip-hop; the golden-age days when Five Percent Nation rappers were as common as club swag MCs today.