In 1990, Lin Que (X Clan affiliate) released his hip hop debut under another name (Isis) and choosing political themes and hip house rhythms, or the two trends of the moment in the genre that's rapidly gaining popularity.
Despite the socio-political lyrics and a pretty decent and flowing delivery by the rapper, she wanted to make a hip hop album. Instead, a disco house / hip house album comes out, where the rhythms are tight, simple minimal, with drum machine skinny and poor, and the other commercial errors overlap each other. Perhaps she's the first female rapper to make an almost entirely political record, or keeping political as the central theme.
However, the choices in production sink the whole record: from the opening bongos, to the too tight looped sax in the background ("Great Pimpstress"), from the disco house a little dance a bit sci-fi ("In the Mind of One"), to the def funky beat ("To the Crossroads"), from the g-funkian synth ("In the Mind of One"), to the experimental jazzy house bridge ("The Power of Myself Is Moving"), every choice turns out to be unsuitable for the lyrics and flakes the attempts of consistency of the LP, which ends up being a[n almost] fully hip house album: for example "Hail the Words If Isis" has a pop dance beat close to both house and techno, is all but hip hop. X-Clan don't do a good job behind the keys, the album is released by 4th & Broadway and it goes basically unnoticed. 4/10.
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