Consumer Guide Album

KRS-One: A Retrospective [Jive, 2000]
Listening to this selection bound all over his vast corpus, you're struck by two things. First, even striding off a Blondie sample he wouldn't have stooped to in his proud twenties, he always sounds like himself. Second, he never sounds like anyone else of much moment--except Run-D.M.C., called out on the early "South Bronx." His musical forthrightness has no modern-day parallels--Gang Starr are scatmen by comparison, the N.O. Bouncers parademasters. How much impact the right voice and beat could make back in the day--and still can, especially boiled down to stark strokes that stick in the mind. To hear in one place "South Bronx," "The Bridge Is Over," "Criminal Minded," "Black Cop," the sociologically perfect and metaphysically weird "Love's Gonna Get'Cha," and the bullheaded history lesson "Why Is That?" is to learn that sometimes all a man needs to make great music is an idea he believes in. A−