Brand Nubian's 1990 debut album, One for All, has been canonized as a hip-hop classic. Since then the group's leader, a diminutive, mustachioed slacker known as Grand Puba, has gone solo. While Brand Nubian's devotion to the Five Percent Nation of Islam was in evidence on almost every track on One for All, on Reel to Reel, Puba restricts his political views to one song, "Soul Controller," a droning chant that asks who is responsible for a litany of affronts, to which an ominous chorus responds, "The devil," a.k.a. Whitey. He disses Oprah in the same song for saying that lynchings are a thing of the past, suggesting that the talk-show host kiss his black ass.

"That's How We Move It" is as messy as a spray of bullets from the automatic handgun the song mentions; Puba sounds spastic as he negotiates phrases through an obstacle course of turntable blasts that detonate at the most unpredictable times. On "Big Kids Don't Play" a combination of baritone sax, piano and a tremolo-bitten guitar provides a loping, lackadaisical backdrop for Puba. His voice cracks; he seems to savor words, squeezing their pitch, shouting, modulating his pace, running out of breath and always sounding extemporaneous – no other rapper sounds as improvised on record. And as the convoluted phrases tumble out in his raspy, singsong voice, suddenly ending smack-dab on the eighth beat of a bar into which he's staggered seemingly without goal, Puba's mastery is beyond reproach.

The music on Reel to Reel is deceptively casual, and the backing tracks are sparse, grounded in a simplicity almost unheard of in this era of over-the-top technology. Most of the samples were chosen from scratchy Stax/Volt-era soul records, and the resulting sound is cheery, bouncy and melodic. But if it has a less aggressive tone than many other rap albums, Reel to Reel is no less funky: Puba is such a gifted rapper, he could probably have made do with a mike, one drumstick and a plastic bucket. Indeed, despite the twenty-four-track studio and considerable financial resources at his disposal, he still sounds like a street MC, kicking flavor for a few pals at a basement party in Mount Vernon.

An expert at his particularly loose style of rhyming, Grand Puba approaches the microphone like a fighter feigning awkwardness to throw you off guard: You're never quite sure which way a phrase is headed until it hits you dead on. (RS 647)

DIMITRI EHRLICH