Spearhead: Stay Human : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Michael Franti of Oakland, California, is a spiritual and musical heir of a long-past era of socially conscious street poets like Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets. Blessed with a rich, resonant baritone and an easy way with metaphor ("The harder they hit us, the louder we become" he says on "Skin on the Drum"), Franti is a singer and rapper who cushions his heavy messages of political and racial protest in a bed of homespun soul as well as spoken-word and funkified hip-hop. It's a groove that has served him ably on two previous albums with his band Spearhead, Home and Chocolate Supa Highway. Stay Human plows the same earth, but this time Franti uses the entire span of the record to chip away at a single issue: the folly of the death penalty. Franti makes a risky gambit by interweaving a series of skits between songs to dramatize his point. But there's genuine excitement in hearing him leap nimbly between the tart funk of "Rock the Nation" and the loose organic soul of "Speaking of Tongues" as he rails against the inequities of death row, mingling the earthy and the high-minded into something special.

DAVID THIGPEN
(RS 872 - July 5, 2001)