You might recognize the velvety voice of Ursula Rucker from four of the The Roots’ albums, including the achingly beautiful, yet painful, track ‘The Return to Innocence Lost’ from Things Fall Apart. After a two year hiatus from her own recording career, the soulful artist is back with an eclectic selection of tracks that make up the impeccably produced album, The Ruckus Soundsysdom. Known for her politically-charged, socially-conscious musings, Rucker shows her lighter side with this album, declaring ‘Sometimes I just want to sit in front of the fire and listen to that shit crackle/I’m not always lying awake for the next problem to tackle/sometimes-I tell jokes’ on ‘Read Between the Lines,’ the first single. And she does. In a musical climate where lyricism and poetry are often compromised in the face of gimmicky (if only because you hear it every damn second on the radio-) production techniques, Ruckus pokes fun at the latest fads by employing them respectively during the first verse of the opening of the album, ‘I was thinking/ maybe you’d listen if I chopped and screwed it while I do it/ or perhaps if I Auto-tuned it then you could groove to it/ahh-fuck it-let me just do me.’

With a steady and often hushed tone throughout the album, Rucker proves that you don’t have to build up to climactic explosions of emotion in order to resonate with your listener. Tracks like ‘Catholic’ sound like what you’d expect from a traditional performance poetry piece, with eerie and sparse production, but full of lyrical zingers, like ‘Maybe in a strange, but familiar way/I was-am your religion/you practice and unpractice me-at will/When you feel like being faithful-you come to me/prayerfully-and lovingly/with feigned devotion.’ ‘Dirty Chi P.A.’ demonstrates Rucker’s power as a female emcee whose flow is up there with the leading ladies of hip hop, and then makes a 180 degree turn on ‘End of an Era’ where her voice literally oozes sex t la Sade, crooning against a lounge music background. Working once again with producer King Britt and others, Rucker adds in the musical styling of several Brooklynite female producers, including the avant-soul duo FISHEYE, who ultimately take Rucker’s insightful words to the next level in what is an impressive and refreshing listen.

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