The album cover of Sister Souljah's "360 Degrees of Power" features the black activist-cum-rapper in a circle of portraits that portray her successively as coquettish, pensive, tranquil, tough, happy and finally angry.
It is the latter air she adopts throughout the record, her first effort, which by successful hip-hop standards hasn't sold very well (20,000 copies), though Souljah, a.k.a. Lisa Williamson of the Bronx, N.Y., has become practically a household name in America.Her fame - or infamy, more precisely - is due mostly to the political timbre of these election-year times, not to her talent for rap. Most of the 13 cuts on "360 Degrees of Power" are decidedly lacking in the slick cadence and clever rhyme employed by true artists of the genre.
Rap in its short history has managed to potently capture the pain of the urban dispossessed, and Souljah tries to take it up a notch by striding to the front of the class, where she admonishes black Amer-ica to get in step or die.
It is strong stuff (banned from MTV) and probably repulsive to most people. The record fails by being too dogmatic to be entertaining, too hateful to be inspiring, too shallow in its musical and lyrical reach to be catchy.
Bill Clinton was right when he chided Souljah for her combative remarks to the Rainbow Coalition earlier this summer after she said black people ought to set aside a week especially for killing whites. Clinton appropriately compared her to the white supremacist David Duke. Souljah made the next cover of Newsweek.
On the title track she gets right to the point, tapping the spiritual sturdiness of African-American women as a vital weapon because "in a state of war we must be even stronger."
In "The Hate that Hate Produced" she will do "whatever needs to be done, whatever it takes no matter who it may hurt."
"The Final Solution - Slavery's Back in Effect" envisions a time when the president announces at a news conference that the institution has been revived for the betterment of the country.
"Brainteasers and Doubt-busters" has perhaps the silliest lyric, asserting "there's no such thing as a black racist," and offering a blanket condemnation of all white deeds, even the ones that look good. White people join the Peace Corps so they can steal secrets from other cultures. White women proffer friendship to Souljah so they can steal her black man. White feminists make overtures to black women in order to destroy black families.
And so on.
There are some worthwhile messages on "360 Degrees of Power," where, for instance, it presents in "The Final Solution" a true-enough if simplistic critique of American foreign policy and later, on "Umbilical Cord to the Future," a plea against teen pregnancy ("If you don't teach the children, they will not know").
But "360 Degrees of Power" is mostly a disappointing screed that is neither uplifting nor very constructive, overseasoned by more than a dash of self delusion.
"Most people," says the would-be rapper, "won't accept my activism and this album until I'm dead."
When you get to the afterlife, Sister, don't hold your breath.