Mick Jenkins - 'Pieces of Man' review

After listening to The Healing Component in 2016 I remember being a little disappointed. Though it did have some stand out points like Drowning, Communicate, 1000 xans and Angels, it was a let-down overall; an album slightly distracted by a concept that wasn’t all that new or original. His skits throughout, discussing the importance of love and religion, seemed like an annoying rip off of Lauryn Hill and, considering Mick’s promise with tapes like The Water[s], Wave[s] and even The Mickstape, I was left wanting more. That was two years ago, and Mick has been pretty quiet since. A few features, an impressive freestyle on Sway In The Morning and one or two standalone songs that were fun like 3K but, other than that, relative silence.

Then all of a sudden in August: Bruce Banner. It’s bold, it’s angry, and it’s smart. He opens declaring ‘Can’t nobody come for me ‘cept Kendrick’. A seemingly crazy claim to make when his last album is considered, but it made a clear announcement nonetheless. Mick wants to be considered with the greats, reigniting an interest in him that hadn’t really faded for me. The singles he dropped in the build-up to this album got me so excited that I even said to Jules that this could be album of the year if all goes well. So, did it?

17 tracks is a daunting task for both artist and listener. Clocking in at just under an hour, I saw the album going one of two ways - blowing me away entirely or boring me to the point of losing interests. It somehow did neither.

On my first listen of the album, I found it to be remarkably consistent, and I liked almost every song. I wasn’t bored at any point, however, I also wasn’t particularly engrossed either. It was bridging a strange gap between enjoyable and forgettable, and at the time I didn’t feel the need to discuss it in any particular detail. Repeat listens, however, have made me recognise that this album really does give a lot to those happy to persist and interested enough to stick with it.

I find openers really interesting; the idea that we haven’t heard from someone in a while and this is the first thing they want to say to us, or that this is the space and environment they want to create, a concept mirrored only perhaps in films. Mick’s use here of the Gil Scott-Heron inspired spoken word was a cool start and I thought pretty effective. It inspires a picture of a smoke-filled room, with the slightly awkward start suggesting that he’s finding his feet to speak over the crowd, before he gets into his stride. He reminds listeners who he is, ‘Of course my name is Mick Jenkins’, as if we had forgotten, and steps right back into his spot but with more confidence. As always, he talks about race and identity with a slick coolness that carries through the album. His style feels a lot more settled than his last venture. His trademark deep, immersive voice is still angry and frustrated but this time he uses it to broach the subject of unknowable identities. The broken mirror image on the cover links to part 2 of the spoken word section as well as the end of Consensual Seduction, all three of which suggest that we can’t know ‘the whole of a man’ or person, relating also to how many people don’t know themselves. Jenkins relates this particularly to the celebrity, finding issue with a society in which people are blinded by a headline and therefore make assumptions about people without reading the story. Consensual Seduction is a surprising song to hear on a hip-hop album, showing a rapper and a society conscious of the #MeToo movement. This is refreshing as a response to Snoop’s Sensual Seduction back in 2007 and to the general issue of the mistreatment of women in hip-hop; the song is sexy but veers away from vulgarity and disrespect.

Mick switches up his flow and his wordplay constantly to remain versatile, really showing off his awareness of sounds on Reginald with a flow reminiscent of fellow Chicagoan Noname:

‘They draw lines in our widow's peak, we don't peak at capacity

Casually givin' no fucks about your two cents

We gon' clip the loose ends, we gon' clip the split ends

We gon' split ends, we gon' burn the nooses

They try to exclude us they lie to include us

My tribe is of Judah, your kind is of Judas’

The flow is relentless and so comfortable that you can’t read this and not naturally fall into the grooves he creates.

This album evidenced an improvement in his hook writing on tracks like the irresistible Black Milk produced Gwendolynn's Apprehension or the infectious U Turn. Mick represents a certain wave of the new school with a focus on intelligence. He loves to juxtapose metaphors and drag them out as far as he can take them. He did bring through the old school in the form of Ghostface on Paded Locks who has the best feature on the album, reminding us, along with Method Man’s recent feature on the Ocean Wisdom album, that Wu-Tang aren’t done. The song is a banger and a good transitional point for the album, which is overall pretty well paced and is another well-crafted track to go along with many.

There is a slight sense with this release, however, that something is missing; a final piece of the puzzle to take it from good to great. The production is solid and fairly Jazz influence heavy throughout. Producers like the aforementioned Black Milk and frequent collaborator Kaytranada both come across nicely, as well as a welcome return from BADBADNOTGOOD for Smoking Song, which felt like a part two of Drowning and was quite a dark and creepy way to end the album. Mick also did perform well on pretty much every song barring maybe Pull Up and Soft Porn which both could’ve been dropped. There is just still a feeling that Mick Jenkins can do more, especially with this number of tracks, as though this album is him at 90% and if we had that final 10% he’d release something that would be really impactful to the face of rap.

An improvement on The Healing Component, the album is good, and I’ll conclude it to be a hint of what the artist can one day achieve.

7.5/10