Paul Thompson ain’t livin’ like a sheep
Greg Grease is woke. That doesn’t mean he’s selling sunglasses that cover all three eyes or listening to Baduizm on endless loop. But while the rest of the Twin Cities is at fashion week with Kanye or primping their soul patch on an endless college tour, “Rip Van Winkle” is a straightforward campaign platform: Wake up, or get left behind. The second single from the Minneapolis workman’s excellently titled Born to Lurk, Forced to Lurk is breezy but pointed, a side-eye in .wav form.
Led by last year’s menacing “Really Tho,” Born to Lurk is Grease’s definitive effort, an expansive treatise on what it means to be a black man who raps in an ostensibly progressive metropolis. “TWUD” (guess what it stands for) takes up arms against the Minneapolis police force that was caught on video dragging a black woman outside a grocery store last fall. Elsewhere, cuts like the Mike the Martyr-featuring “Vang Gogh” merge the metaphysical and the punch clocks of the part-time hustle.
Born to Lurk, Forced to Work is out March 24 on Sound Verite.
