Usually, it’s that you’ve either never heard Myka 9 or you’re given to
making fantastic claims about the man and about his virtuosity. Superlatives
adhere to Myka, yet he is absurdly under-known for an artist of his stature, and
it’s this paradox that too often governs discussion of his two and a half decades
in rap. (A body of work, by the way, bookended by ghostwriting two songs on
N.W.A. and the Posse’s 1987 LP and now by this piece, Sovereign Soul.)
Perhaps it’s simply that Myka is more or less alone in the world of rap.
His tonal palette is broader and brighter and his voice more liquid than other
rappers, his melodic sensibility more unpredictably hard bop than 80’s pop soul—
though he goes there too. And he has harder angles too—peep his compelling
snarl here on the street duet, “Indigenous Areas,” with the elusive but excellent E-
Rule.
Myka’s legend began in Freestyle Fellowship, whose independent debut
in 1991 is comparable only to De La Soul’s The Daisy Age in opening up
possibilities for determined experimentation in hip-hop. As Pitchfork observed,
“to say that Freestyle Fellowship significantly influenced west coast hip-hop is
like saying that Jesus was a pivotal figure in Christianity.“ And Fellowship,
impossibly, persists in producing “the highest standard of rhyme,” as Chuck D.
has it, ever confirming their mantra, “We will never fall the fuck off, we promise.”
And Chuck’s “highest standard” is soaring: if Jay-Z has said, “If skills sold, truth
be told,/ I'd probably be, lyrically, Talib Kweli,” then Kweli has rapped that “writing
rhymes with Myka 9” was a career high akin to his first tour with The Roots.
Myka also must be the only rapper to have attempted, as a teenager, to
battle both Run DMC (with Aceyalone at a South Central Denny’s) and LL Cool J
(at a backyard party), though the former demurred and the latter never learned of
the plot on his rep, as Myka choked on a chunk of ice from his gin and juice while
en route.
All the high-flying talk, though, all of these attempts to grasp at the
dazzling fact of Myka’s rhymin’, does a strange disservice to his work. Even if we
indulge the legend, he doesn’t; he’s never larded his music with reminders of his
reputation or references to his classics, though his career is lit with them (see, for
instance, “Park Bench People,” recently and beautifully interpreted by Blue
Note’s Jose James).
The possible classic here is “Mind Heights,” vivid and lively though
colored by a mature resignation. “It takes a real man to admit he was wrong,” he
croons in the song’s opening chords before loosing a double-time, baritone
barrage of ruminations on break-ups, class-conscious lovers, and regret. “It
takes a real man to put in a song,” he concludes two and a half minutes later,
“and this is that song.”
The title of Sovereign Soul is an affirmation of his whole aesthetic:
searching, spiritual, and fiercely independent of the burdens and strictures of pop
expectation. And the
album is the work a 42 year old who happens to have invented more vocal styles
than any rapper living or now with Biggie, and who toils still, crafting songs of
bare soul and hard-won honesty in a carpeted one-room apartment off La Brea.
