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| [Propaganda: the mass-spreading of an idea or a thought through various media.] |
| Apparently Props took his name because he wants the word 'propaganda' to have more than negative connotations; he wants to share his own ideas and thoughts, and he wants that to be a positive thing. Which is pretty much what he achieves. |
| The combination of Donavan Luke Henry on the beats and Propaganda on the rhymes is found on every track but one on the album ("Don't Let Us Lose It", produced by Don Baker), and the reason for this is that it's a combination
that results in good tracks. Henry's beats are all fairly low-key, and he clearly favours pianos and keyboards, but they are nicely constructed so his chosen instruments sound clean instead of blatantly sampled, and Propaganda's easy flow is given free reign above them. |
| Another thing favoured by this partnership is the usage of sung choruses, which appear on almost all of the tracks. To give two examples, on "My Life, My Music", Macho of New Breed sings the hook in Spanish to complement the salsa piano of the track, and on "Keep
It Live", the accompaniment and chorus are sung in a low alto; so Henry and Propaganda manage to re-use sung vocals without sounding repetitive. And they avoid monotony all the way through the album, until they stumble on "Move With Me" (with vocals by Macho of New Breed),
which isn't a particularly bad track, but just sounds like a worse version of some of the others. |
| While Henry's finest moments are perhaps the jumping timing of "Time And Place" and the jazz-quartet feel (complete with a beat Jay Dee would have been proud of) of "We
Are", Propaganda offers verses of a continually high standard throughout the record. In the same vein as the production on "Out of Knowhere", Props' ideas may not be earth-shatteringly original, but they are all well-delivered, and he succeeds in conveying positivity. "We
'Sketchbooks'" offers the most concise explanation of what Propaganda's lyrics tend to be about and its message is fairly simple: life is all good, no matter what the weather. The neat device on this track is the idea that we are sketchbooks onto which both good and bad experiences are
drawn. So Propaganda considers lost love and heartbreak and also challenges people to defy his commitment to Hip Hop, and concludes that all of this and much more go towards making us who we are, and that's not a bad thing. |
| Other tracks that deserve a mention are "Ya Never Know (Played The Game)" on which Props swaggers as he recounts how he approached a girl with a tight game, and still eventually got played; and "Keep On Singin'"
with its echoing keyboard funk that reminds you of "Brown Sugar" way before the D'Angelo-esque harmonised chorus kicks in. |
| And that basically concludes my description of Propaganda's propaganda; negativity is avoided and positivity is emphasised, and so it goes. Propaganda is always about selling an idea to people, and that's just what the man does, except what he's selling isn't sinister or corporate,
it's simply his own opinion, and that comes across as something that's worth paying for. |
| review: cornerstone |
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