Unicus and Big Zach

It’s a Minneapolis hip-hop mystery: How did Unicus and Big Zach end up in the same group, let alone stick it out for 16 years running? Unicus is a Haitian-born father who remembers playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt back home, and sings a hymn in Creole to his mom on the second track of his new solo EP, which is the kind of dedication rappers usually make deeper into a record. Big Zach is from Bemidji, Minnesota, and is a hallucinogens enthusiast and fridge-surfing rake who says, on his March 2011 solo album, that his “life has been one long weekend,” arrest record aside, and tells love interests he’d “like to apply to be your next ex-boyfriend.”

Emerging from a group of friends out of South High in the ’90s, Kanser now consists of these two guys (a.k.a. Harry Philibert and Zachariah Combs) plus singer Alicia Steele and DJ Gabe Garcia. The rappers also front live band More Than Lights with singer Natalie Fine, which will play Wookiefoot’s Shangri-La festival in September, embracing the “hippie” label that De La Soul once spurned. (More Than Lights’ 2011 EP, Fun’s On Our Team!, has a redeeming streak of Sly And The Family Stone-style pop sunshine.)

Obviously, Unicus and Big Zach share more than good taste in strong female singers: Both are event bookers and community men. Unicus put on a show last year that raised $4,000 for Haiti earthquake relief. And both keep improving: Last year’s Two For One, a Speakerboxxx/The Love Below-style split, was Kanser’s best in a dozen-odd albums. Unicus’ dancehall-fueled “Babydoll (What Do You Do?)” extends his feminine metaphor for music out of palpable love rather than moralism: “After hours she’ll do you right. / If a knucklehead starts to fight, she get turned off, / here comes the lights.”

There’s nothing that sharp on Starving Artist: Abstraction Lyrique, issued under the name UnicusHarry. But it’s a promising stopgap on the strength of Unicus’ great, honking voice and deepening love of melody. With Minneapolis’ Strayz producing, this solo project sounds like a perfect fusion of Overcast-era Atmosphere and neo-soul sounds, all dusted piano and lush keyboards, with enough A Tribe Called Quest-type dissonance to set things askew. The gnawing guitar twang of “Punch Clock” fits the song’s anti-boss sentiment (“Why don’t we all just walk out of here and see how they manage?”), while Jackie-O croons the evocative refrain, “One layer lives off the other.” Other ideas feel undercooked: Unicus could take his own advice when he sings, “When you’re not looking, that’s when you find answers.” But he soars vocally when he coasts lyrically, an unusual combination of scatman and singjay cut loose on his notebook.

The leap forward for Zach is in content, a flowering in the periphery. His jokes are funnier and more frequent on New Crayons, especially piling up on “New Approach,” where Zach complains, “Girls my age always ask me to change, but it’s dinnertime and I’ve been Zach all day,” a line that can’t quite be unscrambled. Against the Ant-sized thwack of producer Big Jess, “Hood Rap” announces, “This ain’t hood rap,” before explaining, in the chorus, “I wrote this for every soul that we lost, growing up fast through this maze, / The drug addictions that mute the pain. / Wish I would write more letters to my peoples in prison. / If I could give ’em more bucks on they books, then I would, but I can’t, / Just a few photos and a stamp.”

Zach claims to ignore politics, but he’s never sounded more political than when criticizing street cred from within. And he keeps slipping, digressing from the sex boasts of “F-Yo-Life” to coin a party slogan: “America, / Everybody’s depressed, so just act like you ain’t got to pay your rent!” He pauses during a hitchhiking tale to reflect on improvements brought by immigrant communities along East Lake Street. And on the date-happy “Disco Balls On Venus,” he raps, “Magazines and the TV stations only vend abominations of what beauty is / …. But beyond the devil-made matrix you can find a goddess who is capable of greatness.” When he meets that goddess, you can bet he’ll volunteer to be her next ex-boyfriend. 

Unicus plays a CD-release show this Friday, Aug. 26, at the Nomad World Pub. Kanser performs at the Audio Perm Block Party this Saturday, Aug. 27, at Shuga Records.