Clichéd though it may be, adequate words don't quite exist to describe the debut album from the Brooklyn-based duo Dead Prez. Savvy. Political. Caring. Insightful. Warning. All of those apply, but even rolled together they fail to grasp the grander vision this pair of artists -- Stic.man and M1 -- has to offer. In the face of a genre that prefers nihilism and materialism to uplift and raise self-awareness, Dead Prez has made an album that eschews wanton trendiness, yet still somehow speaks that lingua franca as a means toward education and enlightenment.

This becomes evident from the album's first single, "Hip Hop." On the surface, it's a grimy bass track (both members spent part of their youth in the South) thick with distortion. Sonically geared for the clubs and Jeeps, their words offer a far more subversive soundtrack, unpacking record industry hypocrisy – "nigga don't think these record deals gonna feed your seeds and pay your bills."

Most exciting, though, are the raw politics. Stic.man brings the rawest insurrectionary fire on "They Skoolz," a vicious lambasting of Eurocentric education: "I took the history class serious / Front row, every day of the week, third period / Fucking with the teacher's head, calling him racist / I tried to show them crackers some light / They couldn't face it."

When not busy excoriating authority figures, Stic and M1 focus their energies on reforming their own communities, making what has to be the first rap song ever dedicated to nutrition in "Eat Healthy." "Mind Sex" relocates attraction from below the waist to above, while "I'm a African" revisits the Afro-diasporic sensibility of Stetastonic's "A.F.R.I.C.A." That all of these ideas exist in hip-hop is exciting. That they're all on this album is a miracle.

Jon Caramanica (www.cdnow.com)

www.getoutofthematrix.com's  Rating: 9.3/10