Album Review: Mantra - Telling Scenes

To speak of a hungry emcee doesn't get to the heart of it. Hunger is about desire: I want food. Hunger is not starvation: I need food. So to describe Mantra as hungry is to miss the point. He doesn't want to rap. He must rap. You can hear it in the ferocity of his rapid fire delivery. You can feel it in the way he squeezes everything he can from a rhyme scheme before moving on to the next one. You can sense it in the mini-melodies that punctuate his raps. Mantra had to make Telling Scenes this way. He had no other option.

Learn Your Language is a case in point. “Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya,” and then – bang! We find ourselves in Mantra's world of words bouncing and boom-bapping along. It serves as the album's mission statement: we are here to talk about talking. The Fear has a stunning moment a little after the two-minute mark where Mantra's melodic command roams free before segueing back to the hypnotic hook. Break Tradition deserves its reputation as a call to arms for all white ribbon wearers. Perfect Crime is striking and powerful; comfortably the album's best.

Problems? The skits detract from the album a little more with each listen. After all, a good joke gets boring faster than a good song; an average joke, faster still – a minor quibble. Telling Scenes is a compelling achievement. It's the album Mantra had to give us.