Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy
Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
I’ll go ahead and spoil the whole thing for you: in the 51.7 minute entirety of Speech Therapy, nobody gets shot. There are no signature dance moves, no area code shoutouts, and you probably can’t purchase any of these songs as a ringtone. The MC only has one tattoo and it’s of a music note curled up around some dumb colloquialism. She routinely says the word “mum,” in what sounds like an endearing sort of way.
If you are a hip hop artist trying to make it in the “real world,” I just counted about a gazillion strikes against you. Sorry Speech Debelle, it looks like the world’s out to get you. Again. I mean, you’ve never lived a life of luxury, but in a genre dominated by Thug Life and tinny Fruity Loops handclap beats, your intelligent, jazzy flow guarantees you no fast track status.
So, what does one do then, when they are abandoned by their father, then mother, give school the boot, start rapping, and then get nominated for a British Mercury Prize? Well, the smart thing to do would be to phone up Oprah, schedule an appointment with Dr. Dre, or grab a 16 gauge needle and shoot up with the liquid embodiment of “Boom-Boom Pow.” Once you have that going for you, you can do some guest-feature black-and-white Converse advertisements and hopefully chalk up a sports-drink-sponsored tour. You’re then free to retire, and live in a mansion in San Diego, with wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-ceiling carpet that’s so lush and shaggy that it’s like living in a goddamn anemone. Then you can come out of retirement to do some botched-up comeback album with “stellar” guest features by the likes of Ja Rule and Drake. And then you can call it a life.
Fortunately for us, Speech Debelle does not choose to pass GO, she does not collect $200, she instead keeps it low-key and quietly drops major knowledge on her excellent album Speech Therapy. It may not be sexy, but it sure gets more than the job done, with superb lines, and a bold, catchy flow. She tells us up front that she’s not a rapper, but a poet. And I can believe it. I would say she’s confident, but that just wouldn’t do it justice. Rather, she’s pissed off. And while when most people get mad they just end up doing stupid stuff like smash out car windows with croquet mallets, Speech Debelle channels her energy to make it more focused and driven. Because as everybody knows, it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.
And boy does she have a lot to tell: life isn’t fair, being raised by a single mom sucks, boyfriends are usually meatheads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all this before, but the way she presents it is witty and charmingly intelligent. It’s like those dumb, half-baked “Choose Your Own Adventure” books you used to read in 3rd grade. It was really the same lukewarm plotline that you were reading over and over again, but all the new twists and turns made it easy for you to lie to yourself and convince your neocortex that what you were imputing was new and fresh. Debelle’s gritty description, peppered with metaphors, onomonopias, and British slang, paints an all-too-real picture of the magnitude of poverty in the streets of South London. And she leaves no details out. “And the baby sniffles as he watches, but that ain’t nothing new/He’s always sniffling, always got a cold, yeah that’s what crack’l do/Peek-a-boo, I seen you/Doing what your people’s don’t know you do.”
Sure, there are the occasional clichés and lines that sound like they were lifted off inspirational posters and allergy medication advertisements, but overall, her clever syntax is beyond superb. She refuses to bow down and conform to industry standards by indulging in played-out themes or repulsive celebrity-skit memes. The closest she gets is a singular, awkward, reference to Facebook that she will probably regret in 10 years.
The production is like Herbie Hancock and Buddy Rich had a kid and force-fed it a steady diet of José González and 9th wonder. Each beat is jazzy and tight, but still maintains an essential bit of free form to let Debelle’s cascading rhymes wander. Priceless oboes, semi acoustic guitars, and bassdrum bombs fill in the gaps and liven things up before any 4/4 drumming starts to sound tired.
Speech Therapy sounds surprisingly intellectual and crisp. For instance, I think my next door neighbor might like this album, and she’s 53. Debelle’s sheer dexterity shows that even if it wasn’t for Root’s Manuvas gorgeous production, she could still carry her own weight. It’s almost as if she’s too smart for her own good, and it’s a shame that there’s barely a market for this sort of stuff. For these flaws lie not in her skill, but in her image. She may be bad, but she doesn’t want to waste any time talking it up.
The only thing holding her back from mainstream success is the fact that even if she’s sold drugs—she hasn’t sold the right ones, and she doesn’t brag about it nearly enough.
