For more than six years, DJ Mr. Len made up one-third of the acclaimed underground hip-hop trio Company Flow. Since CoFlow underwent their "amicable split" last year, Mr. Len has been on his own. Suffice it to say, he's doing just fine. And his first solo album, Pity the Fool, is the proof.

When it comes to MCs, Len uses many of them. By the time you've reached the end of Pity the Fool's 16 tracks, you've heard nearly 20 different individuals-- from Steady Roc, to the Arsonist's Q-Unique, to Atlanta up-and-comers Massinfluence. This gives the disc diversity not just in vocal delivery, but also in attitude and content. You've got the ever-amusing Chubb Rock "changing colors like iMacs" and puffing his skills on "Dummy Smacks"; Jean Grae vamping about a Columbine-style teen rampage on the nine-minute epic "Taco Day"; Lord Sear, pleading with his rotund "big-chocolate-shake-drinkin', no Ultra-Slimfast usin'" love-interest to never change on "Girl (Got to Give It to Me)." Maybe it's Mr. Len's effect on his collaborators, but every one of them sounds relaxed and confident, like there's nothing better or easier than rapping over a Len track.

If the MCs are diverse, the beats are Tiger Woods. The whole thing sounds like a well-planned mix tape: although no two tracks are the same, you can tell they're the product of the same imagination. Two ends of the spectrum are "Get Loose" and "Force Fed." "Get Loose," featuring the admirable flow of Massinfluence, is built around the kind of dirty super-wah'd bassline that could have come straight off of Miles' On the Corner. The Pantera-like heavy metal of "Force Fed," meanwhile, replaces the funk with confrontation and aggression, courtesy of Agents of Man and Amplifire.

One of the album's standouts, "Dummy Smacks," builds around an upbeat, funky horn section, but separates Chubb Rock's from Mr. Live's verses with five different ten-second interludes, including a Gregorian drone, a dark electronic sample and some soulful blues-fella setting up a Chubb verse by expressing, "There's something I've wanted to say for a long, long time." The interludes cut up the beat nicely, keeping the horns sounding persistent and fresh. Len is clearly in touch with his ass, and makes it known with his mastery of beat-dynamics, modulating them by adding choruses, bridges, or just letting a bassline drop out of the mix, to leave only a breakbeat. "Get Loose" is a prime example-- its orchestration is steady throughout, but after a few minutes, the mix suddenly opens up like it went from mono to stereo.

I'm constantly baffled by what constitutes hip-hop's "underground." Apparently, the term has nothing to do with obscurity, novelty or musical subversion, because Pity the Fool is "underground," and it's none of the above. Neither is it a disc rife with musical surprises, abstract concepts or ideological enlightenment. It's simply bold, street-level hip-hop with plenty of verve and attitude-- exactly what you wish they'd play on the radio.

-Brad Haywood, November 19th, 2001