Review Summary: Focused, relevant and uplifting. Ana Tijoux finds herself at the forefront of self-conscious female hip hop artists
Ana Tijoux's forth full length album Vengo champions the globally oppressed; listening to what wise ancestors the world over have told us while maintaining a firm eye on what changes we need to apply to advance forward. The French-Chilean rapper delivers track after track of conscious, serious hip hop tackling topics from environmentalism, social justice, feminism and the caring of her child.
With lyrical themes diverse and prevalent to today's global reality, Ana Tijoux confidently vocalizes her brilliant rhymes throughout the record. The first three numbers are quite revealing to the type of sound one can expect from this album. Title track, "Vengo" shows Ana waxing poetically over lush instrumentation including the much maligned pan-flute, popularized by the new age movement. The message is clear and poignant, "Vengo para mirar de nuevo para deducirlo y despertar el ojo ciego/sin miedo, tú y yo descolonizemos lo que nos enseñaron". The aforementioned flutes, are actually quite at ease in the mix and don't ever dip into the realm of cheesiness that they so often occupy. "Somos Sur", sees Ana unleash some of her fiercest vocals on the album along with Palestinian rapper, Shadia Mansour, they both trade intricate flows over booming Andean pipes, brass instrumentation and rolling drum work. Finally, cumulating with "Antipatriarca", she croons, over a soothing composition of intermingled guitar notes, her stance on feminism and female equality.
The instrumentation, composed mostly of Andean flutes (among other wind instruments), brass horns, guitars, bass, and drums combine with a progressive flair and a slight jazz influence to lavish the album in interesting compositions while maintaining the sounds of the southern hemisphere. Ana's rhymes are succinct, enunciated with passion and at times combined with her singing, which can be anything from hushed whispers to soaring escapes, elegant in its application. Look to a song like, "Oro Negro" to get an idea of the kind of empathy she can elicit. One of the great things the record offers is that unlike most Western based rappers, Tijoux's music doesn't rely on samples. They are completely devoid on the album, giving the record a genuine organic sound. While a quite brilliant exhibition of the ferocity she had displayed on previous albums, some tracks do come off as filler. As they could have easily been shortened and or fused with other songs to provide a more cohesive sound. That slight blemish aside, Tijoux has delivered one of the freshest sounding hip hop albums of the year. For fans tired of rappers relying too much on sampled based song structures and ripped-off ideas, instead Vengo offers a dazzling call-to-action for the global social injustices found in our world supported by a unique blending of melodies.
