One Mic

[November 12th, 2008]

After 16 years of heavy involvement with the Portland music scene, Mic Crenshaw is on the verge of releasing his debut record. Sure, his name is in the liner notes for experimental hip-hop projects Hungry Mob and Suckapunch, and more traditional beats-and-ryhmes duo the Cleveland Steamers, but Thinking Out Loud is the first full-length album the MC has ever released under his own name.

Despite this record’s incredibly long gestation period, urgency has never been Mic Crenshaw’s problem. If one were to take issue with the 38-year-old rapper’s previous work (not that we encourage you to criticize a guy with a pro-wrestling build and years of martial-arts training), it’s that he attacks tracks too hard, firing on all cylinders about a host of social injustices and sometimes trying to pack too many words into a verse. Though his rhymes are generally as stylistically on-point as they are intellectually sound, Crenshaw’s own personality was often lost in a storm of beats and radical politics.

But a personal narrative begins to take center stage on Thinking Out Loud, a record that finds his Chuck-D-meets-Del flow comfortably in line with the beats of his primary producer, Erik Abel. Peppered between doomsday slow-jams (“America,” “Running Out of Time”) and shotgun showtunes (“Take ’Em Out,” “So Serious”) are detailed autobiographical stories from Crenshaw’s past.

On “Fightin’ ’Em Back” and “Follow Your Instincts,” Crenshaw recalls his formative years in Minneapolis, where he was a member of the Baldies, a crew of non-racist skinheads that engaged in sometimes vicious combat with their neo-Nazi counterparts. Over the dark techno beats of “Fightin’ Em Back,” the MC recalls intimate details of a skirmish that sounds almost too bloody to be true. But it is: A February ’08 feature story in the Minneapolis City Pages caught up with the Baldies, and described Crenshaw beating a Nazi skinhead so badly that his face “came to resemble a crushed box of jelly donuts.”

Though he has since chosen a nonviolent path toward social change—involving himself with a handful of progressive organizations, including a nonprofit he co-founded called Global Fam—his social consciousness came out of his time with the Baldies. “There was this sense of one for all and all for one,” Crenshaw—whose infectious, gap-toothed smile belies his buildexplains. “And later I realized it’s not just about me and my gang, it’s about community, it’s about family, it’s about society.”

That understanding has permeated all of Crenshaw’s work, but never has he gotten so personal as he is on Thinking Out Loud. The trick is to “Live my life openly/ Expose it through the poetry,” Crenshaw explains against a buzzing funk beat from Sandpeople’s Sapient on “A Lot of Us.” Later, “On the Move” spills Mic’s entire résumé (from his astrological sign to his overarching political philosophy) over a Tony Ozier soul hook as a reference for potential romantic interests. And “2 Way Street” finds Crenshaw going step by step through the disintegration of a destructive relationship.

While the contrast between the confident revolutionary and the sensitive lover can be somewhat jarring, one comes away from the album with an understanding of Crenshaw that politics alone have never quite communicated. “It’s funny, because I was a little nervous to perform those songs live at first,” Crenshaw says of his soul-baring numbers, “but those are the songs that people really feel.”

On various occasions, Crenshaw has attempted to leave Portland for his home cities of Chicago or Minneapolis. But something kept turning him back. “I felt like I didn’t have anything substantial to leave Portland with,” he says reflectively, twisting a corner of his wild goatee. “I always say to people, if I’d have pursued an academic career all this time, I’d have a Ph.D and master’s and shit. I knew I wanted to make a statement before I left. That’s what this record is.” He plans to return to Minneapolis in the spring to be closer to his 16 year-old daughter.

If Thinking Out Loud is the last contribution Crenshaw makes to the Portland music scene, he’ll be going out with a bang. He may not have a Ph.D. to show for his 16 years out West, but the album serves as a fine dissertation from one of Portland hip-hop’s most engaging artists.