Words by C. Paicely

Sometime in 1995, Tupac said he was striving to be the realest rather than the best. Less than two months ago, PUSH! Montana stated that he had similar ambitions as a rider. Rappers coming from truly dark places aren’t motivated by popularity contests as much as by telling the best story. PUSH! will never be another Tupac, and that probably isn’t his goal, but in the year that we’ve gotten to know him as a rhymer he has rapidly gained credibility as something more than “Maino’s friend,” and the proof lies in a story entitled FreshDope.

The album itself is more than a series of beats PUSH! decided to spit over in a soundproof cage. It is a narrative depicting the harsh circumstances that some of us would assume disappeared as mainstream Hip Hop evolved into its current shiny play thing. The intro, “Who I Am” serves as the beginning of act one, all the exposition filing in the gaps for newcomers. It fulfills the same purpose that a flashback teaser does for a serial TV show. Thanks for getting us up to speed, PUSH!.

Throughout, listeners are taken into a volatile inner-conflict, revealing the moral versus practical arguments surrounding the grind. “Income,” one of the album’s most insightful tracks, questions the value of currency derived from dangerous and immoral dealings, while “Freshdopeboy” gives big ups to the have-nots on the grind trying to have knots. The entire album showcases PUSH!’s back-and-forth relationship with his past life without ever feeling contradictory. Even those without street cred can relate. After all, dealing dope isn’t the only profession that forces people to weigh a light conscience against a heavy burden. Just ask your lawyer.

FreshDope also delves into the internal with reckless abandon for saving anything for future albums. PUSH! pushes I don’t think this works it all out there, and while “I’m Alive” still houses one of his most passionate-sounding verses, “The Next One,” and “Goodbye” fume with a conjoining frustration with the former making creative use of the age-old Cosby Show references.

But some tracks on FreshDope seem to fit only loosely into the narrative and don’t display Push’s lyrical range as well. “Novacaine,” for example, has PUSH! throwing out lines like, “if you can wait on Jesus/you can wait on me.” Not his best work. And while most of the album gels together with double entendre-laden hooks over solid production from Trilogy, Rico Beats, and Steven James, there are a couple of moments like the forced drowsiness of “The One” when the beats begin to mesh together, making the individual songs a little less memorable than the project as a whole.

PUSH! Montana strives to instill a real sense of cohesion, and he has managed to achieve that, possibly at the expense of instantaneous commercial success. Regardless, the push and pull of FreshDope is a moral tug-of-war worth hopping into.