Arrested Development Releases “Bullets in the Chamber”
This is probably AD’s most explicitly politically conscious record in a long string of politically conscious records
2024 has been a great year for new music. So far this year, we’ve had excellent new releases from Kim Gordon, The Black Crowes, Kasey Musgraves, and St. Vincent. All of those records are fantastic, and eclectic and weird and experimental. But to kick the year of great music (so far) off, I return all the way back to the second week of January, with the (surprise, to me, at least) release of Arrested Development’s newest LP Bullets in the Chamber.
Like all articles on The New Haberdasher, this story is presented to you for free. Previously, some word about Patreon was here, but hell with it. It’s all free now. Enjoy.
When UK Super Producer Configa sent me a copy of the record and suggested I write a review of it, he knew I would dig it. Of course, I already did before he wrote. So I told him I would write a review of the record. But then, life got busy — I’m running for President, while continuing to work a full time job, and all the other stuff in life, so that took up a lot of my spare time — and I kind of put the review on the back burner. Today I finally decided to keep my word and write the review, and I am glad I am, because revisiting this album reminds me of what I really loved about it to begin with.
I remember something I read about one of my all time favorite bands, and I feel like I can say this without losing too many readers. I really love the band 311, from Omaha, via SoCal, and probably via Hawaii and now via a cruise ship in the Caribbean somewhere. The thing I read said that they don’t really change — specifically, they were supposedly inspired by Nicole Scherzinger, wrote the song “Amber” in 2002 for wine swilling 30-something ladies and have been rewriting that particular song ever since.
So they haven’t changed anything for like 20 years. I mean, they sort of did: While they have been doing a lot of space rock since 1997’s Transistor they also have brought in a lot of influences, including basically inventing dub rock, as well as metal riffs. But their music still pretty much follows the formula of the Venn diagram intersection of “what they like” and “what you like”. For the most part, they sing songs about unity and chilling and having a good time, and also about cosmic lunatics blowing up planets and pulling free energy out of the carbon in the air. I absolutely love it, and listen to every 311 record at least once, and often more than once. Because they are doing what I like, they try new-ish things once in a while, but for the most part don’t veer too far away from what they do best.
You find bands like that, and I would say, from a place of full love and admiration, Arrested Development is one of those bands. They consistently, and have consistently, put out excellent quality music for more than three decades. When Speech told me on “The Supernova Earth Show”, after For the Fkn Love was released that that was AD’s last record, I was shocked. The band is such a high caliber band musically. They have literally decades of experience, and they make music that I really enjoy listening to. I’ve purchased AD’s records for friends, seriously. I was shocked and quite unhappy to hear that that was their farewell album.
And so, you can imagine how glad I was when I saw over the social medias that Arrested Development had released another record in January of this year. And I am sure you can also imagine how glad I was when I listened to it, and realized that indeed, they were doing what they do best, which is also coincidentally what I love about them, but taking it to a new level. This record is probably one of their most explicitly politically conscious records in their whole history of politically and socially conscious records, and I got to say, I am here for this!
Let’s start with the obvious: The lyricism on Bullets in the Chamber is second to none. AD has long celebrated the appellation of “consciousness”. They have never shied away from that term, not even when conscious hip hop fell out of fashion in the face of Shiny Suit ultra materialism of the late 90s and 2000s, and the self destructive and community-corrosive nihilism of Sound Cloud rap of the 2010s. Conscious music was being produced the entire time, but it wasn’t really called that. We can point to Kendrick Lamar’s work, or the work of Tobe Nwigwe in Texas during this period. And Hip Hop was also still alive and well, if not on the Top Ten Spotify Lists, then at least at the Grammys, where work by Nas and Royce da 5'9" was being celebrated.
But AD has kept doing conscious music the entire time. And it is one of the main reasons that I, as a white dude who has aligned with Alternative for my entire adult life, still love their music. And the topics they are discussing on Bullets in the Chamber are very timely and relevant. The band has not lost a step. While Don’t Fight Your Demons occasionally veered toward a reflection of a life of hard work and seeking an opportunity to just rest and enjoy the good things in life, and some of the lyrics on For the Fkn Love were often about being grateful for support from friends, family, and fans, all of AD’s music also has that socially conscious thread that keeps the music grounded in the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice.
But this record is as explicit as a PE record. And I mean that. The song “And This I know”, for example, is a direct critique of the rotten political choices that people have, the false narratives of the culture wars, and how exhausting it is just to try to stay awake when everything in society wants people to be pacified. And that’s just in first verse. The second comes with a full on critique of capitalism’s exploitation of laborers in other countries to get lithium for batteries that power our electronic devices, and how that is the same as the slavery that the US’ national prosperity of the 19th century was built on. A different set of people now, maybe, but really nothing has changed. On the song “The Meek” Speech says “When a Clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, the palace becomes a circus”, and the chorus says “I believe that before I die, the US won’t be a relevant empire, it will sink within its own muck and mire, and the meek will inherit it all.” No punches pulled!
These type of lyrics are designed to make people look at our society and think “What the Fk?!” if they don’t already. And I suspect it reflects an idea that Speech and Arrested Development have come to, that the people ain’t hearing the message when it is couched in clever turns of phrase, metaphor and somewhat obscure cultural references. Speech decided to take the explicitness up a step in this record, to put it right out front. There is still a lot of verses dealing with AD’s legacy, but set against the more explicit political commentary on the record, even these lines themselves come off also as a evaluation on the state of Hip Hop, and its role in the community more than anything inward looking.
This caliber of social commentary is found throughout the entire record: It may come in the guise of the churchy hymn sound of “And This I know” or the brass heavy Philly Soul sound of a song like “Classy”. Lyrics on the song “We Want This (To Be Ruled)” gets downright philosophical, talking about inordinate desires which may come straight from The City of God by St. Augustine of Hippo, and describes how people claim they seek freedom, but still worship false idols. The lyrics come fast and hard and are loaded with meaning, value(s), and focus on simplicity, getting back to basics and nature, staying true to one’s moral compass, and avoiding the pitfalls of the world around us that we often fall into because we are distracted by shiny ephemeral nonsense around us.
Bullets in the Chamber continues AD’s string of albums which are very heavy on verses from MCs and singers from outside the band. We can look back at For the Fkn Love with awesome cameos from all sorts of MCs , including legendary MCs Big Daddy Kane, Monie Love and Masta Ace. That record, to me, demonstrated the kind of respect that AD still maintained among their colleagues, and added so much variety and depth to that record. And this record is no different.
On Bullets in the Chamber we see guest verses from more than a dozen guest artists: West Coast hip hop legend Ras Kass, Dancehall luminary Diana King, underground Hip Hop MC and Rhymesayers Collective member Sol Messiah, prolific New York MC Canibus, Hip Hop pioneer Grandmaster Caz, and the inimitable legendary Chuck D from Public Enemy, who along with Grandmaster Caz are featured on the album’s first single, “Hip Hop Saves Lives”.
These and a host of additional featured artists bring a depth to this record which doesn’t take anything away to the expert delivery and styles of Arrested Development’s in-house MCs Speech and 1Love. Instead, it nicely breaks up the songs and introduces new and unexpected flows and additional perspectives into the music. Hearing voices that call out to different eras and genres in these songs really set AD’s music apart from much of the new music being released today.
And speaking of which, of course, I would be utterly remiss if I didn’t mention the production that went into this record. In a day and age where everything either sounds like it was made on a drum machine, or it almost lacks the elements of music that defined hip hop entirely, (like for example, a bass drum of any discernable kind), Arrested Development returns with some of the hardest hitting beats available today. Anchored by long time collaborator Configa, Arrested Development also perform production duties on the record. The production style ranges from hardcore boombap to almost Philly Soul in some songs, to something like Sunshine Pop on the record’s opening track “Hello” and everything in between, and no hispeed SP12s detected.
The album is blessed by the excellent musicality of JJ Boogie and the wonderful and welcome vocals of Fareedah Aleem that give a very human flavor to complement the sample heavy production. The most interesting albums in hip hop always use human musicians in the studio and in the live shows, whether it be Public Enemy, who made great use of the Bomb Squad before bringing in live musicians for stage shows, to Cypress Hill, whose music was often performed live, even when records were being made, to The Roots, who was a live band that happened to also make hip hop music. Having these live elements to accent the music really takes the whole production to a higher level, and continues what AD has excelled at and perfected over the last 30-plus years of making music.
The interesting and unique production always stands out on Arrested Development records, and I know at least Speech bristles at the label “alternative hip hop.” As he put it once (I’m paraphrasing) AD is not an alternative hip hop band, because what they are doing is just making hip hop, and the adjective is not necessary. But I push back because 1) I think the adjective means “something different”, usually something more interesting, and at least something that is not formulaic and populist, and 2) nothing AD does sounds anything like the constellation of cookie cutter formulaic stuff that populates the top ten lists. They are different from what passes for hip hop even these days. They produce more interesting music than even some of their peers. Their lyrics are far more socially oriented when it seems those kinds of conversations, as needed now as they ever were, are just not being had in popular rap and hip hop music.
They are moving the needle in the correct direction, and I think this is why the alternative kids did embrace them decades ago and why their music is still celebrated by those of us who like stuff that sounds like it was made conscientiously by thinking, three-dimensional human being rather than something designed to just move units, produced by computers and performed by people who only want to appeal to the lowest common denominator. If that doesn’t make them an alternative band who does hip hop, like the Beastie Boys, or Cypress Hill, or The Roots, or Outkast, or Black Star, or Jurassic 5, or Public Enemy, or more recently Childish Gambino, or Brother Ali, or Tobe Nwigwe, I don’t really know what does. Maybe real Hip Hop has always been the Alternative itself.
Let’s be honest: there’s not a bad song on this record. And I think for this reason, ADs music appeals to a select group of listeners. It is appeals to people who want to think about what the music is saying, how the music was made, what value music has in our lives. It’s accessible, but at the same time, doesn’t fit well into what is the current fashion. This record will make a lot of critics’ and music lovers’ Top 10 lists of “Best of the Year.” It is easily the best album I’ve heard this year, both in terms of quality and skill (the other albums I have listened to this year so far satisfy only certain tastes for me, like if I want soft, I will listen to Kasey Musgraves, and if I want grungy, I will listen to St. Vincent, and if I want loud, I will listen to Kim Gordon.) All around, though this one is the best one thus far of 2024, and will likely remain so for the rest of the year. But it is even more interesting to me because it doesn’t fit into this year: It is something I like, and I liked it before this year. I like it in spite of the popular music tastes of 2024. I like it because it stands so starkly against the backdrop of pablum being produced in the Hip Hop genre, or the music that is on the radio.
For this reason, I can say I certainly appreciate the fact that AD is still making music. I hope they know that they will always have people who appreciate their music, because it is what it is. It’s expertly made with more than 30 years experience, it’s timely even though it retains a lot of the features and styles that have been stupidly discarded by the current generation of music consumers, and it’s needed because there are not enough people still screaming “Revolution” in their music these days. I would encourage everyone to go to BandCamp and check out the new record, and then, if you like, support the band by buying a copy of their record!
You can buy it here: https://officialarresteddevelopment.bandcamp.com/album/bullets-in-the-chamber
