Personal Journals

They Say...

Review by Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide

Sage Francis is something of an enigma wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside a slam poet wrapped inside a rap MC. In other words, it's difficult to say in which way, exactly, Personal Journals should be classified, but considering how qualitative are its returns, it hardly matters. Already a battle champion (he won both the 1999 Superbowl Battle and 2000 Scribble Jam competitions) and a nationally ranked slam-poetry contestant, the self-defined "self-referentialist" Francis finally dropped this debut full-length with the support of his spiritual compadres and fellow rap revolutionaries in Anticon, and like the music from that collective, Personal Journals vigorously pushes back battlements and erases musical dividing lines. At any moment, you may find yourself unexpectedly confronted by gritty street hip-hop ("Climb Trees," "Pitchers of Silence"), gonzo reportage ("Personal Journalist"), what probably comes closest to spoken-word ("Inherited Scars," the live reading "Hopeless," "Runaways"), emotionally intense autobiography ("Different"), even cockeyed rock music ("My Name Is Strange," with six-piece backing band AOI), and then a more free-form and indefinable performance art (the superb "Broken Wings," halfway between rap and a touching sort of metaphysics, or the gothic, multiple-personality "Eviction Notice"), for lack of a better term. The soundscapes that his team of producers came up with are every bit as unorthodox and superlative. That the album could appeal to rap heads and arty, alternative types alike is a testament to the high caliber of Francis' personal journalism.