(resonance of reforming)

Title: Curb Appeal
Artist: Sintax.the.Terrific
Label: Illect Recordings
Length: 18 Tracks / 69:37

You choose to use the broken and abused soft-spoken misfit to open your good news.
(from “Broke Toys (An Anti-Intro)”)

Curb Appeal is the sophomore outing by founding Deepspace5 member Sintax the Terrific, who when not rapping is known as Ryan Seacrest. Prior to this recording he could be found spittin’ rhymes on Deepspace5’s The Night We Called It A Day (2001, Uprok Records) and Unique, Just Like Everyone Else (2005, Gotee Records) as well as his debut record Simple Moves (2004, Illect Recordings) and a bevy of guest spots on conscious hip-hop records. Before all of that, he got his start in the late 90’s with underground crew The Pride. My first encounter with Sintax was on Mars Ill’s 2001 epic Raw Material where he had a couple guest spots.

With few if any exceptions, his stuff is always well-received for its honesty, wit, and unashamed proclamation of spiritual truth – be it troubling and convicting or just lighthearted and touching. Sintax has a way with words, and a noticeable love for life, hip-hop culture, and most of all Christ. All of these things come through loud and clear on Curb Appeal – there’s just so many incredible and well-worded thoughts permeating this disc that it’s all but impossible to do it justice unless I quote from it pretty extensively:

I’m the Ryan Seacrest of this rap game, no shame
In my dep gel, making pop idols look lame
Bring revival, not fame – I’m Billy Graham plus Busta
Rhymes, spit theology in double time structure
Sike! I hate double time, I only spit traditional
Boom bap, KRS-One type material
(from “Moonlighting)

Sintax has a way of weaving insight and challenge throughout his lyrics that I find particularly impactful. One of the closing tracks on Curb Appeal is called “Make Believe” and the first time I listened through it closely, I was in tears. Here’s the chorus as a sample:

You make me believe it’s not make believe
Fill in all the gaps that I can’t conceive
Break a skeptic down to his basic need
To put a finger in the wrist where salvation bleeds
You make me believe it’s not make believe
I’m breath taken by your sacred mysteries
Take me to the root of that ancient tree
Where knowledge is the fruit that only faith can see
(from “Make Believe”)

All throughout the song, the interplay between the idiom “make believe” and the injunctive idea of being made to believe goes back and forth, to the point where Sintax has encapsulated an often complicated spiritual concept – the idea of faith – in an easy to remember and repeat statement. Namely, the re-casting of the idiom “make believe”. It’s brilliant, and I hope it serves as a clue as to what kind of calibre of rapper we’re dealing with on Curb Appeal.

Sintax is a father, a husband, and an all-around normal guy who loves Jesus Christ. He’s also a bona-fide premium rap-artist wordsmith who can tangle flows with the best of them. He keeps the heavy and yet very accessable content of the album from becoming dark or overbearing by putting his eldest son Jackson (who’s about 2.5 years old) to extremely touching use. Jackson appears a few times on the album, in one place he’s recording himself trying to sound cool like his dad (”Yo”) and thus delightfully trying to rap and beatbox. In another spot, he introduces the Christmas-tinged song “Immanuel” by attempting to sing the old classic carol “Hark The Harold Angels Sing”. It’s a poignant moment designed to ease the listener into the right frame of mind before the song beats them over the head with the wonder and glory of the thought that the Creator God would humble Himself to come as an infant and ultimately as the Savior. Here’s one particularly brilliant moment in the song:

Oh! Bethlehem, your sky was so thin
Didn’t even try to hide the Hope within
Heavens open wide to let the oceans swim
“Peace on Earth” spoke the Golden Rim
of angels found a few of life’s broken men
To show the rest of us how to behold a gem
Go and tell the Word that’s now life and limb
That Immanuel will grow to throw the yoke of sin
Hope can’t choke the well of grace we’re soaking in
Nor provoke the Son of Man to turn stone bread-thin
(from “Immanuel”)

Musically, the album is what I like to call a “slow burner”. It grows on you. Some beats will grab you right away, while others will take repeated listens and maybe even a month or two. Trust me though, they’re all keepers. The sound runs a gamut from laid-back (”Hurricane Crush”, “Soul Weep”) to the very intentionally boom-bap (”Falcon Plume”, “Showstopper”) and most places in-between. There’s a lot of horns, guitars, and minimalist synths. It’s not a very complex sound, but the choice to take that direction seems intentional, and it serves to accentuate the lyrical content quite well. A couple of the beats made me drop my jaw a bit (”Soul Weep”, and “Moonlighting”), but for the most part they take a pleasant backseat and avoid getting in the way (something that both incredible and awful beats can do). All in all, the record has a cohesive sound despite a handful of producers, likely due to the pedigree involved; Production was handled primarily by DJ Ryval and Sivion, with Fred B, Playdough, JustMe, Beat Rabbi, and Kurfu contributing as well.

I write the raps that make kids dream in colors
Where whites and blacks are brothers from different baby mothers
I write the raps that make people better lovers
Not between the sheets, but with the God that they discover
I write raps cuz a Terminator X scratch
Made my heart skip a beat my breath couldn’t catch
I write raps cuz I love to hear the snare snap
To let the bass drum know exactly where the fun’s at
Plus writing raps is safer than gun clap
I’d rather talk smack than trade shots you can’t retract
And that’s a fact, rap is better than flowers
To shower you with sun spun from the night the light devours
I write for hours so that you can really know me
Every word I write is like a long lost friend who left me lonely
Christ the only path to righteousness before me
I write raps to tell His story
(from “Showstopper)

If I had to level criticisms against Curb Appeal, the first and most natural thing to say is that it’s way too short. Unfortunately for me, it’s 18 tracks long, only two of which are “filler”. In other words, it’s already plenty long, and clocks in over an hour. I just want more Sintax – so I ordered his first record. It hasn’t arrived yet.

If it wasn’t clear by now, I love Curb Appeal. It’s full of groove and poignance, full of heart and meditation, and best of all… full of challenges. It’s full of Sintax taking every ounce of himself and recording it in the hope that those who listen would come to know Christ or to follow Him more closely.

Curb Appeal is something I worship to, something I think to, something I live to.

Curb Appeal deserves your attention. A very worthwhile (terrific?) sophomore effort from Deepspace5’s Sintax The Terrific.

As a way of closing, I’ll share the album’s inscription, taken from the Biblical book of Amos:

Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.
But let justice run down like water,
and righteousness like a mighty stream.
(Amos 5:23-24)

Curb Appeal reveals that Sintax has his priorities straight, and the music to back it up.

Five Deep-spaces out of Five. (YES!)

Standout Tracks: Hurricane Crush, Immanuel, Moonlighting, Soul Weep, Make Believe.

Jerry Bolton – for The Phantom Tollbooth.
October 22, 2008