The Mind Of A Saint (Deluxe Edition) CD

"I'm tryna do shit the right way. Right to the other side... the game's rigged! It ain't made for people like us. You know what, I'm rewriting the rules...". Such goes the revelatory opening sample of Skyzoo and The Other Guys' The Mind Of A Saint, encapsulating the psychic nub of the record, and much of hip-hop at large, in a single 15-second soundbite. In a world of rigged systems, oppressive working environments, and un-worked-through deferences to greed, is it even right to try? Or should we forgo the beautiful soul, admitting all hands have blood on them? Despite the muddy, corrupt conceptual groundwork, this is a high-fidelity record in sound, as if to suggest that the murk lies in the sheen. Drawing on every injustice, sufferance and innermost thought affecting one Black teenager - from COINTELPRO to modern retellings of 80s street life (the new TV series Snowfall being a central inspiration) - Skyzoo describes The Mind Of A Saint as one of the most cathartic, true-to-history inversions of the American rags-to-riches ideal he's made to date.