AOK (or Assault of Knowledge) is an interesting study. He’s the son of a Lebanese immigrant who grew up in small town Alberta -”on the prairies is where I spent most of my days”- and funded this album by publishing a book about cats. He has a lot to talk about.
If You Don’t Buy This CD the Terrorists Win discusses serious issues, but the beats are relaxed instrumentals and soulfully sung samples. The regularity of the rhythms allows the rapping, not the beats, to push the songs forward and highlight the lyrics.
Thematically, the album is all over the place: coffee-shop girls, atrocious wars, the difficulties of making it in the music industry. AOK’s got some witty lines, and “Coffee Shop Girl” is a sweet and kind of dirty monologue to the freckled girl behind the counter; the Arabic lines are a bonus. “Hip-Hop a la mode” is equally clever but is more introspective: “I rap for any ism in the world’s prism.” “Unintelligent Redesign” is a short but intense criticism of church and state’s “poison that’s positioned to pontificate the wisdom.”
The manifesto is revealed in “You Are a God,” where the artist makes some strong statements about leaving his “born and raised Muslim” roots in favor of non-theism, realizing that “you are a god… in the end only you can save yourself.” In the same vein, the powerful “Freedom is a State of Mind” is an unblinking critique of civil freedoms and global oppression: “Freedom is the right to bear arms; freedom is the right to wear bombs, run into a temple screaming Allah O Akbar”.
If You Don’t Buy This CD the Terrorists Win is sharp in all its facets. Intelligent enough to support the serious themes, fun enough to house some bold statements.
By Amalia Nickel, Abort Magazine (September 4, 2008)
