Buck 65’s last album, Talkin’ Honky Blues, was something approaching a revelation, proof that hip-hop could still be a potent, astonishing force. It was the perfect distillation of his distinct vision, a series of dark, character-led tales, cloaked in a musical backdrop that was as informed by Johnny Cash as it was KRS-1. It was never going to top the charts or thrust its author onto MTV but it did promise much for the future, a promise that Secret House Against The World resolutely fails to deliver on.
It’s not that bad a record to be honest, just an incredibly difficult one to relate to or even enjoy. What made its predecessor so inspiring was the mix of light and shade as Buck the Canadian navigated his way through a variety of landscapes.
Secret House Against The World, on the other hand, is all about the darkness. Pick any line at random (“Twice bitten, washed up, bored stiff and burned out”, “Allergic to conformity, full of shit all the same”) and you’ll find yourself plunged into Buck’s own peculiar vision of hell, a world of frustration and alienation. Which would be fine if the music wasn’t so damned impenetrable as well, tracks like ‘Le 65isme’ approaching the unlistenable.
When he talks of having “The Midas touch in reverse”, it’s an uncanningly accurate observation, a realisation that the brave new dawn Buck 65 once offered us has faded to black, the mantle passed on to the likes of Atmosphere and Sage Francis. Maybe this is just a stage he’s going through, a violent reaction to the success of Talkin’ Honky Blues, or maybe that was the anomaly, a brief flash in the pan. Whatever the case, another record like this and our patience will have been stretched too far.