“My revolution rides a black horse, and it is stunning!” exclaims guest poet Joshua Idehen barely 2 minutes into
Black to the Future. “We are rolling your monuments down the street like tobacco, tossing your effigies into the river,” he continues, indignantly, over tumbling drum fills and squalls of sax, and the effect is a combined sense of unease, resistance, desperation and celebration of Black protest, both righteous and insistent. It sets the tone for the rest of the fourth album from Sons of Kemet, which swings between exultant skank and soulful melancholia (and occasionally mixtures of both) while incorporating in its first half an array of bilious guest rappers and poets into the now trademark Kemet sound: rasping reeds above earth-rattling sub-bass tuba, and a double-percussion pincer movement tight like a rottweiler’s jaws.