DISCLAIMER: THE THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS IN THIS REVIEW DO NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF THE TRACKSTARZ! EVERYTHING IN THE REVIEW WAS WRITTEN FROM A PLACE OF TRUTH COUPLED WITH GRACE!
There is a lot of art being created that reflects the time we are living in. Because there is so much music being released, it’s very easy to skip over a project from an artist you may not be familiar with. Although it’s almost October, we are going to backtrack to the August release of Modern Christian’s ‘Letters From Your Lost Love.’
The first song is “Red Letters” and it sounds more like spine word poetry rather than rap. Modern spits over a piano only track. I’m not quite used to his flow, so that may take some time to adjust to. He urges the listener to return to the “love letter” which is the Bible, many Christians call it a love letter from God to His children. The second track is “Been There,” and Modern starts off whispering the hook, an interesting way to start off the song. He empathizes with the listener and reassures them that he knows what it’s like to live life without God. There are pockets where Christian rushes to cram words into a bar and he gets slightly off beat.
Next we have “Give Us Truth,” a track where Christian speaks about the desire for truth, and that truth is found in the Bible. I love the beat, but there’s a part where he sounds like he doesn’t believe in dinosaurs and seems skeptical of outer space. Maybe I misheard him, but that part was off putting. We then turn the corner into “Stand Firm.” This is the best sounding song on the project so far, as Modern Christian sounds pretty good on it and the beat is banging. I would have liked for this song to be a little longer, Modern had my head nodding and I was actually disappointed that the song was over so soon. The fifth song is “Selah,” and it’s really just Modern doing a short exaltation of Scripture while some boom bap plays behind him. This song served as an interlude. Right after that was “Pause” and that was another interlude. It was literally a twenty four second song with a beat playing. This could have been spaced further along in the album or cut completely, but having two interludes back to back didn’t make sense to me.
Right after that we land on “Reader’s Digest,” another short song. Clocking in at a minute and twenty four seconds, Christian talks about how reading Acts 3 was convicting and he hopes to see change in whoever is listening. Six seconds into “Agape” and my head is nodding. I love his production and he sounds good on this song, the best he’s sounded on the album thus far. This song was supposed to be dedicated to his dear cousin who passed away, but it didn’t really sound like it. He mentioned it briefly with one line, “Whats the remedy cuz?” In a time where a lot of people have lost loved ones, it would have been great to hear Modern talk more about his relationship with his cousin and how much he misses her and what he learned from her. This was a good song but could have been much better if he went deeper with it.
On “All The Same,” we hear Modern spitting over a piano driven boom bap track. This song is a play on the idiom “if it’s all the same,” and in this case, Modern is saying if it’s all the same to the listener he’s praying for them to change. He says, “I know what it makes to be the change,” and I wonder if that was a mistake as that sentence doesn’t make sense. On “Closer To Death”, the song starts off sampling Ravi Zacharias and ends with it as well. On this song, Modern Christian touches on the cares of this world choking us out and bringing us closer to death. Ravi did the heavy lifting on this song as the beginning and ending have his voice for a total of about forty seconds. That only leaves a minute and a twenty six of Christian’s raps in this two minute and six second song. The next to last song on this project is “Lazy Days.” This beat sounds like a smooth summer day and Modern is just drifting on it. This song didn’t have a focused topic, Modern was just rhyming in a stream of consciousness. The beat rides for a minute after Modern finished rapping, so the song was really more like two minutes instead of three. The final song is “Lost Love,” and we are greeted with a forty second snippet of Tony Evans talking about God being our priority and first love. Modern spits a verse encouraging people to come to Christ and encourages himself that if he can win one person to Him, then he can win others. Tony comes back for a few more seconds and Modern takes back over. With this beat and the cinematic strings playing over it, Modern Christian is tugging on the heartstrings of his listeners to turn to Christ. This is a great way to end this album.
All in all, there’s a lot to take in from this project. I was suspicious as soon as I saw the album artwork. I had a feeling it would be a preachy album but not a very good one. The album title is the same color as the mud or whatever brown substance is in the water, making it hard to read. This project was theologically rich but poor lyrically. Modern Christian pleaded with people throughout the project to turn to Christ, but he wasn’t very creative in his communication. In my entire review I may have quoted one line, there just wasn’t much quotable material in this project. For a medium based around words, some wittiness and dope bars would be appreciated. Modern made an attempt at wordplay on “Lazy Days” with masterpiece/ Master’s peace/ give the Master His piece but even that fell a little flat. You can tell Modern Christian wants to preach in his raps but I’d rather he focus on his flow, delivery and push his pen to write better. I’d also encourage him to create his art in community with other creatives. There isn’t a single feature in this album, and that’s fine, until I went through his discography on Spotify. This is his tenth project in eight years according to Spotify, and there isn’t a single featured artist listed in his entire catalogue. To me that means he’s been creating art in a bubble and it shows. His songs are too short without memorable content, and the longer ones are deceptive because they are being carried by snippets. At ten albums in, I would expect an artist to be solidified and at a high level in their craft. This project doesn’t convey that to me. The best part about this album for me was the beats; Modern Christian is clearly influenced by East Coast emcees and that comes across in his beat selection for this project. This is a album about a Christian emcee that loves God and wants to encourage other to do the same. If you love theological rap over amazing boom bap beats, then check out Modern Christian’s ‘Letters from Your Lost Love.’
You can check out the album here: https://album.link/i/1527304564
