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Brother Min’s Journey to the West:
Denizen Kane is a hard man to pin down. After beginning his career with semi-revolutionary spoken word outfit I Was Born With Two Tongues, co-founding seminal Chicago hip hop crew Typical Cats, and logging appearances on three seasons of Def Poetry Jam, he moved west, ... > More

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Brother Min’s Journey to the West:
Denizen Kane is a hard man to pin down. After beginning his career with semi-revolutionary spoken word outfit I Was Born With Two Tongues, co-founding seminal Chicago hip hop crew Typical Cats, and logging appearances on three seasons of Def Poetry Jam, he moved west, settled down, had some kids, and fell off the map. Rumor had it he could be found serving rum and cokes at a dive bar in Alameda, or repairing ratchet wrenches at the Sears in Fremont. There were some dispatches - Tree City Legends Vols. I & II - two severely underrated solo discs, come to mind, but while his crew-mates Qwel and Qwa were touring incessantly and launching up-tempo electronica assaults on Los Angeles, the third Typical Cat was nowhere to be found. Turns out, he was busy attending to the ghosts in his head, and fine-tuning the symbols of his oeuvre.

Brother Min’s Journey to the West, Kane’s third solo joint, is told entirely in the voice of Min, the youngest of the four Kane brothers - characters Denizen has developed on record and in print (reportedly a collection of short stories is in the works). The Kanes represent those slain in the struggle, and Min represents the most tragic of the young, gifted, and dead - the suicide. Tree City has ceased to be clown-head slang for Chicago, or a bizarre amalgam of Chi City, Oakland, Seattle, and New York - as it was for the first two Tree City LPs. Here, it is the city within the City, the remnant of decimated tribes, the last survivors, carrying imaginary homelands in their heads. Brother Min is a gripping collection of immigration narratives, rebel chants, and classic odes to crew, crossing the river, and the wild-ass kids on your block.

Buoyed by mrREY’s propulsive, jazz-inflected production, Brother Min combines the best of true-school classicism, Kane’s oddball eclecticism, and the energy of the 80s sound systems to deliver a platter that is ambitious in scope and easy on the ear canal. After a lengthy absence, Kane might just add another classic to his resume.