If Divine Styler has become a cult artist for fans for letfield rap fans, this is less due to his first album, the great Word Power, than to the experimentalism of its follower, Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light. Released unexpectedly on a major label, at a time when those would sign any rapper, this record challenged radically the routines of hip-hop.
With Word Power, while playing with reggae or house music on some tracks, Divine Styler had already shown a strong interest to mix styles. This, though, was not unusual. In the Golden Age, other rappers had tried similar things. And by the same time as Spiral Walls... is released, the rapper's main sponsor, Ice-T, also crosses some borders with his metal project, Body Count. With this second album, however, produced entirely by him, Divine Styler goes much further.
Here, hip-hop is cut into bits and pieces, and it flirts with ambient music ("Am I An Epigram For Life", "Love, Lies And Lifetimes' Cries"), hardcore metal ("Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea"), psych folk ("Width In My Depth"), some à la The Cure cold wave (the rather beautiful "Walk Of Exodus"), and indefinable things, such as the flute and electronica on "Grey Matter", the single, or the tribal drums, the guitar and the synthesizer on "Euphoric Rangers".
Rapped lyrics are blended with desperate shouts, whispers, howls, songs or, more often, spoken poetry. And the few "real" hip-hop tracks, for example the funky "Livery", enjoy the luxury, still rare at this time, of live instrumentation.
Also, the guy here is not some white man playing with toys he stole to others, as often with experimenters. As a bad boy from the ghetto who found redemption in prison by converting to Islam, Divine Styler has a real rapper story to tell.
Talking about religiousness, the record is full of this, with prayers to Allah ("Livery", "The Next", "Walk Of Exodus", "Aura") and metaphysical thoughts, and also songs where he knocks desperately at heaven's door, imploring that someone lets him in ("Love, Lies And Lifetimes' Cries", "Heaven Don't Want Me, And Hell's Afraid I'll Take Over").
Today, while some think that Spiral Walls... is the work of a genius, others are dubious. Its inner quality is still debated.
The essential, though, is not there. The essential is in visionary moments such as the organ-sustained ramblings of "The Next", that predates Mike Ladd's hallucinated spoken word, or this "Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea" that sounds like Death Grips, twenty years earlier. The essential is about transgression and opening doors, it is the license to do anything with hip-hop, Divine Styler delivers with this album.