DESCRIPTION:
One of the unheralded classics of the 90's A dope band who assimilated live instruments into their music.
year: 1994

POP BRIEFS
By MICHAEL E. ROSS
Published: December 25, 1994

Justice System: 'Rooftop Sound Check' MCA; CD and cassette.

With its debut album, Justice System, a six-member rap group and fixture of the Manhattan downtown club scene, reflects the genre's gradual growth beyond its outlaw traditions.

Like Digable Planets and US 3, Justice System displays a willingness to focus on musicianship instead of the samples and scratches that much of rap relies on. "Rooftop Sound Check" offers a polished blend of swagger and melodies that draw on pop, jazz and funk. It is perhaps the most fully realized of rap's declarations of independence from its customary misogyny.

The group brings tuneful humor to rap's dour conventions. "Dedication to Bambaataa," for example, is a bumptious, good-natured tribute to Afrika Bambaataa, one of rap's eldest statesmen. "Summer in the City" is a soulful street-corner song breezily punctuated by Alex Auld's saxophone and the boisterous interplay of the band's singers, Folex and Jahbaz.

"Rooftop Sound Check" delivers a sound that borrows from other styles while fiercely remaining its own. Justice System offers a glimpse of what may be rap's future and takes a subversive glee in overturning its past. MICHAEL E. ROSS