Dust Artist:  Sup the Chemist Label:  BEC Recordings Time:  18 Tracks/70:05 minutes

As long as there has been Christian rap, there's been Chris Cooper.  Originally known as Super C, the frontman for the group SFC, he's arguably done more for the genre than anyone in Christendom.  And now he's back, this time under the alias of "Sup the Chemist."

Cooper's debut album on BEC Recordings, Dust, is an all-star affair, featuring performances from Gene Eugene (Adam Again), Slerp (LA Symphony), Project 86, Mike Roe (The 77s), Andy Prickett (The Prayer Chain) and Jon Gibson.  With musicians as talented as these, it'd be almost impossible for Sup's album to be boring, and indeed, the tracks he raps over are incredibly well-done.

However, Dust suffers from a common malady of hip-hop records.   The songs are incredibly prideful, with Sup boasting of his hip-hop abilities in over three quarters of the tracks.  While this kind of bragging may be acceptable in secular hip-hop circles, I find it to be completely contrary to everything Christ stood for, and thus not a good attitude for a Christian to have.

With all the pride and posturing floating around in Dust, then, it's not surprising that the best track is the one where he drops it all and shows his humanity.  On "Photographs," Sup raps casually, first about the collapse of a friendship, but he digresses into his feelings for his son, and how he wants to live a Godly life so as to set a good example for him.  Another enjoyable track is the closer, "Is This a Dream?," an apocalyptic rapcore track featuring Project 86.

Sup has a great deal of talent, and has the potential to do great things in rap music.  However, his music would be much more gratifying if he would stop trying to be the best, and just be candid as in "Photographs."

Michial Farmer 2/20/2000

This is the future of rap music: Post-apocalyptic, dischordant tones and off-tempo rapping layered over thumping bass beats. Wait...this is the FUTURE of rap?

Many props to Sup, aka Super C of classic Christian rap band SFC, but his boasting of his skills' superiority seems to be misplaced, given how mismatched the rhymes seem to be with the rhythm. His delivery has the off-tempo, staccato feel I've always associated with rap tracks which radio editors had sliced and diced. I guess some rappers really DO sound like that.

I guess I just don't get it.

Josh Marihugh 3/5/2000

It’s thrilling to see that Sup the Chemist (formerly Super C) has finally found a new label and released a new album.  As leader of the pioneering Christian hip-hop act SFC, Sup produced a series of innovative and thought-provoking albums in the early 1990’s. 
This climaxed in 1992 with Phase III, an album that still ranks among the finest Christian albums of the past decade—this despite the fact that the ruling ranks of the industry were uninterested in (or afraid of?) marketing rap music.

Although not being released with much fanfare, Sup’s new release, Dust, is one project that no one should overlook.  While an earlier album like A Saved Man (in the Jungle) had a few obvious samples and the occasional stilted delivery, Dust is a nearly flawless release overflowing with rhymes and beats that can only be the work of a greatly matured artist.  Sup’s greatest strengths are his plays on conventional meter and rhyme schemes (the result, no doubt, of a decade’s hard work) and his underground production style, which far surpasses any budget limitations.

The lyrics are hard to quote here, not only because they are not in the CD booklet, but also because the delivery is so frenetic and unpredictable that it’s a challenge to keep up.  One song that seems to explain his reasoning is “Walls”:

Now he feels he’s done it
So he’s going public
Integrating the mainstream
Replacing redundant moralist writers
By denigrating their ciphers
His idiomatic expressions
Put him in a category of his own inflection
Exiled like the X-Men
Because his writings make one have to think to
comprehend.

Tommy Jolly  4/25/00