Noname's 'Sundial' pursues a hip-hop revolution

Hip-hop has been effectively deradicalized by middle age, botched love and commercialism, to the extent that so-called "conscious rap" often sounds like a grift to feed a void in the market — the hungry ghost of authenticity. Plenty of the music is no longer a visceral and spirit-driven creative endeavor. It might be realer to just make indifferent music in these instances than to feign the social conscience of a '90s backpack rapper 'cause you aren't hard enough (or new enough) to mimic trap or drill, or surreal enough to channel a new horizon out of the oblivion, one built on the remains of a bygone intellectualism inflected with swagger and rhythm.

In titling her third studio album after a device that measures time by shadows, the rapper Noname calls us to yield to her personal sense of what time it is, the unpredictable shadow that circles and taunts its orbit like a semi-hostile guard. There's a hint of the carceral in her shadow play, so that the album's prevailing drive toward collective liberation to the dignity of privacy, error and unlearning inadequate paradigms emerges that much more triumphant. She is a righteous teacher and intellect, so effective that some listeners seem to dread and resent her range. Her trajectory to this point places her in conversation with Lauryn Hill and Nina Simone; she creates protest music in styles often reserved for hedonism and traumatic romance.