Consumer Guide Album

Serengeti: Dennis 6e [People, 2018]
The biracial Chicago rapper born David Cohn is so prolific I can't claim to have kept up--multiple plays of 2016's Doctor My Own Patience and 2018's To the Max didn't nail down his shifting persona hard enough to keep me plugging. But though Kenny Dennis, the rapping telephone repairman who is Cohn's best-known creation, has gone through many phases of a biography I wouldn't dare summarize, he's such a mensch he always feels earthbound. On this supposed farewell to Kenny--"You can't do Jason Part 23. They stopped Jason at, like, nine," Geti has claimed--continuity is simulated and reinforced by the textured electronics of Minneapolis rap-rocker Andrew Broder, a/k/a Fog. Disconsolate and alone in Orlando as memories of his lost Jueles "come back like winter clothes," aging white guy Kenny contends with bad knees and a dislocated shoulder, name-checks Steely Dan and Judge Mathis, disses drug dependency and 40-minute smoke breaks, rips a letter to shreds, and consigns unnamed rappers to landfill. After warning that he will jam you up if you bite his style, he closes by rhyming "sorry," "Atari," "calamari," and "Maori." A-