[DAMAGED] The Strangers - The Strangers

**All of these copies have bent jackets, dinged corners, or seam splits.

The Strangers are emcees Lateef The Truthspeaker (Blackalicious), Leeroy (ex-Saïan Supa Crew) and keyboardist/producer/singer Hervé Salters (Genera Elektriks). A musical high-wire act blending Hip-Hop with futuristic Funk, The Strangers mix US and French rap with infectious hooks. Hailing from the year 2222, The Strangers send us a time capsule, a sonic testimony from the future. Their songs tell us that in 200 years, the Earth Federation political system will be based on the obligation for everyone to travel annually, starting from a very young age. As a result, fear of the unknown will have disappeared and so will the concept of war. Some will refuse to do so and ght for their right to stay home. Can securing a better world justify oppression? The album plays as a futuristic road movie alternating between, on the one hand, bright uptempo tracks clamoring for the call of the road (‘Movin’) or the quest for a better tomorrow (‘Chasin Sunshine’), and, on the other hand, darker tracks probing the dystopia to come (‘2222 - Go That Way’) or the consequences of global warming (a partly-submerged California ‘Lullaby of San Angeles’). Through Leeroy and Lateef’s razor-sharp rapping styles and Hervé’s soulful choruses, we learn that garbage is falling from the skies, dumped by the Trash Mothership as a result of a garbageman strike; that restaurants serve dishes that our 2023 tastebuds can’t even fathom; that the Federal Bureau of Travel is watching and that agents make sure that every child goes on their annual trip. Environment, personal freedom, police brutality… the 3 Strangers use the Future as a means to talk about the Present with a healthy dose of humor and energy into their music. If what they wrote is indeed a concept album, it should be led somewhere between The Beatles’ ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and Quasimoto’s ‘The Unseen,’ two records whose basic premise gives birth to an unbridled playing field.