Supa Sista

Ursula Rucker | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 11, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: K7
• ASIN: B00005N8PK
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #316,258 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very impressive, December 22, 2001

By 

The Pete (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Supa Sista (Audio CD)

Reading poetry for the length of a CD and keeping it interesting is a pretty big challenge. Ursula Rucker does it, though. The tempo is a bit slow and unvaried, however Rucker tastefully varies her delivery enough to keep the listener engaged. Mostly she speaks, but sometimes she sings and other times kicks the rhythm to the verge of rap.

Although there were times I wished she'd rapped or sang more fully, overall I think the CD wouldn't work as well if she at all seemed like "I know reading poetry isn't interesting enough so now I'll sing or rap". By holding true to what she is - a poet of spoken word - she creates something uniquely her own.

Besides, she's supported with some incredible talent for the CD and they are obviously totally in touch with her vision. 4Hero and King Britt produce tracks. Vicki Miles make an appearance. There's also live instrumentation combined with the programming. Overall, the musical landscape of the CD has a vibe not far removed from Roni Size and Reprazent-land.

Best of all, Rucker deserves the attention she gets. Her poetry is full of strong images and themes, and she uses her gift to celebrate and skewer equally well. She slams black musicians who glorify violence ("What???"), celebrates women ("Letter to a Sister Friend"), relationships ("7"), or ponders the potential of technology ("Digichant") all with skill. Her delivery is very appealing: a soothing, spoken rhythm that oozes cool. It's so effective that even when the poetry is a little flat ("Spring"), she can carry things off.

Excellent example of someone who absolutely doesn't fit the mold, refuses to conform, and by taking the hard road creates something completely their own. Excellent!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sista is a Souljah, November 15, 2001

By 

"jav621" (VA BABY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Supa Sista (Audio CD)

Judging from her thought-provoking poetic-narratives sealed as gems on the ends of The Roots albums, it was a long-awaited journey to see what Ms. Rucker would do with an album all to herself. There's nothing more amazing than the power of words and when used "correctly" they can be a language and beauty of immensive and infinite meaning. Just like poets such as Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore, Ursula brings something to the realm of spoken word that is uniquely hers yet resembling those before her. She plays with the encoded structures of language like Ntzoke, she is powerful like Nikki Giovanni, captivates bitter truths like Baraka...yet in this design she has succeed as creating her own world of prose composed over lush, mellow grooves that would easily turn your listening palace into a jazz lounge. Maybe it was the mood of the day when purchased Ursula's CD and songs like "7", "Philadephia Child", and "Womansong" spoke deeply to me because I was struggling with all the emotions and soft hysterias of my newly forming womanhood. Or perhaps it was the fact that Ursula was preaching and sermonizing the silent voices of people you seldom even notice. The women and men who carry themselves in instropection, or the sleepless and the unheard, the men and women who ride city buses all day and night, laboring their sanity for embarrassing pay checks. Ursula was expressing the observations of a setting sun--powerful yet silent. If poetry is nothing else, it is a insightful medium for us to understand and draw meaning from what has no shape and defintion, for emotions that one cannot reason with, to share dreams and nightmares that warm and threaten our conscience daily. In times as chaotic as these, where the world is in constant upset and anger and sadness have become the equilavent of breathing, Ursula's Supa Sista has come to rescue us from ourselves. Her meditations on life, love, pain, and sorrow is like a love letter to our own minds, composed carefully and thoughtfully, yet evokes more than just a simple reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A spoken word CD for people who don't like spoken word CDs, June 14, 2002

By 

Scott Woods (Columbus, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Supa Sista (Audio CD)

Ursula Rucker gives us a downright interesting record here. If you think you've got her all figured out base on her slight offerings on a few of the Roots records, you're missing out. Here, she is fully produced and stretches a lot more than a poem a year on a hip-hop record might lead you to believe. In fact, her music really makes the record, lifting it well above the pale of poetry CDs on the market (what few there are) when her poems don't.

Is she the greatest poet in the world? Of course not. Her messages are often a little too obvious and preachy and her voice doesn't hit too much above her regular monotone anywhere near often enough, but man, does she know how to pick the song for the job. On tracks like "Womansong" and "7" she is working fully within her range and making great tracks out of good rhythmic and stylistic ideas.

In fact, the music on this record is so consistently good that you'll often find yourself circumventing the poem for a soul music fix. Her tracks are informed by the recent bump in attention to actual soul music like Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and D'Angelo. The tracks are smoothed-out funk, and you can tell she's from Philly by her choices. Great stuff here, and not radio pap. You could put the music for "7", "Brown Boy" or "Letter to a Sister Friend" against almost any groove on the radio right now and watch her sales soar. Alas, radio's not that brave, and the record is just this side of too old for the short-attention span of the medium anyway. Sad. On the strength of the music on this CD, the album made it on my list of the best of 2001.

The King Britt-co-produced track "Spring" is almost worth the price of the CD by itself, and considering you probably won't get it anywhere else but off this CD, go ahead and treat yourself. It's a beautiful song amidst an album of pretty great grooves anyway, so you really can't go wrong here. This is the album that Saul Williams should have had, or at least had its theories applied to.