SOLDIER

Fivio Foreign raps at the volume of a man being heard over traffic, and on SOLDIER he sets that against the massed voices of The Fire Choir. Rich Son's production keeps Brooklyn's militant percussion and ominous low end underneath, so the gospel reads as a recasting of his delivery rather than decoration. Street survival, discipline and perseverance become the terms of a spiritual fight, and the friction between his rough-edged urgency and the choir's grandeur is what gives the record its force. It runs two minutes and six seconds, arrives after Chasin with the same collaborators, and should land with listeners who have heard drill's church inheritance implied for years and wanted it sung.