Still Standing

Goodie Mob’s sophomore album — and last truly great one — starts with Cee-Lo laughing bitterly over the effects of white supremacy on the Black psyche and ends with him mulling over how to maintain a legacy through music. Every voice you hear in between is seething with pain and frustration and doubt: Khujo dekeing his own flow to hemorrhage resentment, T-Mo dissecting the mechanisms of oppression with unflinching clarity, and Big Gipp murmuring with impressionistic anxiety (and given his own showcase as a counterpart to OutKast’s self-assured dichotomy on “Black Ice”). Still Standing is lyrically blunt and uncompromising but not defeatist, and even when the bleakness of fight-or-flight desperation (“I Refuse Limitation”) and the corpse-scattering consequences of hustler life (“Gutta Butta”) seem to seep in from all corners, there’s respite in spiritual reflection (“Inshallah”) and comfort in inspirational women (“Beautiful Skin”). Organized Noize’s Southern gothic soul provides another source of strength, too — eclectic when necessary (you want rap-rock, “Just About Over” will knock you out of your A.D.I.D.A.S.), but at heart a long simmer in their moodier, marrow-deep side of funk that aches every bit as deep as the blues that preceded it.