Thought is always gonna rap his ass off, that wasn't what I was referring to there.

I meant these albums (particularly this one & HIGO) lack that know-it-when-you-hear-it energy you catch off a great rap record or the primal danger-courting rawness of a great rock song.

It's an album that couches itself in aural accoutrements, vaguely addresses weighty themes, is performed for the most part skillfully but the end result sounds like a half-baked half-hour placeholder for a band that now makes studio records as a part-time job.

"For Who, For What?"(c)RickyWaters is this 30 minutes of minor-key mishmash and mid-tempo monotony really for beyond its metacritic score?

Is there a single song or even segment of a song on here that can stand amongst the band's best work?

Does this album have the ability to re-invigorate longtime fans, seduce/frighten potential new ones who came around from their network-TV-smash success, is there any conceivable chance for it to later be considered a cult-classic amongst the catalog that a certain passionately contrarian portion of their audience will one day deem their favorite?

Now that I think about it (no shots at u or others who don't apply).......

It seems almost poetically appropriate that this album's biggest champion inside the corroded confines of our bombed-out-and-depleted but still battling-to-draw-breath Lesson, would turn out to be one of its most joyless/arguing-just-to-argue/men-on-film-hated-it/each-week-new-name-still-same-lame-game.