KEITH SCHNEIDER: On May 1 Lesson releases “Exit,” his second LP that achieves three major breakthroughs. The first is Lesson’s capacity to cut new patterns in the diamonds of love, death, broken romance, the eternal search and boyhood, through a genre that often leaves the subtleties of these themes far behind. He achieves the seemingly unachievable – to create an album that is both poetic at it’s essence and rap in it’s foundation.
The second is to penetrate global themes of repression, humanity, refugees, and chaos in a bigger, more knowing way than Lesson has achieved until now. “Celebrate The Storm,” which honors those who “cross borders and ignore whenever they are warned,” carries the narrative of heroes who fight the system on a melody of hope and admiration.
And third is the album’s music – at turns mournful and despairing with a driven bass and drums, at other turns full of sunshine and insistent breezes. The sound of guitar and drum and cymbals in “Particles of Dust in the Sunlight” is especially good. “You won’t feel the winter when it’s gone, only feel the summer when it comes,” Lesson writes in the chorus. “So when purpose has gone numb, 9-5 feels alive and torchlight seems like the sun.” EXIT, in short, is a coming of age for a startling talent. It’s also a coming of age that is entirely expected. More here.