Ladd, Mike: Nonechosen LP

If you will allow an imperfect analogy, Mike Ladd is underground hip-hop's Terrence Malick: an uncompromising auteur whose early work was both unconventional and critically acclaimed before he abruptly withdrew from the scene he helped build and decamped to Paris, never to be heard from again. Of course, the reality is more complex than the legend. Ladd never stopped making music; over the years he's popped up on all sorts of unexpected collaborations and worked with visual artists in settings like the Pantheon in Paris. Still, Ladd's last solo album was more than ten years ago, and his magnum opus "Welcome To The Afterfuture" dropped in early 2000. If we are going to follow the analogy, "Nonechosen" is Mike Ladd's "The Thin Red Line". A granite testament to the fact that the artist has evolved and grown, but maintains the same gravitas that made his name what it is. "Nonechosen" is a solo album, but Ladd will be the first to tell you that he didn't do it alone; Old friends No Surrender and Tom Degeeter collaborated on respective tracks. Once Mike got the record 95% there with his own production, he passed it on to Preservation, who, with a few well-placed tweaks, elevated the project to new heights.