Otis Houston Jr.: America (Post Present Medium)

From our own, Mr. Jim McHugh:

“Otis Houston Jr. can be frequently found within his proscenium arch at the 122nd Street entrance to FDR Drive, a marginalized stretch he has used as his gallery, studio and stage for nearly twenty-five years. Following a period of incarceration and his mother’s death in 1997, Houston Jr. began occupying this space beneath the Triborough Bridge to stage his charged political performances and spontaneous poems, and display visual works that illuminate his life’s definitive, dynamic elements: racism, poverty and addiction; freedom, education and proactive creation. He calls himself ‘The Black Cherokee’ and in the basement of the Midtown office-building where he works, he builds assemblages consisting of discard from the office dumpster, old signage, and detritus from the streets. His songs, however, are built from the indestructible material of his insight, barely adorned: ‘We not in the same boat, but we all in the water,’ he says. Say it again.

Houston Jr. recorded ‘America’  across three rooms in Harlem and the Bronx in 2006, the year he self-released it on CD. These makeshift studios, now extinct along with their methods and machinery, provide apt context for this storytelling; using prerecorded beats programmed by studio hands, Houston Jr. aligns his cadences and themes programmatically so that settings and rhythms recycle beneath new lyrics. Like the Blues or a go-to reggae riddim, repeat operations within immediately familiar forms serve to open our singer for direct expression, spontaneous and pithy. Thru a wall or in the next room, the results may seem static, meditative or even comic, but there is nothing light about this record, nothing cursory: the electro beats come back just like hard times have for the hero of ‘America.’ What track is next?

This album is too singular and important for convenient RIYL comparisons. Present in the vocal affect are Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye and other R&B giants, and Houston Jr. brings a commensurate lack of irony to the proceedings. Houston’s proclivities toward agit-prop, intoned resolutely atop pleasantly skeletal production equal parts mid-aughts rap mixtape and DIY/loner lathe-cut, make ‘America’  the truest, most criminally-misread type of Outsider Music. Without taking stock of songs about being beaten, being incarcerated or being shot, there’s no way this work of art gets anywhere close to its namesake’s ‘insides,’ its consciousness or conscience. Otis Houston Jr. became adversarial to America when he first opened his mouth for air; that he articulates such direct opposition so clearly — laying out the how’s, why’s, when’s and where’s of his traumas and resolve — makes this album incredibly crucial, and absolutely required listening.”