This is a concept album about Tom Shimura, socially conscious and highly skilled and emotionally sensitive Bay Area rapper, and how the little things in life bring him down, and how he fights against that ennui and his perfectionism to actually produce the very album you're listening to. Like all good concept albums, Later That Day... kind of loses its concept towards its end. But when that end arrives, you feel like you've made the journey along with Shimura, or LB as you will probably end up calling him, and you'll feel better for it.

Oh, and it's bangin' like a screen door in a fuckin' hurricane.

Hip-hop is just so goddamn exciting. You probably forgot that. But when somebody does it right, and LB does it righter than right, this music packs more drama, intrigue, truth, insight, musicianship and pulse-pounding, goddamn-it-that's-RIGHT! thrills in each of its little narratives than most pop forms manage over a whole album. Later that Day ... for all its reflective moments, is truly kaleidoscopic, Shimura's vision of himself, his music, and the world around him as limitless as it is fractured. The turns of phrase, the juxtapositions of sounds, the conceptual inversions -- LB couldn't have been this creative with any other music. Later that Day... is a great book, an inspirational speech, a full head trip and one hell of a party, all in just under an hour.

But it's also kind of hard to put a finger on. I mean, yeah, he's jazz-scatting as much as he is rapping, and that's cool and original-ish, but that's not it. And yeah, he's not afraid to try new stuff in his musical backdrops; dig that cuica in "The Last Trumpet!" What it really is, though, is that no one is more accessible than our man Tom. He does songs about being depressed, having no money (the "U Ass Bank" skit, with the automated phone-voice chick saying "Whoa! You have no fucking money!" is the single greatest skit of all time that doesn't involve Busta Rhymes), feeling politically powerless, losing friends, being interrupted by telemarketers. And although this might seem dull in the abstract, it's thrilling in the concrete, because rap is all about charisma and LB has that by the assload.

Like a great comedian twisting mundanities into side-splitting revelations, Shimura talks about the stuff you already know in ways you never would have imagined. And it's not just talk: it's musicianship, too. Anyone who tries to tell you that rapping is somehow less musical than singing hasn't heard this album: the dozy duvet-covered mumble on "Rise and Shine," the howl-into-the-wind celebration on "Callin' Out," the sizzling dismissiveness of "Pack Up's" battle rap, it's all top-shelf voice-as-an-instrument stuff. Best of all is "Cold Call's" showcase, wherein LB and Blackalicious' Gift of Gab have what appears to be a normal phone conversation, but emerges after several listens as a tag-team workout with more internal rhymes than Eminem's whole career.

But all this technical proficiency wouldn't mean much if LB didn't have the biggest heart in the whole world. He cares about stuff too much. We all do. We all complain about education and taxes ("This is fiscal harassment / They keep touching my assets"), and we all chide ourselves to "Stop Complaining," but we're not talented enough to build a song out of that little voice whispering it into our ears. (That voice is Joyo Velarde. She should be a huge star. Someone should get on this, like, now.) We all hate what's going on in the world right now, but we don't have a rhyme partner like Lateef to break it all down with us. Tom Shimura's greatest strength may be more in what he says than in the amazing jazzy funky way he says it -- he's articulating the thoughts of everyone I know, and doing it better than we can.

If you like Spearhead, check out:
Blackalicious Blazing Arrow
Latyrx The Album
Solesides Greatest Bumps
Dadamnphreaknoizephunk Electric Crate Digger

-- Jesse Fahnestock and Matt Cibula