Rehabilitating Rapper: Cage, 'Depart From Me'

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IF YOU GO to underground rapper Cage's Wikipedia page, you'll find only one description for his specific brand of hip-hop: Horrorcore, the intensely violent, lyrically death metal-esque genre that counts Insane Clown Posse and Necro among its ranks.

But if you actually listen to Cage's latest album, "Depart from Me," you might be tempted to log into his page and do some editing, because Satanistic this ain't -- gone is the man who once identified with Alex from "A Clockwork Orange" and wrote songs about doing drugs, raping women and unleashing rampant amounts of violence.

In his place, rather, is a new (but only somewhat improved) Chris Palko, a man trying to put his crazy past behind him. Short version: military father was addicted to heroin and abused Palko; Palko becomes addicted to drugs; spends 18 months in a psychiatric hospital where he's used to test Prozac; becomes suicidal; is released and starts a rap career.

Cage is also struggling with the responsibilities of becoming a star and reconciling his underground roots with his mainstream aspirations. The album is less a slice of Palko's life (for those tales, visit his previous releases, "Movies for the Blind" and "Hell's Winter") and more of an experiment in maturity, an album similar to Coldplay's "X&Y" in that it centers on an artist trying to stick with the decisions he's made in life.

The result, though, is a somewhat uneven effort that pits Cage against all of the changes he's made to his sound to make the album more accessible to the mainstream. For example, his background music now uses rock-oriented guitars and synthesizers instead of samples; his song structures mix both rapping and singing, which is most evident in choruses and hooks; and his lyrics are vaguer, centering on universal problems (one-night stands, friends' betrayals, etc.) instead of specific situations from his own life.

Instead of bettering the album's sound, though, the tweaks draw away from Cage's own dynamic quality, forcing him out of his comfort zone (where he was fantastic) and more into an awkward middle ground (where he's not so hot). When Cage is reaching into his own memories to write about the death of close friend Camu Tao or the lameness of fake friends, he's fine. But when he incorporates too many new elements at once, his songs sink under that weight.

For example, on "Beat Kids," Cage spits a narrative about a woman raising her children through a string of crappy marriages that end in violence, abuse and rape; however, the overpowering, electronica-influenced beat drowns him out and the kids' voices in the chorus are gimmicky, an attempt to further personalize a story that should be able to stand on its own two legs. Similarly, "Dr. Strong," a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-esque narrative that just happens to be true (see: the spoken "My name is Chris Palko and I'm a former patient of Stony Lodge Hospital" intro), suffers from a churning, heavy rock beat (think Nine Inch Nails or Queens of the Stone Age) that competes with Cage's rhymes instead of accentuating them, while "I Lost It In Harverton" has a really awful, bouncingly annoying '80s arcade beat that does little to help one remember the song's brief 1:38 length.

But the rock sound isn't the only problem -- on "Eating Its Way Out of Me," which is the most obvious instance of Cage's rapping/singing juxtaposition, his delivery is great when he spits his verses. When he chooses to sing the chorus, though, the song starts its downfall, becoming a slurring, droning mess, further annoying because of the repetition of the "you don't give a fuck about me" line. And then there are the totally throw-away songs -- such as "Fat Kids Need an Anthem" or "Look at What You Did" - which still feature some insightful lines ("I was happier when I was fat and on drugs / I went from fantasizing about women / To fantasizing about food I can't eat anymore," from "Fat Kids Need an Anthem") but aren't the kind of thing that need to be listened to more than once.

Instead, that responsibility falls to tracks like "Nothing Left to Say," "I Found My Mind in Connecticut," "Teenage Hands," "Kick Rocks" (which is pretty much a previous single, "Leggo My Megalomania," but it still works) and "Katie's Songs," half of which are solid, vintage Cage and half of which are excellent examples of the new sound he wants to achieve. "Nothing Left to Say" and "I Found My Mind in Connecticut" deal directly with Cage's own life: the former discusses the death of close friend Camu Tao and the latter talks about the prevailing sense of paranoia and helplessness Cage often feels. On those songs he drops some of the album's best lines, such as "My skin is changing / I'm becoming what's inside of me," "I've been judged and judged / What's one more time?" and "The open book of my life/ Isn't really worth reading," bitterly misanthropic, stream-of-consciousness rants that aren't as intense as "Movies for the Blind" but show a glimmer of the old Cage.

And with "Teenage Hands" and "Katie's Songs," which discuss the too-fast-maturity of teenagers-turned-soldiers and the inherent deception of one-night stands, respectively, Cage uses their rock- and '80s-inspired beats to his advantage. He weaves his lyrics into clever tirades, and lines such as "Now you in the business of shooting Arabs / Two years ago you were truth or darin'" on "Teenage Hands" and "This intellectual black hole / Reeks of cologne and lies" on "Katie's Songs" specifically stand out.

Overall, "Depart from Me" ends up a mixed bag, at its best when Cage lets us trespass on his memories and at its worst when he panders to the middle. In trying to be more commercial, Cage has gotten what he wanted - unfortunately, on most of this album, he's just another face in the crowd.

» DC91940 Ninth St. NW; with Yak Ballz, Wed., July 29, 8:30 p.m., $10; 202-483-5000. dcnine.com. (U Stree/Cardozo)