Reviewed by Andrew Midgley

It's difficult to see what ground is made for Christian hip-hop by SeQuenT's '3', a well-produced and culturally credible collection of musings on Christian living that occasionally lapses into dogmatism but most of the time steers around a more circumspect route of personal reflections. SeQuenT is Drake-lite, deprecatory but without the knowing; the mood of '3' is lightly brooding, as though tethered to Christ intellectually but not via the joys of the Presence. "Everything's meaningless/Could this be what Solomon meant?", SeQuenT raps on "Intro". "Let It Go", led by a monotonous synth-wash, is something of a comedown from Idina Menzel's euphoric song of the same name as SeQuenT seeks to be left alone, feeling "guilty of a selfish kind of love." Although there is some nice cronking guitar on "Back" and "Battle" boasts a catchy refrain, the album is lost in mid-tempo, meandering between piano, strings, vocoded choruses and earnest yet uncertain rapping that often sacrifices elocution for speed. "This is 3," SeQuenT declared in his promotion for the album, "to know that you are complete in Jesus, that you are free to fall in love with him and pursue the purpose he has destined for you in an artistic, transparent and intimate way. Again this is 3 - not to say that we won't make mistakes, but in his mercy we get to grow in and with Jesus." Such an infelicity with language - never mind mathematics - shows an integrity of heart but not, sadly, any great flair for expression. This is dangerous on "Perfect", where SeQuenT states "'Nobody's perfect'?/I disagree" and "the key to our perfection is who we abide in," in such a way that justification and sanctification are confused, but more usually his lack of clarity prompts disengagement. Penultimate track "Interlude"'s piano-over-synth instrumental feels lost in its own thoughts before "Name Up" wanders off into the horizon - again mid-tempo, this time masked by jumpy electronic squoinks - with SeQuenT droning "somebody please tell me what I need to know." If somebody does, his rapping ability and ear for production may well make his next offering worth listening to.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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