Out To Sea

Let's offer a toast to the return of Chris Orrick, rap's poet laureate of imperial decline. It's springtime in the dystopia, the birds are coughing up blood, the bees are dying at an alarming rate, and Michigan's most acerbic misanthrope has emerged from winter hibernation with a clutch of doomed stanzas about cold pizza and liver destruction. His latest for Mello Music Group, Out to Sea, might not be easy listening, but it's impossible to ignore.