Steve 'Flash' Juon“I was at a mental health summit, and this muh’fucker gon’ say
‘I didn’t know mental illnesses existed in Black America’
WHAT?!?!!”
Welcome to the strange world of King Iso. Full disclosure — this album review was a reader suggestion. For obvious reasons we don’t have the time or resources to take every one that hits my inbox, let alone the hundreds of albums submitted by independent artists or record labels. Three things pushed me toward giving “Ghetto Psycho” the time though. The first is that I want to acknowledge the people who support this website either directly through pledges or indirectly by being a reader. Either way you’re proving that there’s still value in reading about rap music and engaging with the art on an intimate level. The second is that King Iso has been releasing albums for at least a decade but we haven’t covered one until now. There’s that “time and resources” issue rearing its ugly head. The third is more personal.
Iso’s name is a self-styled acronym meaning “I Shall Overcome.” He’s not shy about sharing his mental health struggles in his music generally or on “Ghetto Psycho” specifically. The only way we as human beings can overcome these issues is to remove the stigma about addressing it. Men are far less likely to admit to it because of societal pressure to “be strong” and adhere to male stereotypes. You only need to look at the statistics to know this is even more dangerous in Black America. This is a crisis. Pretending it doesn’t exist is tantamount to condemning people to die by their own hand.
“Between 2011 and 2020 the suicide death rate among males was more than three times the rate among females in Black or African American populations.” – SPRC
The statistics might also suggest my odds are better due to my ethnic background, but just like King Iso I want to de-stigmatize this issue. I’ve been in crisis. I’ve been at the brink and stepped back. I’ve had family members and friends who were there and didn’t step back. I now take medication daily and I refuse to be ashamed of that no matter what the brain worm addled say. King Iso’s honesty in a world filled with macho posturing in and outside of rap music is refreshing. On “Normal” he talks about the dangers of self-medicating. When I was having sleepless nights and zombie days, I wasn’t afraid to self-medicate either, but all it does is mask the issues and wreck your mental health even more.
“It’s normal to be not normal, that’s the new one
Therapy is not normally spoke of
Kids outside where they normally sell drugs
I might be a +Psycho+ that they know of
And when my symptoms do show up
I guess it’s normal for me”
None of this is easy to write about. Admitting you have problems requires a willingness to crush your own ego. My approach to it is that you can only build yourself back up stronger when you break down the walls you put up. You have to acknowledge they were poorly constructed and only kept others out. Listening to the title track of “Ghetto Psycho” shows me an artist who embraces this process through making music. I admire that level of vulnerability. It’s also much more personal for King Iso given this country’s history of slavery, racism and disenfranchisement. Why are those statistics I mentioned above so alarming? Because the system we live in has been engineered that way. As he puts it in the title track there’s “trauma in our bloodline.”
I’ve spent a lot of this review talking about mental health in general and the relationship both King Iso and I have with it. As LA Knight would say “lemme talk to ya” about the album a bit more. This is a meaty release. It’s 75 minutes spread out over 24 tracks. Due to him being signed to one of the stronger independent labels going, it’s not hard to get a plethora of guest artists to appear on his shit. Starlito is on “Giving Down.” E-40 is on “Crash Out.” Don Trip is on “Concrete Boxspring.” You get the idea. The guest appearances don’t overwhelm Iso but they do show he’s connected and respected.
There’s a chance that by sheer volume “Ghetto Psycho” might be overwhelming to some people, especially if it’s your first time listening to King Iso. I think that’s also partially due to the fact we’ve become inoculated to short albums with even shorter songs, so what used to be normal now feels more like an aberration. Good. I welcome King Iso being an aberration both in album length and in honesty. Nobody’s going to care about those things if this isn’t good bob-ya-head music… but it is. Nothing here is sub par and some of it is well above average, and I didn’t find myself needing to press “skip” at any point. If this is your introduction to Iso I’d say it’s a fine place to start.