Fishbone - Truth And Soul (1988) [Reissue 2011]

Truth & Soul is the most focused, most frenetic, and most political album in Fishbone's small but important catalog of ska/metal/funk/punk. They still party on this record (note "Bonin' in the Boneyard") but they also offer some serious doses of reality, and some fierce insight about growing up black in America. Much of the material (including "Slow Bus Movin'," "Ghetto Soundwave," and the potent, hopeful "One Day") was recorded on the 1988 birthdates of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. Madcap vocalist Angelo Moore is in good form on Truth, but guitarist Kendall Jones often threatens to steal the show, particularly on the amped-up cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead." --Michael Ruby