Indivisible even when they're devoted to solo recordings -- Young Spirit, Overload, and Vweto II account for the artists' full-length dispatches from the previous two years alone -- and featured together on synchronous output from keen collaborators like Dabrye and the Mixtapers, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins return with their third album as GD. The two don't reconvene musically so much as they simply keep boogieing from project to project. On Black Love War, they channel love for one another and their people, vexation in the face of escalating tyranny, and seemingly inextinguishable positivity into some of their most determined and stimulating funk. Perkins, gruff and lucid as ever, doesn't sugarcoat brutality or the objective in what Muldrow calls the "fight against greed," but he's bullish on a turnaround. His partner is just as militant and optimistic, whether she's chanting "One-eight-seven on a slave master" on "187," imagining clean air and water on "Peace Peace," or soothing and impelling on "The Battle." The latter track exemplifies the LP's underlying theme of resolute resistance over one of Muldrow's sci-fi blaxploitation-grade beats: "Sometimes you gotta stand and fight the battle -- don't let misery win over your mind." Communal in spirit still, Muldrow and Perkins aren't above ceding the producer's chair or the mike to their friends. Suitably dramatic sounds from Oh No and Mike Keys fill three tracks. Muldrow in fact hands off an especially galvanizing production to Aloe Blacc, Ms. Dezy, and under-recorded funkateer LaToiya Williams for "Smile," a cheery and lopsided composite of the Doobie Brothers and Earth, Wind Fire. All three vocalists shine, and Perkins drops in for a guest verse, beaming as he offers "We all should be smilin' just knowin' that the devil's reign is almost through." Coming from the rapper who on the same album laments murdered innocent children and eulogizes his father, the statement carries a whole lot of weight. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi

1		English Breakfast
2		Where I'm From
3		Peace Peace
4		That's How
5		The Power of Your Brain
6		The Battle
7		Slave Revolt Skit
8		Protect Yourself
9		So Pretti
10		187
11		Again
12		Jacob's Ladder
13		P.A.L.
14		Smile
15		Fruitful
16		Big Mel

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