Tedashii is a protégé of the Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae, and Blacklight is his third album. I’ve never found Lecrae incredibly impressive, so I have to admit that “Riot,” the first track here, had me worried. It’s a mix of early 2000s Missy Elliot and gritty gangsta rap, and, to be honest, I find gangsta rap mind-numbingly boring. I’ll take the fun and multi-layered music of the Beastie Boys or The Roots over that, any day.

So it’s strange to me that many of the Christian rap artists I hear seem to feel that a swaggering and forceful persona is still required, when artists like Lupe Fiasco have proven that hip-hop has grown past that. To some degree, Blacklight is hobbled by this, and as a result Tedashii sounds like a bit of a relic. In saying that, there are times when guest vocalists draw this album into more interesting territory. But even then, Tedashii just doesn’t possess a flow that is capable of any great subtlety.

Still, if you think the ’90s were the halcyon days of hip-hop, you might just enjoy what Tedashii brings to the table.

Two stars out of five

– Rhett Snell