Braintax is British hip-hop. He is head honcho of the UK’s best label, Low Life records, and his debut album ‘Biro Funk’ is recognised worldwide as a classic and the definitive British hip hop album. After a five year hiatus concentrating on his label and overseeing other brilliant releases like ‘Council Estate Of Mind’ from Skinnyman, he has returned, and ‘Panorama’ is every bit as brilliant as I had hoped.

In the current world environment you would expect hip-hop to be leading the call to stop violence and oppression, yet in the US – where most of it stems from – they’re all too busy wearing jewels and dancing next to expensive cars. Braintax, much like our own The Herd, isn’t having that for a second, and this release is a brutal slap in the face to world leaders and the grip they have on our freedom as a whole.

After getting things started with the only track about hip-hop, All I Need, where he laces a soulful Beat Butcha track, Braintax turns his pissed off attention to the world. Syriana Style sees a vicious lyric on the coalition of the willing over a multi layered Louis Slipperz beat, and he analyses the UK on Anti-Grey and Decade, the latter being a brilliant take on growing up during the Thatcher era over an electro tipped beat.

Also covered on the make-you-think tip is exactly what we are doing to the world, on the brilliantly musical closer Exit Plan. There’s also some screw-the-industry type sentiments for Run The Yards. Perhaps the album’s most poignant track, and in my eyes its deepest, is The Grip Again (A Day in the Life of a Suicide Bomber).

Braintax gets inside the head of an oppressed Palestinian, analyzing brilliantly what drives them to the point of no return. I’m sure critics and politicians will get on their soap boxes over this, but there is a massive difference between condoning the act and analyzing why they do it. Perhaps this is why the world is such a messy place, because leaders condemn without analyzing why.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. There is wit as Mystro and Braintax perfectly compliment each other on Good or Bad, rhyming over a funky as hell Braintax beat. Braintax also thanks those who come to his shows and get wasted on Last Tenner, a tongue in cheek take on the best way to spend your last ten dollar bill.

It may have been five years in the making but album number two shows Braintax is still the best British emcee in the game. Buy this album on sight, because in another five years this too will be rated a classic.