Search - Beau Sia :: Attack! Attack! Go!

For his debut, 22-year-old slam-poetry champ Beau Sia offers up 13 edgy confessionals touching on fame, money, sex, megalomania, and Asian cultural stereotypes, among a bazillion other things. Sia's clever words stream in deadpan delivery over a minimal, jazzy hip-hop soundtrack like some urban-targeted collaboration between Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill) and Steven Wright. He's at his best in the midst of a rant, and though he sometimes raves way off course, Sia always makes his way back to his favorite subject--himself. In "Superstar" and "World's Greatest MC," Sia pulls out a grotesquely inflated ego whose delusions of grandeur, in the end, aren't far from average daydreams. While some of the cuts suffer from a rather sophomoric humor, Attack! is worth buying just for track 2, "Money." Based around the phrase "When I get the money, I'm gonna...," it's a thought tornado that sees Hanson dead before puberty and Tibetan monks break-dancing at Sia's command. --Mike McGonigal