PLC first hit UK store shelves in late 2000, and they have rarely strayed more than 20 feet from my CD player since. Higher Forces employs the same elements that hooked me the first time-the insistent ebb and flow of Life’s freestyling carries you along on its rolling tide of social awareness, a feeling rarely experienced except while reading a basement-published leftist weekly. Saying Life is a good rapper is like saying Winston Churchill had a way with words. And DJ Nappa lays an orchestra’s worth of instrumental beats down-’50s crooners, ’70s booty soul divas and Arabic chanteuses all find themselves inextricably enmeshed in Phi-Life Cypher’s utterly rhythmic world.