This album came out back in 2001. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Usually, EPs are overpriced and disposable — one good song and three or four tracks of filler that cost almost as much as the full-length CD they’re usually lifted from. Not so with this commanding four-tracker from former Massive Attacker Tricky, the dark lord of U.K. electronica.
Mr. T packs more energy and originality into these 15 minutes than most bands get into a three-CD set. The title cut is a grinding, hard-edged gem that uses a sample from Peter Gabriel’s Big Time to cut an entire new path in trip-hop. Crazy Claws and Tricky versus Lynx recall the dark and screechy ghetto-tech vibe of OutKast tracks like B.O.B. But the showstopper here, literally and figuratively, is closing track Divine Comedy, a labyrinth of squealing synths and squirrelly drumbeats which Tricky roams like a caged animal, spitting out a searing, spleen-venting rant against his former record label that makes Graham Parker’s Mercury Poisoning look like a corporate anthem. Don’t wait for the album.
