| 360 Degrees of Power | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Sister Souljah |
| Cover: | 360 Degrees of Power.jpg |
| Released: | January 1992 |
| Recorded: | 1991 |
| Studio: | Greene St. Recording (New York, NY) |
| Label: | Epic/SME |
360 Degrees of Power is the only full-length studio album by American rapper, author, and activist Sister Souljah. It was released in January 1992 through Epic Records.[1] The recording sessions took place at Greene St. Recording, in New York. The album was produced by Street Element and the LG Experience. It features guest appearances from Chuck D, Ice Cube, and Ras Baraka. It reached number 72 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and sold only 27,000 copies in the United States. It produced two singles: "The Final Solution: Slavery’s Back in Effect" and "The Hate That Hate Produced". Music videos of off the albums' songs were banned by MTV.[2]
The album was met with criticism, not only for its performances—most of which were angry spoken-word tirades that Souljah screamed rather than traditional hip-hop rhymes—but also because of its controversial lyrics.[1] [3] [4]
Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times called the album "a stark, disturbing primer on black power", writing that Sister Souljah "uses crude street language and scathing humor to convey her controversial ideas".[5] The Deseret News wrote that "the record fails by being too dogmatic to be entertaining, too hateful to be inspiring, too shallow in its musical and lyrical reach to be catchy."[2] Trouser Press wrote that "Souljah’s militant Afrocentricity contains such positive elements as self-reliance, self-defense, entrepreneurship, unity and education, but proceeds into paranoia ... syllogism ... and absurd sexism".[6]