Released in 2000 on Hiero Imperium Records, Both Sides of the Brain is Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s most ambitious solo statement before Deltron 3030 — and, depending on who you ask, either his best album or his most frustrating one. The polarization is part of its identity. A record that makes everyone happy isn’t making any interesting decisions.
Both Sides of the Brain is making very interesting decisions.
The Concept
The album’s title refers to the split between rational and creative thinking — the left brain (logic, analysis, structure) and the right brain (imagination, emotion, synthesis). Del uses this framework to explore a recurring tension in his work: the relationship between technical craft and genuine expression, between what hip-hop should sound like and what he actually wants to make.
That tension produces an album that refuses to settle. It moves between high-concept narrative passages, straight battle rap verses, meditations on the music industry, science fiction imagery, and deeply personal confessions. It’s not always comfortable. It’s not supposed to be.
The Production
Del handled a significant portion of the production himself — reinforcing the album’s DIY, self-sufficient aesthetic. His production approach on Both Sides is more experimental than on earlier records: some tracks are spare to the point of minimalism, others dense with layered elements, a few venture into territories that feel like they belong on electronic records rather than traditional hip-hop albums.
That variety is either a strength or a problem depending on your relationship to genre consistency. For listeners who want an album to sound like an album — cohesive, flowing, internally consistent — Both Sides of the Brain can feel scattered. For listeners who want an artist to follow their ideas wherever they lead, it feels alive.
Del at His Most Personal
One of the things that distinguishes Both Sides of the Brain from Del’s earlier work is its willingness to be directly autobiographical. Del writes about his experience in the music industry — the Elektra years, the compromises that were asked of him, the gap between what he wanted to make and what labels wanted to sell — with a candor that gives the album an emotional weight his more conceptual work doesn’t always have.
That candor is valuable context for understanding the entire Hiero project. When Del raps about independence, it’s from direct experience of dependence. The value of Hiero Imperium Records isn’t abstract for him; it’s the specific, practical liberation from specific, practical constraints he experienced in his early career.
The Fan Divide
Some Hiero fans consider Both Sides of the Brain Del’s best album. Others consider it his most difficult. Both positions are defensible because both engage with the album’s actual qualities rather than with a simplified version of it.
The common ground: almost everyone who has spent time with it acknowledges that it’s doing something more interesting than the average hip-hop album of 2000, and that the parts where it works — the personal confessions, the most technically demanding verses, the production experiments that land — are genuinely great.
That’s a reasonable standard for any album. Not every track works. But the ones that do are worth a lot.
Stream Del tha Funkee Homosapien on Spotify. Full catalog at hieroglyphics.bandcamp.com.