When Elemental Zazen started working on his sophomore release The Glass Should Be Full, he envisioned the album as a political manifesto for radical social change - revolutionary hip-hop in the tradition of Public Enemy. Over the next two years, a series of tragedies in his personal life interrupted his plans and forced Elemental Zazen to shift his focus to survival. In 2006, he lost a close family member in a tragic accident, and then lost most of his worldly possessions when his house burned to the ground in a five-alarm fire. The following year, Elemental Zazen (real name Jason Trefts, age 25) was diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor in his occipital lobe, which required immediate brain surgery. His new album narrates the fear, hope and anger of a disillusioned revolutionary struggling against both political injustice and personal tribulations. "F**k it. If I die tonight, I hope my last rhyme was tight" Recently profiled in The Boston Globe's "5 Locals on the Verge in 2008," Elemental Zazen raps with an aggressive flow, attacking the mic with honest grit and athletic lyricism. With an urgent need to tell his story, Zazen limits his guest appearances to an elite group of veteran and emerging underground hip-hop producers: Kno (Cunninlynguists), Maker (Glue), Joe Beats (Non-Prophets), Gnotes, Scroll, J.Ferra and Confidence. Musically diverse, the album ranges from riotous fist-pumping anthems ("Handcuffs" and "No Survivors"), to subtle, reflective rhythms layered with lush instrumentation ("Silence of the Now" and "Machine" feature live trumpet, guitar, bass and violin). With intricate rhyme-schemes penned by an angry scholar, The Glass Should Be Full is explosive hip-hop with a revolutionary purpose: "I'm a socialist vocalist focused on roping the hopeless in." The son of international school teachers, Elemental Zazen was born in the US and raised in Al Taif (Saudi Arabia) and Beijing (China). Despite growing up in vastly different countries, Zazen saw a similar pattern of injustice everywhere he called home. Unwilling to accept a system that produces inhumane poverty and opulent wealth side-by-side, Elemental Zazen focused his fury into his 2004 debut The Adolescence Weapon - which The Weekly Dig praised as "one of Boston's most enlightened hip-hop discs in recent memory." On The Glass Should Be Full, Elemental Zazen continues the fight against global inequity and exploitation, but this time his rhymes are laced with an urgent appreciation of life: "All of the events that have happened to me in some ways have opened my eyes to the brilliance of life, so without them the album wouldn't have more upbeat songs like 'Machine'." After The Weekly Dig featured Elemental Zazen in "10 to watch in 2007," Jason Trefts went into the hospital for brain surgery on July 24 2007. During his recovery period, Zazen started writing about his too-soon confrontation with death: "It's strange needing a will at this age / feeling caged, betrayed, jotting it down on the page." Later that year, Elemental Zazen appeared on Gnotes' album Rhymes and Beats and soon got back to touring New England with his five-piece band.