The album's lyrics, performed in front of sparse beats, are startlingly direct, militant, and confrontational. M-1 and stic.man excoriate the media, the music industry, politicians, and poverty, and urge their target audience to study socialism and ideas of black power. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars and lauded its equation of "classrooms with jail cells, the projects with killing fields and everything from water to television with conduits for brainwashing by the system."
"Taking social activism to new heights, Dead Prez are the most revolutionary hip-hop group to emerge since Public Enemy lost their audience and N.W.A disbanded. SticMan and M1 chronicle a broad range of politically pressing issues which pertain to the black community - from the inadequacies of inner-city public schooling ('They Schools') to socially repressive bureaucracies ('Police State'). But Dead Prez are more then just agenda and rhetoric; the group's topical diversity is equally inspiring, seamlessly shifting from the mind-pillaging 'Psychology' into the conversational foreplay of 'Mind Sex.' Yet it is 'Animal in Man' that best illustrates just how innovative this group can be."
- Matt Conaway - allMusic
