December 2007 Archives
Best by Far: 2007 in Singles
2007 was a digital crate diggin' year for me. Maybe it was the inanity of white pop, the vacuity of Black pop or that much of what is now arresting is dance music and I don't much club anymore but I looked to recordings from years prior for my iPod rotation and Last.fm playlists. So I found the year-end listmania to be a little challenging. I downloaded a bunch of records (from Herbie Hancock to Jaheim) in late November to get a feel for what I might have let slip by but after hours of listening I don't regret listening back. That said, there were some bright sounds in 2007. Here are my favorite tracks:
"The People", Common - Sepia portraiture.
"Sincerely, Jane", Janelle Monae
"F.T.B.", Robert Glasper - Expressive, knocking, au courant piano jazz.
"Can't Tell Me Nothing", Kanye West - The sound of obstinance.
"Upside Down", Ledisi
"The Sloganeer: Paradise", Meshell Ndegeocello
"Dial V for Venom", The Smyrk
"911", Donnie - An anthem for humanists and activists.
"Cloud 9", Rahsaan Patterson
"U & I", Emily King - Another sad love song, yes, but simply exceptional.
2007's Disappointments in Film & Music
This year I eagerly anticipated a lot from my favorite entertainers. Maybe my expectations were too high but I'm left feeling unsatisfied.
American Gangster
+Denzel Washington stood but one foot away from me as he processed to the stage for Morehouse College's commencement ceremony this past May. I had been as close a few years back one early weekday afternoon on Fifth Avenue here in New York but it was just as thrilling. So upon the release of American Gangster, I hit a quiet downtown theater with my friend writer/filmmaker Courtney Young and walked out screwfaced. All that big named director and those big named actors managed with all those weighty topics was a wafer thin picture. Scenes of subjections but no fucking subjectivity. Nicky Barnes was straight caricature (That's what you get for hiring Cuba Gooding, Jr.), Frank Lucas was hollow and stone faced and Huey Lucas' behavior was inexplicable as was that of all of Lucas' country kinfolk. You go from farming in the rural south to supervising butt naked women cutting up heroin with no questions asked? As to the depiction of Black female bodies, in noted distinction from non-Black female bodies, brought to my attention by Courtney and memoirist and professor Ferentz Lafargue, it was disheartening but par for the course. All in all, this movie was a waste of resources and further proof that Black interiority is of no interest to the studio system.
Talk to Me
+I adore Don Cheadle. I really do. But this based-on-a-true-story film couldn't have been more cliché. It wasn't Cheadle's fault. I blame director Kasi Lemmons who seemed entirely ill equipped to tell this story. It's a paint by numbers comedy with a conscience until she runs out of time and just starts splashing paint everywhere in a failed show at depth. The jump in time from Petey Greene's heyday to his funeral was jolting and inexplicable and demonstrated filmmaking ineptness of the highest order. You see, I don't just want to see Back people on the screen but Black people come to life. So I have to knock Lemmons and screenwriters Rick Famuyiwa (of Brown Sugar fame) and Michael Genet's hustle.
Funk This, Chaka Khan
+Chaka boasts a singular voice, but doesn't do much with it here. I know, post-Rufus she's had something of an uneven catalog but I'm inclined to think her iconicity has made her lazy. There is little original material here and although she's capable on the covers-I'm thinking "Castles Made of Sand"-there's nothing to trumpet. And where in Jesus' name is the funk! There are Chaka Khan songs that bring me such immeasurable joy that it's alarming to now feel so unmoved.
The Real Thing, Jill Scott
+I don't like this Jill Scott album and it's not just that she's angry or carnal, it's just that's all I can hear. I wasn't expecting another Who is Jill Scott: that opus covered every emotion from lust to loss to liveliness and beyond. I didn't just not dislike anything on that record. I loved EVERYTHING. So then came Beautifully Human, which swept me off my feet with "Golden", a gospel flavored anthem of unacculturated entitlement, then kind of dropped the ball with all that talk of scallions and celery. Still, I had "Golden" and it was good. I can't champion one song on The Real Thing. Journalist Joshua Alston told me it deserves a few more listens. I'll give Jilly from Philly that much but I'm not promising anything.
Graduation, Kanye West
+I am battling Kanye fatigue so I couldn't bear giving this album but 2 full listens. It was completely disinteresting, in part 'cause Kanye, as is his habit, just reconfigured songs/verses that had long been out in the public domain (e.g. "Home", which I really liked with John Legend). This is not a bad album by far and might make my top 10 but it wasn't outstanding and it feels temporal.
Who are HEAVy?: A Q&A with the vibrant duo
Since Jazz Money$$
, the piquant full-length debut from Queens, New York duo HEAVy dropped this past fall, songwriter and lead vocalist Nicky Guiland and producer and multi-instrumentalist Casey Benjamin have been owning stages from Brooklyn to Amsterdam. They recently spoke to Hello, Babar via phone about crafting their omnivorous sound and trying to make a million out of 15 cents.
VIBE: How did HEAVy come about. How did you guys meet?
Casey: Me and Nicky went to high school together and from there we went to college together and we had a great working relationship. We always performed together and one day I said, "We got all this great material together that we're writing, we should just put a band together and get some gigs." Just as simple as that. That was how HEAVy was started in 2001.
VIBE: I stumbled upon you after hearing "Unbelievable" off the Gilles Peterson compilation, The BBC Sessions
Nicky: That was around the height of my jazz influence and I'd been listening to a lot of Nancy Wilson and there's a standard called "Guess Who I Saw Today," where she basically paints the picture of a wife that goes out and sees her boyfriend or her husband cheating so I wanted to do that, but the flip side of it. And I wanted to tell somebody, "Your girl has been cheating on you" and that it's crazy, it's hard to believe, yeah, you'd never expect it, but here you have your girl cheating on you.
You were mentioning, Nicky, about "Unbelievable" having come about at the height of your jazz influence and the record right now has got a different vibe to it. How is your sound changing?
Nicky: We're kids. We're eighties babies and this record, a lot of the influence comes from what we were listening to growing up. Aside from the soul or the R&B or the jazz that we listened to, we listened to a lot of pop, because it was there and it was quality, and we listened to a lot of hip hop and rap and house music and I really wanted to showcase that side of myself too, and I know Casey did as well. It's not just about jazz for us, it's about showing all sides of your personality and allowing people to say, "Hey, I like what they do with the live band. I also like what they do when they take it to something that's a little more today." I really, really, really just wanted to show people that we're not just one thing. Nobody is. No person is just one thing. Come on now.
Casey: As an artist you grow. We were a little younger then and we're still young but that was a different part of our coming about. It's just a true evolution. Who knows what the next record is going to sound like.
You have to offer a little insight into your new album title. What does Jazz Money$$ mean?
Nicky: It originated from a crazy dream that I had where basically the dream told me and showed me that the value of music, it's diminishing.
Casey: Jazz Money$$ is just about all the artists that are on the grind and on the hustle doing everything themselves. Where these record labels, they want you to hand in this million dollar project but you have a budget of-
Nicky: You have 15 cents to do it.
Casey: 15 cents to do it and a token.
Nicky: You'd be lucky to get a swipe on the MetroCard.
Casey: Exactly. That's pretty much Jazz Money$$. It doesn't have to be a musician, it can be an artist, an actor, anybody who's on the grind.
Nicky: But cutting corners man.
Do you remember the details of this dream?
Nicky: Yes, I do. It features two of my professors from New School University. In the dream, I had a regular nine to five and one of the professors, I think he did a gig at my place. I don't know what I did for him, but he wanted to show a token of appreciation, so he left an envelope with a note at the security desk and the security guard was like, "Yo, somebody left this for you." So I opened it and it said, "Thank you so much Nicole for all your hard work. I appreciate it." It also had really bad black & white copies-xerox copies, Kinko's copies-of tens and twenties, only one sided and cut up by like a 2 year old. I was really put off by it and I was like, "What the hell is this," and I go to another one of my professors and he put his hand on my shoulders and said, "Aww, baby that's just jazz money." And then he takes me to jazz land where it's almost like Disneyland but the US dollar is worth 200 jazz dollars or like one jazz dollar is like 20 cents. Where everything is really, not janky, but it's a whole 'nother world.
You were mentioning earlier how different facets of your personality are reflected on this album so I'm wondering if you can point out a few songs and talk about how they represent a different element of your musical personalities. I was thinking "Razzmatazz" initially because it's kind of a swaggering song. And then "Sam/Sam's Return" shows a little sense of humor towards the end.
Nicky: I'll take "Razzmatazz." My background is also really, really, really deep in dance. I grew up in dance studios my entire life. My sister is a professional dancer and a lot of this album is influenced by the things she listened to because she's a couple of years older than me but also from being in the studio. "Razzmatazz." I don't even know how it started. I think Casey sent me some demo of something and was like "Yo, I was just messing around one night." I was like, "That's a song. That's a song!" It feels really Fosse, like Bob Fosse-I don't know if folks know he's the creator of "Chicago" and "All That Jazz"-just very Broadway but kind of kitchy and that's exactly what I was going for. It has all these horns and it has this sense of humor with the kazoo and its just a little Burlesque. That's showcasing my dance studio side.
Casey: I'm a big Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald fan. I like a lot of their writing. A lot of the syncopation of the keyboards in that song is very reminiscent to that sound. As far as the content of the song, "Sam/Sam's Return" is about this girl. She does everything for this guy but she hates the way he's treating her but she still does all these things.
Nicky: I wanted to write that politically incorrect song for that girl-there are millions of us out there-where a guy can do everything wrong to her but she still says by his side and still wants to be with him. And he'll tell her straight up that you're not my girl but she sticks around. Nobody talks about that.
Casey: And basically "Sam's Return" is why you spazzing out for? I already told you that you're not my girl and if you had a problem with it before why didn't you say anything. It's just like a comedic view.
Nicky: It's very real.
You mentioned the Doobie Brothers/Michael McDonald influence. These days Michael McDonald has fallen out of favor with many folks. I'm actually kind of a fan of his too but I feel like it's embarrassing these days to like Michael McDonald?
Casey: Well, I got to say that the newer stuff that Michael McDonald's doing, I'm not really feeling as well. But like the earlier stuff from, "You Belong to Me," "Minute by Minute," the stuff from the late seventies/early eighties, that's the stuff that to me is timeless, you know.
Casey, I was wondering if you could also speak to me about your affinity for the talk box/vocoder and keytar?
Casey: Ever since I saw old videos of Herbie Hancock from the "Rock It" days or even with George Duke with "Brazilian Love Affair" and the Tokyo Tours from the early eighties I was like, "Wow, I have to get one of those." Luckily, I found one and you know the talk box and the vocoder is also from being a fan of Herbie. It's just another texture, another color of showing myself. It's very lyrical. My first instrument is the saxophone, which is a very lyrical instrument. To me, it's just an extension of the saxophone. It's very lyrical and it's harmonic and it's instrumental but it has vocal qualities.
Nicky, who were your vocal influences?
Nicky: They run the gamut. I still listen to a lot of Carmen McRae. I still listen to a lot of Shirley Horn. I listen to Minnie Riperton, Joni Mitchell but for the most part I listen to a lot of emcees and instrumentalists.
Since you mention Minnie Riperton, it makes me think of Stevie Wonder who is just finishing up his first tour in a really long time and I was wondering if you could speak to Minnie's influence, since your song "Wonderlove" is a tribute to her, and also to Stevie's influence, given their association.
Nicky: The funny thing about "Wonderlove" is that I was into Minnie but I wasn't deep, deep, deep at that time. Actually, I fell in love with her after writing "Wonderlove," when everyone would be like, "Do you realize how much this is like this or that." The title came about also because I was into Syreeta and a friend of ours, Tone Wilson, he is another musician and he would always hip me to underground recordings of Stevie and Syreeta and little outtakes that they would do with Minnie. He told me how Stevie's background singers were called Wonderloves, so this song is dedicated to Minnie but it's really dedicated to the sounds of Wonderlove and Charles Stepney and just how Stevie and Charles would use these women with these ethereal high ranges and beautiful voices and I just wanted to write something that would say that I would have been that fourth member.
You also cover The Isley Brothers' "Don't Say Goodnight"" Why did you choose that song?
Casey: The Isley Brothers, that's another great groups with great writers. I always liked the idea of a woman covering a man's song. In some of the old shows we've done Barry White songs, the Rolling Stones. I like that angle of a woman covering a man's song so I thought it would be pretty interesting and "Don't Say Goodnight" is probably one of the sexiest songs ever made. That was just the idea and to put a HEAVy spin on it.
Nowadays, I feel like most people's knowledge of South Side Jamaica Queens is limited to 50 Cent? What else is there to Jamaica, Queens?
Casey: Jamaica, Queens, well there is "Jamaica Funk." Tom Browne and Bernard Wright and Marcus Miller and Lenny White: these are cats that I grew up listening to, I mean when I left high school. When I think of Queens, that's probably the first thing I think of before I think of 'Tip and LL and 50.
Nicky: To me also, Jamaica, Queens-South Jamaica Queens where we're from-it's heavily influenced in our culture, where it's a mixture of different West Indian backgrounds. I remember growing up and going to the mall and seeing Anthony Mason hanging out with Phife Dawg and seeing Sweet Tee and people that were from South Jamaica. People would just be there in the mall. You would see Flava Flav on the ave' or running into Cormega, Noreaga. That's what Queens is. It's not just 50 and it's more than just "Jamaica Funk" and it's not just VP records but it is VP records.
Casey: I like to think that Jamaica Queens is a smaller version of what was happening downtown in the early eighties/late seventies. There was jazz and there was hip hop. It wasn't much rock but the fusion, the idea of the fusion, of both of those musics.
I've only seen you guys once but I caught a little of your performance not too long ago at Pratt Institute. You guys give a lot on stage. I'm wondering how you developed that stage performance and what sort of toll it takes on you afterwards.
Nicky: I'll say this. I'm gonna have to have an endorsement from Advil. "HEAVy endorsed by Aleve and Ice packs." Honestly, it went from wanting to do something, thinking that we're really doing it as big as we possibly can, to tweaking it, to just saying, "Aww, fuck it!"
Casey: This is who we are. You learn so much about yourself over the years. Every day and every time you perform, you get more and more-
Nicky: Comfortable. That's what I was getting to. Just saying, "Fuck it. I'm gonna go out there and do me and just do whatever comes to mind." And I still think that the show is growing.
For those of you in the greater New York City area, HEAVy opens for the Robert Glasper Experiment featuring Q-Tip at the Highline Ballroom tonight.
All photos by Richard Louissaint
Back on the Block: Activist and Addict Gil Scott-Heron Speaks
Tags: Gil Scott-Heron, Legends
"I had a gram of cocaine on me on Amsterdam Avenue. Everyone who ain't had a gram of cocaine raise their hand. They could have arrested everybody on the block that night. I'm saying they got me. I ain't gonna argue about it. That was years ago." -Gil Scott-Heron, 2007
Earlier this year WFUV's Claudia Marshall conducted an excellent interview with Gil Scott-Heron just 4 months free from a bid for drug possession upstate. Yesterday, NPR posted the streaming audio to their redesigned music site and I highly recommend it. Scott-Heron answered a few questions and performed a few songs, which he annotated with anecdotes from his Tennessee childhood and apologies for forgetting a chorus or two. I hear rumors that Scott-Heron may be back behind bars but I haven't been able to find any credible sources. I'm hoping he is free and sober. (Update per Joe Schloss, Scott-Heron fan and author of Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop
Related links:
+Gil Scott-Heron's Rap: Probable Cause and a Poet's Problems, 2001 (He denies doing this interview in the WFUV interview)
+ Breath of Life on Scott-Heron's "Beginnings", 2006
+Hip Hop founder gets prison time, 2006
+Interview with frequent collaborator Brian Jackson, October 18, 2007
+Show review of Scott-Heron's performance at SOB's in New York, September 13, 2007, House footage below:
Ike Turner kicks the bucket and I don't care
Tags: Soul, Violence Against Women
What's with all the sad emoticons? Ike Turner passed away, leaving a musical legacy that was long ago eclipsed by his evil. Thanks to What's Love Got To Do With It, we all know what was up (a coat hanger) and for that reason I don't care to see any more RIP's. I don't celebrate any living thing's demise but damn if I want to read another lukewarm tribute. I am more upset at Davy's Crockett's 5-year-old descendant killing that big ole bear than this man's hellgoing. He's the poster child for domestic violence for goodness sake. And since we're on the subject of violence against women, according to the Los Angeles Times, some activists are planning to protest the L.A. stops of the Pied Pedophile's tour. Organizer Jasmyne Cannick doesn't expect much of a turn out and blames it on apathy,
"It's like pulling teeth to get people to talk about this," Cannick said. "It's a challenge to get the black community to even discuss it. . . . They're acting like he doesn't have 14 counts of child pornography against him. . . . We're all acting like we don't have daughters and nieces and little sisters."
Not the kid. I actually never owned an R. Kelly record although I was a fan from when he was still with the P.A. and singing cute songs like "Dedicated" and "Honey Love." In fact, I remember watching an old BET special on Kelly. Cameras followed him for a couple of days at all hours and I remember being surprised at his tween protégé's steadfast presence. I wondered where her parents were, not that I thought then that he knew no good. I just thought it was strange to be so young and out and about with with a grown, albeit goofy, man (Kells sang a little improptu ode to cheese toast on the special). That young girl of course was the late Aaliyah before she broke. I have had to reconsider my relationship to Kelly's music. His catalogue is too piss-stained for my hears. So I said goodbye to the "Down Low" remix with Ronald Isley, the Crucial Conflict collaboration that brings back such fond memories of my freshman year step show and even "Step in the Name of Love," unavoidable as it is for those of us on the young Black wedding circuit. I know it's not possible to renounce all the music made by bad men but I'm compelled to draw a line in the sand even as the tide closes in.
Don't sell yourself to fall in love & other truisms
+New Year's Eve with Chris Rock at the Garden trumps just about every other option, excepting the dubious Dupri-orchestrated Jackson 5 reunion.
+PETA will clown: listing the Top Ten Vegetarian Friendly Prisons on the day of Vick's sentencing and building a snarky web site castigating the fur-friendly Olsen twins are just two examples.
+Your money will not absolve you. I've been long miffed by gratuitously trifling Black artists' "I Get Money" defense. Kindred soul fiend Nova Slim explains.
+Precipitation and pools don't just frizz Black women's relaxed, flat-ironed or roller-set coifs, but conked Black men's too. Look but to the doughy dandy Terrence Howard with his Colombian girlfriend Zulay Henao in Cancun. The sea water and sun got it looking a hair buckwheatish. Conks are not only unfashionable but impractical.
+Bob Marley (and later Wyclef) sang "in this great future, you can't forget your past" but given the chaotic state of my mom's hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, recently profiled by Current as the fastest growing city in the world, that is much easier said than done. See why I haven't ever been eager to visit:
+Addiction is a losing game and hopefully Amy Winehouse will realize that before anything tragic befalls her. Here is her newest video, "Love is A Losing Game", my favorite song from Back to Black:
+Amy Winehouse's template is and was Ms. Hill. Here is what I had to say of their similarities in January after seeing Winehouse perform at Joe's Pub in New York City:
On a recent critics poll, I listed her sophomore album Back to Black, available in the US as an import, as the best of 2006. It should officially drop here sometime in March. It's girl group for hip hop fans, lush, witty, explicit and really quite good. It's also familiar. Winehouse is (just) Lauryn Hill without the messianic commission. Insecurity, gruff sarcasm, and 'hood tats stand in for triumphant optimism. Where Hill's moralizing ultimately drove her towards something that looks like insanity (I don't think she's crazy), Winehouse presents herself as (maybe) having been crossed that bridge and her occasional instruction, unlike The Miseducation..., is all cynical ("Love is a losing Game"). She doesn't coo or woo and she won't save you from acrylics, yaky, medicants, or bad men. If Hill was "We Gon' Make It," Winehouse is 'what if we don't.' Source.
And there is some more Hill material bouncing around the net. I like this Re-Education of Lauryn Hill mixtape a lot. "The Makings of You" cover is choice. Even amidst the emotional turmoil conveyed, Hill, unlike the talented Winehouse, leaves me feeling hopeful.
+Be discriminating in your dating choices. I'm glad Chicago PD has a suspect, an aggressive ex, in the Nailah Franklin case but this dude's relationship track record as detailed in this Chicago Tribune story should have kept the women, including Franklin, way at bay. We women need to be able to recognize people for what they are. A crazy/deranged man is not ever a good look no matter how good looking. Martin expounds:
The 50th Annual GRAMMY Nominations: The Recording Academy gets it wrong, again
Tags: GRAMMYS
One of these things is not like the other: Whiny, fan-throwing, polygamist pop star Akon and the great Jimmy Jam at the 50th Annual GRAMMY Awards Nomination Press Conference
The Recording Academy has long been off it's rocker but this year I find its nominations offensive to common sense. Here are my biggest beefs:
Comic comes to Harlem: Dave Chappelle then & now
Tags: Dave Chappelle
I was telling a friend the other day how I didn't much care for Dave Chappelle until I went to a taping of the first season of Chappelle's Show
Fallen Star: The Black Female Soul Singer
Tags: LaToiya Williams, Yummy Bingham
It is quite a disappointing time to be listening for good soul music. If soul singers don't have their eyes on pop, or hip hop, they're necrophilicly (trans)fixed on pastime paradises. And with Black radio, once a rather diverse platform for multigenerational Black musical expression, having died and been reborn wack, and post "Video Soul" music television uninterested, there aren't too many venues to get the word out about good soul music by Black artists. Christina, Joss, JoJo are doing just fine. (I can't say the same for Amy, whose substance abuse woes outweigh the commercial success her whiteness enabled.) As to the queen of hip hop soul and the princess of Dereon, their successes are unique and neither does much straight up soul. This has left me frustrated by the relatively low profiles, stalled careers, or critical indifference to some vital Black female voices on the major label soul scene. Here, I want to highlight two of my favorite under-appreciated Black female soul singers whose careers thus far, have been grossly underdeveloped.
40 is still 40: On being grown even if it has become unsexy
Tags: Clark Kent
Geoffrey's Gray's New York Magazine profile of Alex Goldberg, a Nolita brat of some means and absolutely no supervision, is an example of adolescent star fuckery but also suggests the illogic of "40 is the new 20." The now 14-year-old so-called hustler is surrounded by grown folks who have absconded many of their grown up responsibilities, primarily his parents who seem to be living second childhoods as cool kids through Alex. Oh, that being grown has become unsexy! You see, when forty year olds don't act their age, they fail to provide the proper guidance for their sons, nieces, godchildren, or the neighborhood latchkey kids. The only sensible voice to come out of the piece, was that of DJ Clark Kent. He frequently encountered the portly tween terror at the NikeID store in New York City. Gray explains:
"When the East Was in the House": Nineties Edition
Tags: East Coast, Old School Hip Hop
Global warming delayed winter here in the northeast but it's finally brick in New York City and I still don't have a grown up winter coat. I have a selection of puffy coats (aka bubble gooses) but I've been long meaning to purchase some more age appropriate outerwear. I mean, don't get me wrong, my puffies--a snazzy red one from Barneys New York and and brown ultra suede one from Sisley--are jazzy but designer provenances aside, puffies just scream teen. Maybe early twenties but I crossed the quarter century mark this past May so I need to go ahead and step it up. What's stopping me are the half a g starting prices of decent dress coats. So while I figure out how I'm gonna get the extra dough for the multicolored Missoni 3/4 length I've been pining for, check out these classic nineties videos from the region of the puffy. Reflecting back sure warmed my heart.
