Jalylah Burrell

Hello, Babar

Seattle-bred, Brooklyn-based cultural critic Jalylah Burrell riffs on anything and everything.

Bubbling Under: Algebra Blessett

Posted 05/20/2008 at 8:22 AM | Comment?

algebra
Three months ago, when pop mistress Janet Jackson narrowly beat afroed diva Erykah Badu for Billboard's number one spot, Atlanta native Algebra Blessett's R&B debut quietly saw its release. Purpose, introduced an artist many years stifled, as Algebra won her first deal in the nineties fresh out of North Atlanta High School. So delayed, Algebra screams she's here on just about every note of Purpose, imbuing each lyric with weight. Her southern-accented vocals travel relationships' bliss with occasional nods to the bumbling that daters do as on the Kwame-produced "Halfway", a particularly bright spot.

"U Do it for Me," the album's climax, swoons the whole way through and caught my ear in 2006 when its fun video saw regular rotation on BETJ. Unleveraged on account of Purpose's delay, Algebra hasn't garnered the attention her album deserves despite her association with former Motown president Kedar Massenburg, the force that helped Badu push through, not to mention D'Angelo and India.Arie.

In March, I spoke to Algebra via phone about her craft and the industry grind. A quarter of the way through the interview, I asked her about her musical training given that she has been known to accompany herself on the acoustic guitar, which she pronounced charmingly like many of the early giants of soul, gui or rather "git" where all the stress is and tar. In her response, she spoke to how independent soul music doesn't always mean alternative.

I came from another background from a lot of the other underground artists here. I initially started in the studio, like right out of high school. I'm not one of the artists that kind of did the underground thing. I started singing, actually signed to Dallas Austin, so my background is pretty much more mainstream than anything and as I grew and got infatuated with different types of music and me being around music my entire life 'cause my mom is a bass player/minister and she sings. It just snowballed into some of the experiences I've had. Different artists would come to Atlanta and everybody knew that I sang and loved music so much I would get the opportunity to sing background with the different artists that came through Atlanta.

So me playing the guitar came at a boredom point in my life...just being in the studio and having different type of creative people around me. One day this friend of mine just put the guitar in my hand like, "I wrote this song for you and it goes like this." ...And I'm like, "Dude I do not play the guitar." So he puts it in my hand and I learn the chord like that and it just got to the point where I couldn't sing the song without playing the guitar and it was a beautiful song so it just kept going with me writing just sitting at home one day picking up the guitar as well and just playing around with it. Now mind you..I can't take all the credit for that because it did not sound good when I first picked up the guitar. So I just kept strumming at it and just found it to be another tool and found it to be very helpful when I did do open mics. I'm not the best cover song person. I will butcher a song in a minute when I'm freestyling on somebody's song so if the band don't know your stuff you play your song you wrote on the guitar...

Look for more excerpts of my interview with Algebra, tomorrow and check the video for "U Do it For Me" below.