December 2007 Archives
Critical Noir: The 2007 Playlist (ver. 2.0)
Herbie Hancock featuring Tina Turner--"Edith and the Kingpin" from River: The Joni Letters
Following up the success of his Possibilities recording, Herbie Hancock offered his take on the music of Joni Mitchell, garnering Grammy nomination for best album in the process. River: the Joni Letters manages to negotiate that space between smooth jazz accessibility and Hancock's signature improvisational impulses. With Corinne Bailey Rae, Leonard Cohen, Sonya Kitchell and Mitchell herself among those contributing vocals, the biggest surprise is Tina Turner's performance on "Edith and the Kingpin". Turner is as assured and confident as ever, but as she hangs up her touring high heels, there's a whole world of jazz and pop interpretations for her to conquer.
Kanye West--"The Glory" from Graduation
Kanye West begins "The Glory" warbling--ever so cautiously--alongside the vocals of the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro. But by the time that first bass line hits, West is talking his "shit again" on top of the defiant and even celebratory loops of Nyro's voice. It's a fitting remembrance of a woman, whose career was largely defined by the hits that others had singing her music including Blood, Sweat and Tears ("And When I Die"), Barbara Streisand ("Stoney Road") and the 5th Dimension who had major hits with Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Save the Country." It is Nyro own version of the latter--written as a tribute to the Civil Rights Movement--that West reimagines. I'd like to think that the earnest vocals that open the track--"[I got fury in my soul] fury gonna take you to the glory goal/in my mind I can't study war no more" suggests that West's fury has not only fueled the making of great music (or to paraphrase a well-known mogul, West has a body of work; them other cats got some albums) but has given him to the faith to try and indeed "Save the Country."
Ann Nesby--"I Apologize" from This is Love
For the past few years, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings have, for all intents, defined the notion of "throwback" Soul. But I'm gonna make a pitch for Ann Nesby, former lead singer of Sounds of Blackness. Like "Put it on Paper", her throwdown ballad with Al Green from a few years ago, "I Apologize" finds Nesby giving us the Soul of a grown-ass women. Whereas Sharon Jones recalls the music of 60s sirens like Bettye Lavette (still on this journey, by the way) and even the late Linda Jones, Nesby's sound is more like late 70s era Quiet Storm from the likes on Jean Carn ("If You Don't Know Me by Now"), Betty Wright ("Tonight is the Night") and Evelyn Champaign King ("Don't Hide Our Love").
Anthony Hamilton--"Do You Feel Me" from American Gangster (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Anthony Hamilton does Dianne Warren? And that's why Hamilton is such an American original ('bout time we put away those comparisons to Bill Withers, Syl Johnson and Bobby Womack). Who else could take the middle-of-the-road schmaltz of Warren and her ilk and make it sound like it was dripping with some of that West Carolina 'que? "Do You Feel Me" is from the American Gangster soundtrack and sure we hear nods to the Dap Kings in the background, but Amy Winehouse (damn, forgot to put her on the list) can't sang like brotha' Anthony do.
Darrell McNeil featuring Everett Bradley--"I Thought I Knew Heartache" from the Soul-Patrol Digital/Virtual Album
Another track from the Soul Patrol Digital/Virtual Album, this time from Black Rock Coalition veteran Darrell McNeil with assistance from vocalist Everett Bradley. "I Thought I Knew Heartache" like so much of the Soul Patrol project, just makes you wonder how much great music we never had a chance in hell to hear.
Angie Stone--"Half the Chance" from The Art of Love and War
The Art of Love and War is arguably Angie Stone's finest recording and if Mike Epps didn't show up in that video for "Baby" would anybody even know? On "Baby" Ms. Stone shares the mic with Betty Wright and later trades riffs with James Ingram on "My People". Truth be told, Ms. Stone's sensibilities have always been closer to that of Ingram and Wright's generation, as opposed to Mr. Archer or Mr. Richardson's, so it's fitting the The Art of Love and War appears on a revamped Stax label. And much as I have always loved Angie's sassy thickness, for sure, it's on ballads like "Half the Chance" that we are treated Ms. Stone at her best.
Jay Z--"Say Hello" from American Gangster
So let's assume that "Roc Boys (and the Winner is)" is Mr. Carter's best single since "99 Problems", but hot singles have long been irrelevant when we want a glimpse of Shawn. Production wise it's Just Blaze's "American Gangster" with that sample of Curtis Mayfield's "Short Eyes" that is in regular rotation (fo' real black super hero music) and there's a dissertation to be written about "Fallin'" (starting with Bilal's redemption and the rich use of Rick James's "Teardrops). But with "Say Hello" (with the sweetness of Tom Brock cooing in the background) and three or four well placed lines, Jay Z makes himself relevant to the world beyond the world of rap music: "And if Al Sharpton is speaking for me /Somebody get him the word and tell him I don't approve/Tell him I'll remove the curses/If you tell me our schools gon' be perfect./When Jena 6 don't exist, tell him that's when I'll stop saying bitch...BITCH!."
Chaka Khan featuring Mary J. Blige--"Disrespectful" from Funk This
"Never on schedule, but always on time" and our man Nasir could have been talking about that "every woman". For more than 30 years, Ms. Chaka has done things on her terms and in her time. So what if it took more than a decade and more than a few producers to get Ms. Chaka back in the studio of a full-length recording. And God bless Jam and Lewis for again making our Soul elders sound classic and contemporary at the same time. "Disrespectful" might be just a funky little ditty about love gone awry, but damn if in the hands of Ms. Chaka--and Lady Mary--if this ain't them throwing down the gauntlet on behalf of the fully grown, fully developed and the fully in-charge.
Eric Roberson--"Evening" from ...Left
So I'm a 42-year-old husband and father. It's been a bit since I hit the club and truth be told, I was never into the club scene all that tough in the first place. But damn if Eric Roberson's "Evening" ain't got me wishing my 42-year-old mind (and salary) into my used-to-be 24-year-old body for just a night of flirty, sexy love.
Critical Noir: The 2007 Playlist (ver. 1.0)
Rahsaan Patterson--"Oh Lord (Take me Back)" from Wine & Spirits
It's been a decade since Rahsaan Patterson broke through with his debut recording for the MCA label. For those up in corporate though, Ronnie Dyson, one of Patterson's primary musical influences, or the image of a sanctified little Jimmy Baldwin (I always loved how Amiri Baraka simply called the legendary writer "Jimmy" during his eulogy for him, 20 years ago this month) simply didn't register; Patterson has long been off the mainstream radar. Wine & Spirits, Patterson's latest offering, is his second independent release and "Oh Lord (Take Me Back)" is brilliant riff on the sanctified world that birthed him.
Jill Scott--"How's It Make You Feel" from The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3
Admittedly, I've never gotten over the Jill that I fell in love with after the release of Who is Jill Scott?: Words and Sound, Vol. 1 in 2000. There was just a magic--an innocence about Jill and the music "they" called neo-Soul--that was embodied in those bright eyes that peered out on the album cover. Seven years later the bitterness of never really breaking through to the mainstream, a failed marriage and the apparent invisibility of fully grown--and fully formed--black women in the popular realm, stick to The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 like honey on Formica. It's hard to know if the Rutgers' Women's basketball team, Meagan Williams, or the victim in the Dunbar Village gang rape were on Scott's mind when she wrote and recorded "How's It's Make You Feel". In a moment though, when it is so difficult to locate the subjectivities of black women in popular culture and media (and let's be real Oprah and Condi have never been simply "black women") Scott ups the ante by daring to ask, what if my ass--and those of every black female in this culture--disappeared?
Pharoahe Monch--"Welcome to the Terrordome" from Desire
Desire won't get love that Lupe Fiasco's The Cool will on most year-end assessments (and indeed most read like an accountant's index rather than a measure of artistic merit) and that probably has to do with Pharoahe Monch outgrowing the "hip-hop smarty-pants," to quote my man Bakari, that drive the marketplace of so-called conscious rap. Whereas Fiasco can't remember lyrics to the music of some of the genre's true geniuses, Monch dares to remake Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome," rendering the song more politically relevant than the original was when released in the spring of 1990. And let me clear, there was nothing more politically relevant for the black, the young and the proud crowd in the late 1980s and 1990s than Public Enemy.
4Hero featuring Darien Brockington--"Give In" from Play with the Changes
For years Darien Brockington has toiled along with Carolina's Justus League, in relative obscurity and unfortunately, Brockington's solo release Somebody to Love did little to change that. Leave it to North London's 4Hero to give a brotha a reprieve. With fellow Justus leaguer and remaining Little Brother member Phonte in tow, Brockington's "Give In" is a sweet taste of cosmopolitan Soul--much like the work of the woefully forgotten Charles Stepney (somebody get Maurice White, Richard Rudolph, or Terry Callier on the phone) whose legacy 4Hero continues to celebrate.
Stephanie McKay--"Rainbow" from the Soul-Patrol Digital/Virtual Album
Culled from Stephanie McKay's self-titled EP, "Rainbow" is one of those beautiful tracks that will never find its way onto the playlist of your local urban station--even the ones that claim to play classic soul and adult R&B. And if it we're not for internet innovator Bob Davis, founder of the influential listserv "Soul-Patrol" I would have been oblivious to McKay's solo work. "Rainbow" appears on the Soul-Patrol Digital/Virtual Album, a spirited attempt to undermine the corporate gatekeepers, providing the platform for independent artists to be heard at a fraction of the cost ($.15 percent per song) that the evil apple--I mean empire--offers songs for. McKay is among the 20-something artistz that contribute to the virtual album which features new music from legends like The Dells, Mandrill and Public Enemy.
Keite Young--"E.N.S. (Everybody Needs Somebody)" from the Rise and Fall of Keite Young
Keite Young somehow manage to escape damn near everybody's attention and rightfully so--The Rise and Fall of Keite Young is not a great recording. "E.N.S. (Everybody Needs Somebody)" is a winner though --a throwback of sorts that channels mid-career Prince ("Insatiable") and the only D'Angelo we've known (more "Heaven" than "Untitled"). Give Young some seasoning, stronger song writing, and more crisp production and Mr. Archer may have to remain on that now 7-year sabbatical since Voodoo.
Me'Shell Ndgeocello--"Elliptical" from The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams
Apparently the man of Me'Shell Ndegoecello's dreams is an emo/hardcore punk star, 'cause that is what we get throughout her latest recording. As always give Ndegeocelleo credit for accepting the challenge, even if she leaves her core audience grappling in the dark. That said, "Elliptical" is a succulent piece of computerized f*ck funk that feels like Octavia Butler dreaming 40-years ago about a world that she couldn't then write about--and be taken seriously. And perhaps that's Ndegeocello's point.
Chrisette Michelle--"Your Joy" from I Am
Chrisette Michelle's I Am stole my heart at the beginning of the summer, but by the fall it was an ordinary love. Not a comment on Michelle's considerable talents or Mr. Carter's faith that Def Jam could break into the world of adult R&B. Indeed Anita Baker's first album for Beverly Glen was forgettable (so forgettable the label apparently forgot to pay her for it), but she left us with "Angel"; Chrisette Michelle left me with "Your Joy", a love song for her father and every father who has loved his little girl(s). As long as I'm thinking of my own little brown girls, "Your Joy" will always be the perfect song.
***note: (ver. 2.0) will upload on Friday, December 21st
A Peerless Genius: Thriller @ 25
Michael Jackson was fifteen years into a professional singing career when Thriller was released 25 years ago on November 30, 1982, but nearly a decade past his peak years as the boy lead singer of his family group, The Jackson Five. Not yet aged 25, Jackson could have easily become another child-star as cultural footnote--much like his temporal peer Donny Osmond was at the time. And indeed in the years between Jackson's star-turn as the Scarecrow in The Wiz (1978)--a soulful adaptation of The Wizard of Oz--and the release of Thriller, Jackson worked hard to craft an image of an independently minded adult who, removed from the comforts of his family clan, the assembly-line logic of the Motown label and the overbearing influence of family patriarch Joe Jackson, was now in control of his life and, more importantly, his music. What may have begun as simply a stab at independence, eventually became a stab at history; Thriller remains the biggest selling recording in the history of the music industry.
Critical acclaim for Thriller was immediate. In the pages of the Sunday New York Times (December 19, 1982), John Rockwell noted that "Thriller is a wonder pop record, the latest statement by one of the great singers in popular music today. It is as hopeful a sign as we have had yet that the destructive barriers that spring up regularly between white and black music - and between whites and blacks -in this culture may be breached once again." Yes, Michael Jackson as unwitting Race Man. Thriller's lead single "The Girl is Mine" featured Paul McCartney (who wrote Off the Wall's "Girlfriend") in what was a a calculated appeal for crossover success and pop gravitas, on Jackson's part. The significance of this collaboration was not lost on critics. In a Newsweek piece titled "The Peter Pan of Pop" (January 10, 1983), Jim Miller noted that the song "sounds very pretty and perfectly innocuous--until you begin to think about the lyrics. Have American radio stations ever before played a song about two men, one black and the other white, quarreling over the same woman?" Recorded a year after McCartney and Stevie Wonder broke barriers with "Ebony & Ivory" and nearly two years to the anniversary of John Lennon 's murder, the collaboration with McCartney gave Jackson instant credibility among "serious" pop audiences.
But crossover strategies and Jackson's own pop appeal would mean little if not for the sonic landscape that producer Quincy Jones created for Jackson. During the filming of the 1978 film The Wiz Jackson and Quincy Jones, the film's executive producer, laid the groundwork for the productive and profitable professional relationship that transformed Jackson into global pop star. Jones's brew of sophisticated and subtle pop-jazz--a sound he brilliantly mined on his own albums Body Heat (1974), Sounds...And Stuff Like That (1978) and the award-winning The Dude (1981)--provided Jackson with a mature, yet youthful style. Jackson and Jones initially collaborated on Jackson's Off the Wall (1979)--arguably the best album in Jackson's oeuvre--creating signature pop confections like "Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough", "Rock with You" and the title track.
Though Jones might have helped Jackson to sound grown-up, Jackson's naivete helped ingratiate him to audiences. In the aforementioned Newsweek article Jones describes Jackson as having a "balance between the wisdom of a 60-year-old"--not surprising for a young man who had worked intimately with Berry Gordy, Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff and Jones--"and the enthusiasm of a child." Jackson's childlike demeanor (the soft voice) and somewhat androgynous (and Jerri-curled) features led to the perception of him as a Peter Pan figure. Jackson played off on his child-like sensibilities most brilliantly in the video for the title track. Written by Rod Temperton, who penned songs on both Thriller and Off the Wall, "Thriller" was recorded as a tribute to Jackson's love of horror movies. Employing the talents of veteran film director John Landis (American Werewolf in London and Trading Places) Jackson created the first "music video as event"--a half-hour long film short that directly referenced Night of the Living Dead (1968) and a host of other horror flicks.
Thriller's success was due to Jones's production as much as it was Jackson's desire for cinematic presentations of his music. With each music video, beginning with "Billie Jean" and then "Beat It", Jackson upped the artistic ante--these were postmodern spectacles in a form of presentation (music videos) that was still grappling with its own possibilities. Jackson's seamless presentation of (musical) text and image was cutting edge and spoke powerfully to the historic relationship between blackness and technology--indeed black bodies were often literally the technology that cut the edge. Twenty five years later it's difficult to hear Jackson's "hee, hee, hee" over Paul Jackson's signature baseline on "Billie Jean" and not envision the Blade Runner style video that was shot in support of the song. That said, I still argue that the purest form of genius on the Thriller is the opening track "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".
"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" marries Jackson's boyish exuberance with a complex rhythmic structure that propels the song into an ethereal exorcism of funk. As the song rumbles towards its climax, Jackson seemingly summons the gods, delivering a sermonic spectacle worthy of the greatest black preachers ("Lift your head of high and scream out to the world / I know I am someone and let the truth unfurl / No one can hurt you now, because you know what's true / Yes I believe in me, So you believe in me"). The song soars when Jackson yelps (literally, out of breath) "help me sing it" at which point the legendary backing group The Waters (Julia, Maxine and Oren) chime in rhythmically "ma, ma, se, ma, ma, sa, ma, ma coo, sa." These utterings we're appropriated from Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango's classic "Soul Makossa" (1973). Jackson ad-libs behind the Waters when suddenly the bottom drops out, and listeners are left with Jackson (damn near orgasmic), the still frenzied Waters, the punctuating lines of the horn section (including veteran studio trumpeter Jerry Hey), and a shout-clap rhythm worthy of the Ring Shout tradition. These are the most brilliant moments on Thriller and moments that most casual listeners of Jackson's music continue to miss. For those who read Jackson's ever devolving facial features as some evidence of racial self-hatred, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" is Jackson's unspoken retort, as he summoned the Orishas in a way never before experienced in American pop music.
***
Time has been hard on our memories of Michael Jackson; both the Jackson who initially stole our hearts as the little black-boy from Gary, Indiana and the Jackson whose sophisticated crossover style, bespoke all the possibilities of a post-Civil Rights world. Indeed, many had to be reminded of the anniversary of Thriller's release--a testament to an icon whose current legacy has little to do with the music he has created for much of his life. In that regard, Jackson has many peers, including the two men, James Brown and Elvis Presley, who inspired his most spectacular performances--they all have lost their sheen as the years have passed. Nevertheless, Thriller was a singular achievement--one that Jackson has spent the last twenty-five years trying to recreate. Michael Jackson will never again be the pop phenomenon he was at the peak of his fame in the mid-1980s. Here's praying that Jackson will allow himself to exhale--deeply--and enjoy the resonances of what was truly a peerless genius.
Come Back Chester Himes
Unavailable for nearly three decades, the original motion picture soundtrack for Come Back Charleston Blue was recently released. The re-issued recording not only serves as a reminder of the era of Blaxpolitation--the moment in the late 1960s that marks the beginning of mainstream America's fascination with under/other-worldly blackness--but highlights the work of an often overlooked genius of black expressive culture, Chester Himes.
In his own right Chester Himes was one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. His first two novels, If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) and Lonely Crusade (1947), though roundly dismissed at the time of their publication--Ebony Magazine called Himes a "psychopath" in a review of the latter--they have since become part of the canon of 20th century African-American literature, as is also the case with Himes's two autobiographies The Quality of Hurt (1973) and My Life of Absurdity (1976).
Born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909, Himes began writing professionally, while he was in prison for armed burglary. Two short stories, "Crazy in the Stir" and "To What Red Hell" were published in 1934 by Esquire Magazine while Himes was a 25-year-old inmate. His experiences in prison, logically informed Himes's decision to write as a social realist--capturing the less savory aspects of Black American life, without a hint of irony or luster. When Himes moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, hoping to find work as a Hollywood scribe, he turned to the shipyards of Los Angeles and what writer RJ Smith calls the "The Great Black Way" to find inspiration. "The Great Black Way" was Los Angeles's "Central Avenue" which rivaled Harlem's Lenox Avenue and Chicago's "Stroll" in the mythology of mid-20th century urban blackness. It was this world that Himes partly captured in his first novels and it would be this world that would fuel Himes imagination a decade later as he sat in exile in France.
After the commercial failure of his first two novels Himes headed abroad to France, mainly to salve his hurt feelings and depression. While in exile Himes turned to crime fiction and it was through his detective novels, set in the Harlem of the 1950s and 1960s, that Himes remained wedded to the intricacies of everyday blackness. Himes famously once described his main occupation as "the search for money" so many have come to think of his crime novels as attempts to cash in quickly on his formidable writing skills--mid-20th century street-lit, if you will. The focal points of his nine crime-novels were a pair of "Harlem" detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson--characters who were based on two cops Himes had contact with on Central avenue.
When Hollywood came calling for Himes--more than twenty years after Himes tried to sell scripts to Hollywood studios--it was those detective novels, in all their absurd glory, that became fodder in the Blaxploitation machine. The first of those novels depicted on screen was Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), which was directed by Ossie Davis, and stared Redd Foxx and Calvin Lockhart. Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson were brought to life by Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques. The duo reprised their roles when the Samuel Goldwyn company turned Himes's "The Heat is On" into Come Back Charleston Blue (1972). Himes voiced little regret in having his work serve a machine that so many felt belittled African-American culture. In his wonderful book The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African American Renaissance (2006), RJ Smith writes of Himes, "the last thing he was interested in was being a role model, in 'representing the race.' That was the burden of those elegant Harlem Renaissance writers whose pictures [Himes] was turning to the wall." Chester Himes died in 1984.
