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Pop Rock Nation

Author: Robert Lashley

  • BLACKsummersnight by Maxwell

    In, “BLACKsummersnight,” his 4th studio album, Maxwell scraps every single construct that has made him popular. The warm, afro coifed R&B god that could have passed for a fashion model is gone, replaced by a clean cut, moody man with a serious case of the thirty somethings. In place of the smooth, up tempo funk that seemed ready made for urban coffee houses is a darker sound; more attuned to low chords and minor keys; night time music too edgy for your modern night club. Even the record packaging is different; whereas Urban Hang Suite, Embrya, and Now emanated a bright, United Colors of Benetton vibe, “BLACK”, with the picture of him right profile in darkness, has the feel of a Himes novel cover.

    In short, he’s made a neo-soul album that will make your typical neo soul fan want to run from the room. Those more inclined to stay and listen to such outrages might love “BLACKsummersnight”, a near masterpiece full of uneasy, immense passions, a record as complex in it’s sadness as his earlier records were simple in their manners. In turns sardonic, wistful, smart and horny; it is as fierce a statement of individuality as I have heard from a top 40 R&B star. More than that, it is a genuine risk, a tremendous, yet thoughtful one, full of diverse influences, yet unafraid to make you slowly shake your ass. “BLACK” is Maxwell made new, full of fresh, bright ideas that need to taken seriously and listened to by as many people as possible.

    To understand how much of a gamble this is for him, you have to understand how much of a gamble his earlier records were not. With 1996’s Urban Hang Suite, Maxwell was packaged as a newer, nicer version of Marvin Gaye( going so far as to hire Leon Ware, one of Marvin’s old producers) and his subsequent records ,1998’s Embrya, and 2001’s Now, strayed little from the same formula. The records are nowhere near as bad or as good as their critics say they are, and it is a testament to his talent that he could carry them so successfully; even shining in the rare occasion that he broke his own mold. The problem with the records were that they were just that, a mould, something to fulfill a market niche.

    If you listen to it once, you might think that “Pretty Wings” his first single from “BLACK” is a continuation of that same mold; but only if you listen to it once. The same Muze sound is there, but Murkier, with muddy horns, slower chord progressions, and an organ that seems far, far too sleepy for church. Maxwell is there too, telling a lover goodbye in a passive aggressive language that harkens the creepy aesthetics of Eric Benet, R&B première sensitive phony. Just as you want to turn it off, however, Maxwell comes in with

    “I came wrong, you were right/Transformed your love into like”

    And begins to break down every convention of the R&B breakup song I have ever heard. Instead of phony I’m sorries, emo kiss offs, or quasi sociopathic sneers, Maxwell presents himself mixed up, vulnerable, willing to admit he’s stupid, but not to interested in wanting a cookie for it. “Pretty Wings” is far more complex than any song with the hook “take your pretty wings and fly” needs to be; almost Ashberry esque in its garbled narrative. It is as odd a great R&B single as I have ever heard, but it’s a great R&B single.

    The bulk of the record is in that same vein, a picture of a man going through immense romantic drama and…..acting like an adult about it. From “Playing Possum” to “Fistful of Tears” (it’s actually about a fistful of tears, not domestic violence) to “Stop the World”; Maxwell goes through all the stages of a bad break up, denial, anger, and morose sorrow. Yet in the end, the sweetness, the charm that carried his early records is still there, just weathered a bit by life. Unlike 808 and Heartbreak, Kanye West’s breakup record that degenerated into a quasi sociopathic temper tantrum, Maxwell retains a sense of self, a basic decency that seems honest, pragmatic, and in the end, deeply likeable.

    This new sense of self burnishes even the songs when he comes on like a Wolf. “Bad habits” is a make out single that eschews the lite Marvin- isms that made him so famous; and in turn is his first great make out single. It exists in a messy space, full of emotions ranging from (slightly) dark, to deliriously sensual; kind of like what sex actually is but too few people are willing to admit it to be. There are no 8th grade metaphors or slam poet come ons, just a sweet growl that comes off real, sticky, and averse to convention. It n short, a booty call song for people who might not be inclined to listen to booty call songs.


    Because it is part of a trilogy, there will be those who will compare it to Erykah Badu’s Nu Amerykah series, and they will be wrong too. For as Great a murky make out record as “BLACK summer’s night” is, it doesn’t hold up to what Badu did with her first installation, 2008‘s “4th world war”. That’s unfair to Maxwell, however, as few records I have heard this decade has held to that standard( regardless of genre); and if there is a lesson to be learned from this new record , it’s that we don’t know what Maxwell can do yet. He is re-introducing himself to us for the first time; in layers rich enough to make you want to hear him show more of them. The one’s he’s shown here, however, are more than enough to make “BLACK” the R&B album of the year*

    * so far. Let’s see what Badu does this fall.

  • Michael Jackson 1958-2009

    MJfro

    And now there is only the music. There is no bleached, living corpse to ridicule, no mutilated goblin to speculate on; no daemonic, yet tortured soul to gossip over for years and years on end. There is nothing left but the beauty, the arresting, transcendent beauty that came out of him at his very best; a beauty as clear, yet unexplainable as December or June. Oh, people will talk still about the madness of the past quarter century that followed him, but those cases will fade into history. His music, the only thing that was permanent about him and the only thing that is left, will not.

    So listen to it. Listen to Off the Wall and Thriller, where all of his gifts where at their full flux, unfettered by time, constraints, or the madness to come. Intricately created masterworks where Michael bedazzled the world with masterfully layered textures of disco, Philly soul, watercolor jazz and structures borrowed from the old Motown machine. Masterworks headed by a walking dictionary of black music: blending Stevie’s vocal stutter, Jackie ( Wilson’s) soaring grace notes, and Marvin sense of emotional bravura into a package all his own. This Michael, Sly, sensual but cool, will last beyond anything brought forth from his decline.

    Writing this, I see the people at the Apollo, and I think of all the uncles, aunties and cousins who have mourned him for years before this afternoon. The history of black music, intertwined with the history of black people, has a special relationship with tragedy. Billie. Sam. Marvin. Donny. Minnie. Phyllis. If you have an intimate relationship with any hood in America, you know that these are ghosts that have not gone away, nor gone away from the record player. Michael Jackson is now one of them, a specter of such beauty and trauma so intense to think about that all you can do his mourn him and listen to the music. What the people at the Apollo are doing is just that, the right thing to do tonight. No TMZ. No Dateline. Just a home going. Michael Joseph Jackson’s great getting up morning. Fare thee well. Fare thee well.

  • Ask an R&B Geek Vol. 1: Prince & More…

    Prince

    If you have questions for Robert, our resident R&B geek, please leave them in the comment section here and they will be answered!!

    1) What’s the best Prince album and why?

    At his best, Prince is big, messy, Whitmanesque in his ambitions and attempts to encompass the entire vocabulary of black music into 3-4 minute increments. His best albums aren’t mystifyingly perfect like Stevie Wonder’s string of classics; nor do they have the sweet, organic, arresting playability of Marvin Gaye’s finest work. What they are however is loud, gloriously loud in multitudes of musical ideas. They take staggering risks with convention and structure; and have highlights so blinding in their beauty, so mystifying in their invention; and so arresting in their listenability that they envelop whatever flaws the albums might have.

    So if you guessed my answer to be 1987’s Sign of The Times, give yourself a gold star. Sure, you could bitch about Starfish and Coffee, deem The Ballad of Dorothy Parker too pretentious, and scratch your head at Strange Relationship. You could even complain about the lack of continuity between the studio and concert cuts. If you do that, however, at the expense of Play In The Sunshine, Housequake, I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man, Adore, If I Was Your Girlfriend and the title track, then you need buy an ELO record.

    1a/2) Why is he such an ornery so-and-so these days?

    Oy vey iz mir! He’s in his 50’s with two busted hips! Seriously, in the scope of great geniuses in the 20th century, he’s doing ok. Find somebody who revolutionized their idiom the way Prince did, and you will see someone with demons. Prince has had his share: his involvement with drugs, while minor, was the catalyst that led him to become a Jehovas witness, and his vicious treatment of Sinead O’ Connor underscores the problems with women he’s had in his life. Compared to someone like Sly Stone, however, he’s a saint.

    That said, he has been a crotchety son of a gun lately. Gaging his New Yorker interview and love/hate relationship with Wendy and Lisa, I would say that Prince has not yet come to terms with the sexuality that made his early records burn so brilliantly; and that’s why he’s been a pissed off bastard.


    3) Why don’t R&B musicians (Alicia Keys and John Legend excepted) play their own instruments anymore??

    It’s easy to give the Wynton Marsalis answer, and complain about kids today not being that inventive. It’s harder to talk about the Massive drain in musical education in the past 40 years; the mass exodus of Black Male authority figures in mentoring and the arts; the pervasive sexism shown in the discounting of Female composers; the destruction of black radio by Bill Clinton’s deregulation bill; and the long, long, long list of R&B artist-musicians in the past 15 years that have been neglected by record companies obsessed with the easy suburban teenage dollar.