You might have not been paying attention, but The Roots have been up there with The White Stripes, Radiohead, and Kanye as the most consistent artists of the past decade. With thought-provoking lyrics and rock-solid funk grooves, this is the kind of hip-hop that lots of people have either forgotten existed or never knew existed in the first place. While most of the attention behind the band gets focused on drummer ?uestlove (either because of his striking look or because of his ease with a quote), rapper Black Thought is just as important to the group, and has quietly revealed himself to be one of the most unsung emcees in hip-hop history. Plus, the man, like fellow emcee greats Andre 3000 and Slick Rick (sorta), can sing too! Their new album, “How I Got Over” was originally scheduled for a summer release, but has gotten bumped into October. Check out their performance of the title track on Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show, where they also serve as the house band. Hopefully this exposure results in a well-deserved, successful album.
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Ask an R&B Geek Vol. 1: Prince & More…
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.
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FORTY-FIVE REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE #41: Hooked On Phoenix
MAC & KATIE KISSOON “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” b/w “Walking Around” (ABC Records #11306, Fall 1971)
Pop smashes don’t just write themselves. It takes actual people with actual brains to conceive of the melodies (with or without lyrical combinations) that will become the soundtrack to our difficult lives, brightening up otherwise cloudy days. And it can take teams of people, and lots of time and effort, to get that potential hit into the right hands, often after many incarnations: the right recording by the right artist, the right slot on the right radio station; these and more factors can make or break a pop song. It can be a long and belabored process. Yet when the tunes reach our ears, it all seems effortless, like it was whispered through the airwaves directly at us.  It’s the magic, my friends, that makes it all so attractive.
In its original incarnation by Scottish songwriter Lally Stott, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” is Euro-bubblegum of the sparse variety.  Surrounded by handclaps-with-brushed-snare percussion, clanging Fender Rhodes piano and staccato horn charts, Stott gets his point across by pushing the catchy melody to the forefront . It was a hit in Europe and Australia, but the recording itself comes off more as a writers’ demo.
Appropriately-named English pop-vocal group Middle Of The Road scored huge in Britain with their rendition of “Chirpy” the following year, but one could easily attribute their success not to the clunky backbeat and general “okay-ness” of the arrangement, but to the sheer sex appeal of singer Sally Carr. Oozing hip Swinging London cool, Carr straddles that forbidden barricade between tambourine-happy Betty Cooper-style band chick and aloof Nicoesque chanteuse, like a strict Bavarian school marm who makes you stay after class then totally fucks you. Young English boys feverishly masturbated, while a blossoming quartet of guys & dolls over in Sweden carefully took notes.
(Sick of this song yet? I’m not. In fact, I sing this song at work. Yes, I sing at work…you wanna make something of it? I didn’t think so. Furthermore, I’m in the right mind to slap this sucker on my iPod, remove everything else, and set it on repeat with the volume at full-blast, that’s how I feel right now. Keep your Robert Fripp outtakes and your Albert Ayler box-set and let me wallow in my trashy eurobubblegum compost heap, goddammit! Anyway…)
Play (or don\’t…see if I care) Mac & Katie Kissoon\’s hit rendition of \”Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep\”
Late 1971 saw Mac & Katie Kissoon, a brother-sister duo from Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad, finally push “Chirpy” (incorrectly attributed on this 45 to “Scott”) into the US Top 20. Katie’s voice propels the song here, ringing bright and clear over a smart and swinging gospel-soul arrangement, replete with Motown-Philly strings and Stax/Volt drum-breaks. Ditching the European production values and going for a fuller, more American sound proved to be a watershed for the Kissoons’ version, and henceforth “Chirpy,” in one rendition or another, was now a worldwide smash.
Unfortunately there’s no clip available for “Walking Around,” the strange, off-kilter ska track that makes up the B-side. With its cut-time snare-n-horn rolls, unpredictable dub-inflected bassline, and unusual vocal melody that shifts jarringly from major to minor, “Walking” is hands down one of the oddest and most intriguing flips I’ve ever heard. Ten years later, it would’ve sounded right at home covered by The English Beat or The Selecter or Madness. In this incarnation, however, the Kissoon siblings sound like they’re having a great time, making this complex vocal exercise seem very natural and simple, like a magical, refreshing, effortless Caribbean breeze.
Mac & Katie continued to make records over the years, and had several more hits, mainly in Europe. Katie can often be seen and heard singing backup for luminaries such as Roger Waters, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison.
NEXT WEEK: “Alcohol is/An easy key/Helps you unwind/And dance with me/To a disco trot from Germany”