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Tag: David Banner

  • R&B’s Best Kept Secret Makes His “Point”: Anthony Hamilton

    Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to make of the current R&B landscape. The R&B band has all but disappeared, the divas of yesteryear still exist in a radically faded state with no ladies in waiting to replace them, and as for the guys? Well, most male R&B singers either spend their time trying to be rappers or trying to be Michael Jackson. Nothing against rappers or MJ, but you’ve gotta wonder what happened to what they call “grown folks” R&B. Stick-to-your-ribs soul music. A man who sounds like an adult instead of a perpetually horny teenager, someone with real-life perspective. An artist capable of filling the void created when Gerald LeVert and Luther Vandross passed away. Well, if Anthony Hamilton hasn’t found his way into your music collection yet, I strongly suggest you check him out right now.

    North Carolina-born, Harlem-based Anthony Hamilton is still pretty much under the radar. Despite selling a combined 1.5 million copies of his first two albums, the majority of music listeners-even fans of R&B- music fans would be hard-pressed to name three songs from the guy. That anonymity has prevented him from getting his props, because 37-year old Hamilton is easily one of the best-if not THE best- singer in his genre. His raspy tone has drawn comparisons to everyone from Bill Withers to Bobby Womack, and he’s proven himself to be one of the few current artists capable of sounding like an authentic throwback (as opposed to a pale facsimile) and completely contemporary at the same time. He appeals equally to men and women, although the (formerly) scruffy, diminutive Hamilton is not the traditional R&B sex symbol. His music has a strong spiritual element to it (the song “Pass Me Over”, from his last album, literally got me through a very trying period several years ago), and the guy throws down live. Believe me, y’all. Anthony Hamilton is the whole package.

    Rumors of his third album, The Point of it All, being a more “uptempo” affair caught me off-guard and had me thinking the worst. After all, Hamilton certainly wouldn’t be the first favorite artist of mine to make a sellout move after showing promise. My fears were compounded when I realized the first single, Cool, featured a guest spot from rapper David Banner. Again, I love my hip-hop just like I love my R&B, but there are definite times when the two don’t need to mix, and although Hamilton has made guest appearances on a couple of popular rap singles, I felt like the addition of a guest emcee on a Hamilton album was a compromise of sorts.

    Thank goodness, my fears turned out to be unnecessary. While The Point of it All has added a few elements to make Hamilton sound a little more contemporary, it’s basically still an Anthony Hamilton album. Fans of his first two albums will find much to enjoy here.

    Cool actually turns out to be a pretty decent song, a mellow midtempo track with a fairly unobtrusive (and witty) rap section from Banner, but it’s far from the best song on the album (actually, it‘s one of the weakest).  The News opens the album and immediately sets the tone for everything that follows with a groove and socially conscious lyrics that recall both Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. Listen to a song like this and it’s no wonder that the guys who put together the music for American Gangster (which was set in the early Seventies) picked Hamilton to perform two original songs on the soundtrack . Prayin’ for You/Superman is a two-part song that stretches Hamilton out with a little bit of country twang followed by some piano blues. It’s pretty ballsy for an R&B artist and shows why musicians as diverse as country star Josh Turner and blues-rocker Jonny Lang have sought him out to work with. Hamilton even proves that he can handle adult contemporary balladry. He pulls off a song like Her Heart beautifully when it would be mush in any other artist’s hands.

    Hamilton’s more spiritually inclined work hits me the hardest, and to me, this album’s centerpiece is Fine Again. It’s got a hopeful message and  pleading vocals that put it head and shoulders above the rest of the album.

    One good album can be a fluke. Two good albums suggest potential greatness. Three great albums seals the deal. With The Point of it All, Hamilton has sewn up his position as one of the most talented R&B artists around. Hopefully, this will be the time that the world-at-large realizes this.

    See the video for “Cool” here.

  • Maroon 5 Gets the Cut & Paste Treatment on “Call & Response”

    Remember, like, 20 years ago, when remix albums were cool? Starting with Madonna’s You Can Dance in 1987, just about every major pop artist put out an album of dance remixes of their biggest hits. There was Phil Collins’ 12″ers, Bobby Brown’s Dance…Ya Know It!, Paula Abdul’s Shut Up and…OK, I think you get the picture.

    While most of the aforementioned albums are listenable, there’s not much in the way of lasting value. However, Maroon 5 is setting out to change that long-standing perception of remix albums with Call & Response. The pop/rock/soul hybrid (fronted by nasally-voiced seductor Adam Levine) collected a team of producers as eclectic as the band itself, spanning the genres from hip-hop to indie rock to dance music, and asked them to tackle selections from the band’s two studio albums. The results are varied, but there definitely more interesting experiments here than there are failures.

    The sleazy If I Never See Your Face Again (which is great in it’s original Prince/Talking Heads-esque original version) gets a double makeover. Paul Oakenfold turns the song into a twirling house anthem that retains the sexual tension between Levine and guest vocalist Rihanna (also proving to me that I can deal with modern dance music as long as there’s vocals and melody involved) while Swizz Beatz turns it into a hip-hop party anthem, sampling (and keeping fresh) the well-worn Take Me to the Mardi Gras beat (which you may recognize as Run-DMC’s Peter Piper). Both versions work, as does Mark Ronson’s sinister remix of Wake Up Call. The Amy Winehouse producer gives the original version some extra tension by adding a guest vocal from Mary J. Blige. ?uestlove smooths out Sunday Morning so that it sounds like Sunday Morning. You can picture yourself taking a lazy drive to nowhere with this song in the background.

    Strangely for a remix album, the slower songs work best in their new versions. Deerhoof turns the arena ballad Goodnight Goodnight into a weird indie rock/electro hybrid-kinda like The Postal Service meets Death Cab for Cutie (obviously with Levine standing in for Ben Gibbard). DJ Premier handles the slinky Secret, and even with turntable scratches and a typically thumping hip-hop beat, the song loses none of its’ seductive quality. Even songs I didn’t like originally (or grew to dislike after extensive plays) regain their flavor. DJ Quik turns Shiver into a greasy funk workout, while The Neptunes’ (who have restored some goodwill to their name over the past two days) turn the pedestrian pop ballad She Will Be Loved into another one of their hazy synthesizer jams they’ve become famous for.

    Certain matchups, however, just don’t work. The funky Makes Me Wonder gets slowed down dramatically by Just Blaze (whose work is usually flawless) and the lowered tempo and piano intro (which sounds like the theme from “The Young and the Restless”) just doesn’t work against the song’s cocky lyrics. Another one you might wanna skip is the Cool Kids’ remix of Harder to Breathe, which sports a plodding, murky musical background. I’m still on the fence about David Banner’s 808-heavy remix of Wake Up Call, but the more I listen, the more I like-well, except for Banner’s unnecessary guest verse.

    I dig this album quite a bit, but then again I’m a Maroon 5 fan. If you’re just discovering the band, this is obviously not the place you wanna start. However, if you’re one of those folks with eclectic musical tastes and don’t mind a little hip-hop mixed in with your pop/rock, with a little hi-NRG dance thrown in (and a little sprinkling of indie goodness), then you might want to give Call & Response a shot.

  • The New Music Files 10/21/08: Featuring AC/DC, Kenny Chesney, HSM3 and More!!

    I figured it was time to change the title of the column into something a little less…you know, boring. Anyhow, here’s what you should be expecting to see on store shelves and in your trusty little iTunes browser this week:

    AC/DC: Black Ice:

    Those rascally Aussies have pretty much made the exact same album for thirty + years now, but damn if people don’t go out and buy tons of it each time. Black Ice is their first album of new material in almost a decade, and it’s receiving a little extra notice not only because they’re crisscrossing the globe in support of it, but because, much like The Eagles album from last year, this album is being released exclusively at Wal-Mart and walmart.com (actually, the album went on sale yesterday, but who’s counting). If you’re anywhere near rock radio or VH-1, I’m sure you’ve already heard the first single “Rock & Roll Train”.

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