From the ''Think Like a Man'' Soundtrack
He doesn’t wanna brag. And so what if he says he’s gonna be the “best you ever had” – it’s not bragging if it’s true, right? (Having seen him live when he was touring his debut album, I don’t doubt he’s got the goods. On stage, I mean. On stage.)
I love John Legend, and part of the reason is that he can say things like “I don’t wanna brag” – while bragging – and make it sound charming and sexy. (It helps that he doesn’t need any Autotune to get his point across.) Justin and Timbaland can talk about bringing the sexy back, but John Legend is the sexy. Obviously, there’s more to John Legend than his sex appeal: like his 70s soul forebears (particularly Marvin Gaye), he’s a deep-thinking, three-dimensional, socially/politically engaged artist (who – did I mention? – also happens to be totally hot) and he’s one hell of an entertainer. While we’re waiting for him to wrap up his fifth studio album, he’s serving up some sweet, sweet foreplay with this new single.
“Tonight (Best You Ever Had)”, from the soundtrack of the forthcoming movie Think Like a Man, is the first new music from the Ohio native since his 2010 collaboration with The Roots on a collection of covers of classic soul protest songs called Wake Up!. “Tonight” features a guest verse by Ludacris, which is okay, I suppose; more importantly it features a throbbing beat, a slinky “let’s-take-our-clothes-off” bassline, and John Legend doing a breathy falsetto on the word “tonight.” This sounds like a great live show opener. It also sounds like it could make it rain panties in a theater.
Magnetic Man’s self-titled debut album
Dubstep is to the recently concluded decade – whatever we’re calling it – what “trip hop” was the 90s. That is: a dubious, and ill-defined (though distinctly British) sub-sub-genre hybrid of electronic dance music, dub, and hip-hop. Like trip-hop (and “garage”, “two-step”, “grime”, etc.) before it, dubstep has largely failed to find a footing here in the States, but that doesn’t mean its practitioners aren’t gonna try their damnedest to get Americans’ attention. And the genre has found some pretty high profile American R&B singers to make nice with.
For example:
Magnetic Man – a London-based partnership of djs Benga, Skream, and Artwork – recruited John Legend to sing the lead on a song called “Getting Nowhere”, the closing track of their debut album and a brooding electro-dirge that he sings the shit out of. It’s a long way from last year’s Wake Up!, Legend’s socially conscious retro-soul collaboration with The Roots, and the singer seems absolutely (and good for him!) unchastened by the lukewarm reception given his more clubby Evolver album (or by the volumes of vitriol spewed at his pal and fellow Chicago scenester Common‘s defiantly Euro 2008 album Universal Mind Control, whose whole-hearted, damn-the-fan-base embrace of its sound I admired, but many others regarded as nothing short of a betrayal.) But then, John Legend has always been about moving musically forward and backward at the same time. “Getting Nowhere” has just been released as the third single from the Magnetic Man album, and the group has put out a beautifully disturbing, urban-apocalypse video for it.
On my personal Tolerability Index, the radio format (I dare not call it a “musical genre”) known as “smooth jazz” generally falls somewhere between Sarah Palin’s Alaska and gnawing my own arm off. But last year, I discovered that Billboard actually compiles a weekly Jazz songs chart and every now and then, I give it a look. And it’s not just the curiosity of someone expecting to be repulsed: As it turns out, Sade landed three tracks from her latest album in the year-end Jazz chart, and Wake Up!, the great collaboration between John Legend and The Roots (and friends) has also landed a few hits on the chart.
But my curiosity isn’t entirely pure either. As Sunset Boulevard‘s Joe Gillis might have said, sometimes it’s fun to see how bad bad music can be. And so, every now and then, when I have nothing better to do than watch the Chiefs lose the last game of the regular season, I arm myself with a few titles from the Jazz chart’s upper reaches and head on over to YouTube. The results are predictable. Lots of alto and soprano saxophones and wooshy textures. Lots of clips from The Weather Channel where the songs are used as soundtracks for seven-day forecasts and temperatures for cities around the country.
Mindi Abair’s ”In Hi-Fi Stereo”Recently, I noticed that saxophonist Mindi Abair had a new album out. Now, Mindi Abair’s a name I actually know, although I can’t honestly count myself as a fan. Here’s the deal: for several years, I shared office space and a boombox with a crusty old man who kept a copy of the 1966 edition of the company’s employee handbook in his desk. For a while, there was only one radio station he could tolerate – a Wisconsin Public Radio station that played classical music until it was time from Terry Gross. I didn’t mind that. But then, a smooth jazz station was launched in Madison, and we started listening to that a lot. It wasn’t all bad. They played Steely Dan. But they were also really hot for a hottie sax-blower named Mindi Abair and they played her songs all the time. Despite that fact, there’s not a single Mindi Abair melody I could hum for you. Her music was entirely forgettable, and as a result, I’d forgotten it – entirely.
So when I saw Mindi Abair’s name on the charts, I thought, y’know, why not give it a try, and see what it does for me? The song I checked out was called “Be Beautiful”, and I actually found myself – well – sort of – gulp – liking it. It had a nice, understated groove that felt organic and live even if it wasn’t terribly distinctive. The sax solo was fine and tasteful – though, admittedly, still a sax solo – and it was tempered by a soulful vocal chorus that felt made-up-on-the-spot which made the whole song feel a lot more intimate and real than (I suspected) it deserves to feel. More recently, another song from the same album – it’s called In Hi-Fi Stereoand the cover art shows Abair spending some quality time with her vintage vinyl collection and portable turntable – has started showing up on the charts, and this one’s even better.
The new one’s called “Get Right” and it features vocalist Ryan Collins, who bears more than a passing vocal resemblance to John Legend. The song, too, sounds like something John Legend would record. It’s got an immediate retro soul groove, driven by electric piano, a stylin’ horn section, and a great singalong chorus. Abair’s sax doesn’t even show up in the spotlight until halfway through, and even then, she cedes the floor to Collins after a brief solo, choosing, in essence, to be featured artist on a song where she’s credited as the lead – an act of both confidence and restraint that demands applause. Give the song a listen here:
