D'Angelo - Black Messiah (2014)

dancing around the kitchen to this is highly recommended fyi

I'm not very knowledgeable on the engineering side of things, but I feel like there is something less "crowded" about this record when it is played loud, as though turning up the volume gives each sound more space.

^^^

xgau:

Comparisons to Sly’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On pertain—like that end-of-year funk bombshell, this music is disruptive, a little forbidding. But a-b the two albums and recall or discover how much cleaner music was supposed to sound in 1971. Proudly antidigital though he may be, D’Angelo knows damn well that he’s competing in a funk soundscape epitomized for the nonce by the dense computerized pastiche of Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy—a soundscape in which gearhead murk and gorgeous complexity coexist a tweak or two apart. His response, almost as far from Voodoo as Riot was from Stand!, is a thick, sui generis jazz-funk in which Questlove and Pino Palladino avant around with the kind of bottom they already change up as flexibly as anyone in the pop sphere while guitarist Isaiah Sharkey and horn maestro Roy Hargrove interject from the jazz side. Instrumentally, it’s more virtuosic, more surprising, more conceptual, and more physical than Riot’s “Africa” jams. But D’Angelo isn’t just being conceptual when he buries his murmurs, moans, pleas, regrets, and imprecations so deep in the mix that the words are indecipherable, because not a song here stands as tall as “Family Affair,” “Just Like a Baby,” or “You Caught Me Smilin’.” Which is to say that the talk about how profoundly D’Angelo articulates his racial awareness and romantic struggle is mostly guff, although both are certainly present. I’m very glad this album finally came. But I also very much hope there are more. Because it’s distinctly possible that he has more to tell us. A MINUS

actually pretty much aligned w/my feelings

I think Christgau is right to an extent, but I also think those songs were very much written as *The Singles* and I don't think Black Messiah clearly has a *single*, and I'm not sure he was under any external or internal pressure to make one. And they also happen to not be my favorite tracks on Riot.

Yeah, there's something sort of neat about the D'Angelo album dropping as an album-as-album with no concession to singles. It's just a slab or whatever it is, with no illusion that it is some potential crossover vying for mass attention a la Kanye.

Do you really think "Just Like a Baby" and "You Caught Me Smilin" were conceived as singles? (Only one of them was, btw - "Smilin" was the third single off the album and its release as a single may have been an afterthought.) Maybe there's some history I don't know, but "Family Affair" or the Little Sister 45s on Stone's label sound much more like tracks that might have been conceived as singles to me than those two.

the stone flower version of "just like a baby" is catchy as fuck. he just slowed it down into a total knot of anxiety on riot

fwiw, You Caught Me Smilin' and Runnin' Away were singles, it turns out, but not Just Like A Baby

That xgau review sucks

agreed.

i sort of think the opposite, that d'angelo burying his voice so deep in the mix disguises how great some of these songs are, particularly in the middle stretch. (i don't think this is wholly a positive, but neither am i mad that i had to dig before they clicked.)

like everything from "really love" through to "betray my heart" basically has a pretty immediate melody, even if he just sounds like he's mumbling it

yeah in some ways i think this is more of a melody-over-groove album than Voodoo's frequent stretches of groove-over-melody

I suppose I'm in that teeny tiny minority that cherishes Xgau reviews even when I'm in full disagreement with him, which I'm not in this case.

yeah even after 14 years there are stretches of voodoo that i always love listening to but that i can't strictly recall how they go ever. after a month with black messiah that's not the case at all

i'm with lex on this

If anything's gonna make my 2015 it'll be "Prayer."

"Babies Making Babies" is post-murk Sly. I prefer Fresh to TARGO myself.

Me too, though I grew up with the European CD mix of Fresh, which feels a little murkier than the original mix.

I love the vocals on this album, though, these infinitely multi-tracked clusters of vocal fragments that sound like gossamer. Like sometimes they're so diffuse they're barely there (but still definitely there), and sometimes they blossom so strong, like on Another Life, which is currently my favourite song. I've been listening to the album a lot in my car over the break, and I keep looking up to the stereo on the dashboard to see what track is currently playing, because they're mostly still numbers and not titles to me, and for me that's a good sign - that with regular play individiual songs are slowly revealing themselves from the greater whole.

Sasha Frere-Jones

lex otm upthread

all of these new songs have very distinct vocal bits/melodies/arrangements that are sticking with me

sfj seems pretty otm
basically still playing this on a daily basis
playing it now

pre-ordered the vinyl, right now it's 17.99 on sale at amazon, scheduled for feb 10

ooooh full live set:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34S8mat51KQ&feature=youtu.be

(duo)

wait nevermind, not duo!

I suppose I'm in that teeny tiny minority that cherishes Xgau reviews even when I'm in full disagreement with him, which I'm not in this case.

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, January 3, 2015 2:33 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^

Who is his bassist? I assume Pino is booked up with the Who.

dude from the Roots

the mad swing in the drums on ain't that easy, ain't that easy

highlights from that Afropunk set:

-theremin solo

-the way they play the unison lick in the middle of the solo on 'She's Always in My Hair', haha

What happened to the white dude who played bass in the Roots?

Wait, was he a white dude? I could have sworn. So many former Roots.

solo career apparently?
http://www.okayplayer.com/news/mark-kelley-joins-the-roots-farewell-to-owen-biddle.html

that's Angelo Moore on theremin!

wtf?!

!

opening w Miss Lucifer's Love awww

not a song here stands as tall as “Family Affair,” “Just Like a Baby,” or “You Caught Me Smilin’.”

maybe... sure... but this is the point where i want to say "you've had 45 years to listen to 'there's a riot goin' on' and less than a month to listen to this one."

Digression - SFJ concludes his review by talking about the "unsettling lack of response" from musicians to Ferguson and Garner. I've seen this claim elsewhere but I've found a bunch of tweets and songs by big names over the past couple of months. I don't get this claim that rappers have been silent.

there's a black hole of politically conscious/interested musicians in the last 10 years. More proof everything has got more corporate, more control, less thinking.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic

Ratuki is living proof of the less thinking bit so... he must be right.

music critics voicing their political concerns by asking why more musicians aren't voicing their political concerns always seems like an echo chamber of concern trolling irrelevance to me

Go on then Swift fans, name me 5, no, 3, obviously politically or socially conscious rappers out in the last 10 years. Just 3. Then in rnb, Then name me 3 popular artists in any genre.

I'm rooting for you.

They're not allowed through, or not popular anymore. People want to hear that shit less and less. They just want weed songs. In the 80s 90s rap music was defined by it's socially conscious artist. KRS, NWA, P.E, Mos, Talib, Wu, Kast, Pac, Roots, Nas. They just don't exist anymore.