NEW AMERYKAH, POLL 1 (4th World War)

well i'm not saying that's surprising, generally i think people who know an album won't vote for the single in a poll like this even if they like it

Also, "Honey" kind of feels like an addendum to, rather than a component of the album.

wtf, people; this is the only thread where we can specifically talk about this album!!?

anyhow, i din't want to sidetrack the whatcha listening to thread any further... so i'll post this here instead:

"New Amerykah makes me think of something Matos told me about Sign O the Times: "You will never get to the bottom of that album." It is the meatiest album I've heard in a long time."

sure. but so what? the main difference between the two, for me, being that SotT has at least ten GRATE songs on it; whereas, New Amerykah... has what esactly??? i mean, i keep waiting for the damn songs to sink in, but it just ain't happening. yet.

SotT has at least ten GRATE songs on it; whereas, New Amerykah... has what esactly???

11.

i mean, i keep waiting for the damn songs to sink in, but it just ain't happening. yet.

I don't know how long you've had it, but it took me about 3 months to realize this album's greatness.

hahaha--now if only i could remember any of them...

xp

i've had it since March. :(

took me 1 listen

well yeah, it sounded good right off the bat for me as well; i just don't get any of this "album of the year" nonsense.

Album of the year nothing. This is an all-timer.

gah! the love you guys express for this makes me feel like i'm listening to an entirely different album. hey, maybe that's it...

i loved Mama's Gun, btw.

It's been my experience here on ILX that those most strenuously resisting this album are also those who can't get beyond Mama's Gun (which I love also, but I've moved on).

but i'm not resisting it, strenuously or otherwise; it just doesn't seem to want to sink in for me. also, after eight months of trying to “get it”, i figure the problem must be with the album itself, and not with any unwarranted expectations i may have brought to the tale.

Look, if you don't like it, it's all good!

don't get an aneurysm forcing yourself to like it.

believe me, I felt the same way the first few weeks I was listening to it and not understanding all the crazy praise. I think it clicked one day when I had it on in the car. but yeah, like Alfred said, not worth forcing it if it's not happening.

haha, no. i'm just surprised with all the love it’s been receiving 'round about these parts. for me, it seems like the kind of record people will be denouncing five years (or so) down the line.

And won't you be really happy when that happens.

maybe it will be seen as overblown and slightly embarrassing in place but it's nowhere near as much those things as, say, The Love Below and probably better written and produced than that too.

xpost Anyway, no need to pull this misunderstood minoritarian act. The anemic results of this poll bear out the fact that you're hardly alone in not being moved by this record.

just put soldier on your headphones and bop around the streets to it, you'll love it. mmm, telephone, too, when it's early.

no. honestly i'm glad that people reaqlly love it, i just wish i understood why is all. no big deal. this too shall pass.

xxxp

anemic? 30 votes for a poll about an album that's only a few months old ain't bad.

xpost

Everything that falls short of the Now! poll results numbers is pretty anemic to me.

The Healer is a highlight but i don't think of it as being as much of a standout as these votes indicate. the main reason it's my year favourite is because i don't think there's a real dip and every track has some distinct value and power thru various means.

the main reason it's my year favourite is because i don't think there's a real dip and every track has some distinct value and power thru various means.

O! T! M!

i did not vote in this poll because i could not choose!

"The Healer" is really just the song that pops into my head when I think about this album.

i now associate 'The Healer' with being at the edge of Lake Brienz in the Swiss Alps. Shit is TRANQUIL.

the healer is a huge standout for me.

I love the hell out of "The Healer," but I have to admit preference for some of the album's denser, Sa-Ra-ian tracks.

love that dilla/sa-ra drunken 8th note thing

Every time this thread gets bumped, I start humming "The Healer". Sometimes I follow that with "The Cell", but I always default to "The Healer".

i think i voted for 'the cell' or 'soldier' here but it's one of those rare albums which makes such sense in its totality that picking individual peaks feels sort of wrong...what blows my mind is how stellar its components are, but the whole is somehow even more than just the sum of them.

I had a bit of a slow uptake, too, but at this point I can't identify an album released this decade that means as much to me. I just posted this in the other thread last night.

yall have no idea how much this record speaks to me... I might even say it feels like its ABOUT me

― mr. mayan end times guy (The Reverend), Thursday, November 13, 2008 2:53 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I feel like, amazing new developments aside, this record perfectly encaptures how it feels to be black in america in 2008

― mr. mayan end times guy (The Reverend), Thursday, November 13, 2008 2:55 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The album it reminds me most of is Curtis. While the makers of both records are quick to detail our social ills, neither sounds, for even a second, like they don't believe we can overcome them.

― mr. mayan end times guy (The Reverend), Thursday, November 13, 2008 3:35 AM Bookmark

Another thing is, despite all the social commentary, it's never didactic (not that there's anything wrong with that, I mean Public Enemy were didactic), the whole thing feels so personal at every level.

And there are so many easter eggs, lyrically and sonically! I always discover something new when I listen to it. It's a complex motherfucking work. Just about a week ago, I first noticed that "My People" ends with the words "Good morning. Did you have a Dream?" And I capitilize Dream intentionally, because whether she was referring to the American (Amerykahn?) Dream or, I think more likely, MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, she intends to load the word with more meaning than its M-W definition would indicate.

yeah absolutely - i get annoyed when people overuse adjectives like "meaningful" but it absolutely applies to new amerykah in the sense that every word, note, inflection, every last detail in the arrangement is there for a reason, and even the most minute element of it can spark off these chains of thought just like yours

Yeah, even things in the sequencing. It's no accident that "Me" is followed by "My People". She's already claimed her people as her in the former song. "I salute you [insert your name here] because you are me". It's also no mistake that she goes from grown folks acting all niggerish and not taking responsibility for their kids in "The Cell" to lamenting how those same kids "don't know their language...don't know their god" in "Twinkle" to the epiphany of "wait....what if there were no niggers, only master teachers?"

there's some amazingly subtle towards Dilla on the album, too, like how 'My People' is based on the Eddie Kendricks track 'People Hold On' that Dilla sampled on Donuts. There's snippets of Badu singing on Madlib's new Beat Konduktah tape too, which is a Dilla tribute.

subtle nods towards

The sirens at the beginning of "Telephone" cribbed straight from Donuts!

egggggsactly! god, i love this album. i highly reccommend the dil cosby suite album too; its really strangely moving.

dil cosby suite album?

sure. but so what? the main difference between the two, for me, being that SotT has at least ten GRATE songs on it; whereas, New Amerykah... has what esactly??? i mean, i keep waiting for the damn songs to sink in, but it just ain't happening. yet.

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― Ioannis, Thursday, November 13, 2008 5:47 AM Bookmark

I'm getting at this above, but a marked difference between Sign O the Times and New Amerykah is that the songs on SOtT are very discrete, whereas the songs on NA heavily rely upon each other for contextual clues and inferences, building upon each others' ideas. So, while both albums are very rich experiences, they operate in different ways.

Onomatopoeia of the police's shotguns: "BANG BANG" ["The Cell"]
Onomatopoeia of Erykah's shotguns: "BLLLLACK" ["Soldier"]

Little touches like ^^^ make this album.

dil cosby suite is the new madlib beat konduktah album, on stones throw...

I'll have to check that out, even though I'm not generally a huge fan of Madlib's solo work.

there's not a lot of erykah on there, just little glimpses and slivers, but she's there. makes sense, what with them working together, and both being friends of dilla's.

aaaarrrggg! see, this is exactly why i feel like i'm somehow being left out by not "getting" the damn thing; you all make it sound like it's the best album to come along since There's a Riot Going On (or Maxinequay maybe). still, truth be told, i'd much rather read what Rev has to say about New Amerykah than actually listen to it. (ok, preferably, i'd like to do both simultaneously...but whatever.)

Can I mention how much I love ?uestlove's drumming on "Telephone"? Between that and "75 Bars" and "Lay It Down", dude has done all my favorite drumming this year.