Wow, it’s been two months since my last post. And all I have to offer is some links.

I have a Chris Rock interview is in this week’s Time Out New York. We talked about funerals, Pootie Tang and the infamous James Brown alien abduction episode of Miami Vice.

Speaking of outerspace, I caught up with Erykah Badu last month for this Time Out story, just a few days before she stripped down in front of the grassy knoll. I got to have a nice, laid-back, extra-casual conversation with her—in a dressing room at Jimmy Fallon—the full text of which you can read here. Read to the end for the dramatic conclusion.

Bronx dancehall dude Skerrit Bwoy recently turned up as a talking point on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, during a visit from Aziz Ansari. (Apparently, the two made fast friends). I first heard about Skerrit five or six years ago, back when he was better known as “Sponge Bob.” Now the face of Major Lazer and the international ambassador for daggering (surely, not an easy job), he’s having a bit of a moment. Figured I’d document it in this TONY profile.

I’ve been talking about TV One’s excellent music biography series Unsung for a while now. It’s one of my favorite shows so I was geeked to catch up with recent show subjects Stacy Lattisaw and Lester Troutman from Zapp for their take on the series in this Washington Post story.

Be back with some original content again soon.

I wasn’t planning on writing a “Best Of” list this year, seeing as no one asked me to (What’s up with that?) Fine, I’ve never been all that interested in these things anyway. But as I’ve read list after list these past few weeks, I noticed that few of the albums that impressed me this year were being acknowledged by other folks. Since I don’t get to write about other music styles as much as I get to write about rap, I thought I’d throw together a list of my favorite albums without any rapping on them. I’m not saying these are the best records of the year, in this order: they’re just the ones I listened to and enjoyed on a regular basis. I wouldn’t want to altogether leave hip-hop out of the discussion so I’ll be back with a shorter, all-rap list shortly. (Click on album titles to stream music)

HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE—S/T (Honest Jon’s)

Hypnotic, the world’s best post-hip-hop family brass band, has had a number of full-length, slim-case CDs for sale for years, but, until now, they’d never made a proper album. Recorded in several days for Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label (Hypnotic are said to be featured musicians on Albarn’s next Gorillaz LP), this 11-song LP finally captures the majesty of their remarkable live performances on record. With the group having reportedly put their street performance career to bed, it’s a much-needed document. Read the rest of this entry »

I woke up yesterday morning with a nagging urge to hear some Eddie Kendricks. You could say I had a scratch only Eddie’s smooth tenor could itch. After running through some of my favorites — “Date With the Rain,” “Girl You Need a Change of Mind,” “Keep on Truckin,” “My People Hold On” — I found myself on his Wikipedia page. Turns out it was the anniversary of the Temptations great’s death, one day removed: he succumbed to lung cancer 17 years earlier, on Oct. 5, 1992.

NBC’s Temptations miniseries from 1998 was pretty good considering it was made for primetime network TV, but I don’t like how Eddie’s character was left undeveloped. I know the film was based on Otis Williams’ autobiography and all, but Eddie had the most successful solo career of any Temptations member. Read the rest of this entry »

Ghostdini is far from perfect, but it was needed. I like my Supreme Clientele and Iron Man as much as the next white journalist writing about rap music but I never got the appeal of Fish Scale. The Ghostface I want more from is the one who made Pretty Toney and Bulletproof Wallets. Always dug the “commercial-sounding” R&B collabs on those albums that my journalist/rap nerd colleagues like to bash—“Never Be the Same Again” is my shit. Disorienting Ghost cameos on remixes of Beyonce hits? Even better. Ghost does love as well as he does the crime stuff—anyone who wants to hear him chase Supreme Clientele again is welcome to another Big Doe Rehab.

Naturally, a recap of Ghost’s R&B collaborations and cameo spots is in order. As it turns out, two recent mixtapes already do this: there’s DJ Finesse’s Imeem-only RNB N Fish and, for those who enjoy hearing music on devices other than computers, Think Differently Music Group has a nearly identical one called R&B Duets for download on their site. It appears my work is already done for me, but here’s my personal favorite Ghost R&B remix assists, anyway: Read the rest of this entry »

The Very Best’s Warm Heart of Africa is that rare record that’s completely unique yet totally accessible; kind of like the M.I.A. albums but without everything that’s irritating about them. Producers Etienne Tron and Johan Karlberg (collectively, the London-based Frenchman and Swede are known as Radioclit) give singer Esau Mwamwaya, who’s from Malawi and sings in Chichewa, all sorts of unusual, Afro-techno beats to sound ecstatic over, but the song I find myself tuning to the most is probably the most familiar sounding one. The synth chords that drive “Chalo” recall the sort of anthemic stuff that aging arena rock bands (like The Who, maybe?) were making when they started discovering synthesizers in the new wave ’80s. I’d like to say why “Chalo” is good, but there isn’t much to say. It’s good because it’s so simple. Read the rest of this entry »

Red (a.k.a. Red The Man Without the Machine), the homeless, raspy-throated beatboxer whose performance of a song called “I Should Tell Ya Momma on You” in the alley behind LA’s HVW8 Gallery made him a viral video sensation and led to the release of a record on Stones Throw (and HVW8’s own label), might be the music story of the year. Not because of the homeless-to-Youtube-to-Stones-Throw-arc so much as the fact that “I Should Tell Ya Momma on You” is so damn brilliant. With all due respect to Rahzel intermissions at Roots shows, you’d have to go back to the heydays of Doug and Biz to find an act of beatboxing as fresh as Red’s take on the long outmoded science. Read the rest of this entry »

The least flattering pic I could find of this guy

Ladies, I had a brief, interference-addled phone conversation with Maxwell two weeks ago. The fruits of that interview were used to write this piece in this week’s Time Out.

BLACKsummers’night is streaming here. Musically, he’s on more of a Marvin than a Sade vibe this time.

I’ve avoided writing a proper M.J. post (this notwithstanding) ’til now for one simple reason. I prefer to use my writing to illuminate what is not well known or present viewpoints that are not well represented. With the whole world simultaneously eulogizing Mike in every way imaginable, that just did not seem possible.

Yet it doesn’t seem appropriate to avoid the subject. I was born in 1979, the year of Off The Wall. My earliest, foggy memories come right in late ‘82, early ‘83—you know, Thriller times. My first concert, in July 1984, was the Jacksons’ Victory Tour. Now, these are by no means unique experiences. But, for someone who never tried to sing or dance, Mike’s influence on the direction of my life was profound. See, I was the original MTV kid. As one of the first families in my neighborhood with cable in the early ’80s, our house was regularly visited by our teenage neighbors, who would come over specifically to view the channel. Beginning at the age of four, watching hours of music videos became just as much a part of my daily routine as Sesame Street. As a result, I absorbed pop music more intensely and thoroughly then many other kids, beginning right around the time of Michael’s breakthrough onto MTV in ‘83 with “Billie Jean.” Read the rest of this entry »

Yo Mike, July 1984, Giants Stadium, remember?

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble has a new album out. Not that you’d know it if you don’t live in England. The only stateside acknowledgment of the self-titled LP (on Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label) that I could find through Google News was this excellent piece on Phil Cohran’s sons by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker. In a perfect world, this outstanding record by New York’s best street performers would be greeted with the enthusiasm that the music press has lately reserved for the band Grizzly Bear (Side note: I tried listening to their album on some see-what-the-hype-is-about shit, and it’s unbearably unlistenable). Since folks are sleeping, and I didn’t get an opportunity to write this record up in print (I interviewed the band for this very abbreviated piece in Time Out last year; if I hadn’t lost the full transcript in a data meltdown, I’d drop it here) I’ma use this space to break down why you need to get familiar. Read the rest of this entry »