Single of the Week: Jazmine Sullivan, "Holding You Down (Goin' In Circles)"

Spoiler alert: This song is pretty much perfect.

If I had to pinpoint the moment I really, truly fell in love with music, it would have to be somewhere around 1994. It was just about then that hip-hop soul emerged as a formidable force, marrying thumping beats with stacked harmonies and church vocals. Mary J. Blige's heartrending My Life was the music of the moment, and producers like (then-named) Puff Daddy and Trackmasters began to fully explore the sweet spot between the swagger of a rap beat and the soul of an R&B track.

My love of that era is why I was bowled over by nostalgia and affection upon hearing Jazmine Sullivan's "Holding You Down (Goin' In Circles)," the debut single from her sophomore album, Love Me Back. The song is a pastiche of sounds from the early and mid-90s. On first listen, I counted at least four samples: the break-beat of Biz Markie's "Make the Music with Your Mouth," the drum line of The Honey Dripper's "Impeach the President," the lyrics and melody of Mary's "Be Happy" as an introduction, and the eerie harpsichords of Nas's "Affirmative Action" throughout. The two former tracks are rather familiar hip hop riffs, particularly "Impeach the President," which has been sampled by a litany of artists on classic tracks (LL's "Around the Way Girl" and Janet's "That's The Way Love Goes" come to mind). It's that sense of familiarity that causes a immediate connection to the song, as though it's a leftover track recently rediscovered from that bygone era when Biggie ruled the world.

The abundance of samples mashed together would be a cacophony if not for Jazmine's ample vocals. She always produces strong material, but the emotional affect of her music is rooted in her rich, throaty alto. There's a certain conviction in her vocal style, particularly as she reaches higher and higher in her range and a bit of scratchiness creeps in. Even at the age of 11, she was an accomplished, commanding vocalist. Now 23, she's really grown into her voice---besides tearing down absurd gospel runs, she makes you really believe them. As with "Need U Bad," the first single from Jazmine's debut, the comparisons to Lauryn Hill are inevitable. The aching, minor harmonies that cut through the second verse almost explicitly recall Hill, specifically "I Used to Love Him." Their voices share that lived-in quality, one that can effortlessly evoke heartbreak.

With so many soul artists moving towards a Euro, techno-inspired sound, it's refreshing to hear Jazmine once again swerving in another direction. I think I've found my song of the summer.

Listen Up: Jazmine Sullivan, "Holding You Down (Goin' In Circles)"

Album of the Week: Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)

Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid is one of the most important soul albums of the past decade.

I wouldn't mind just leaving it at that; if you take the hour required to listen to Suites II and III of Monáe's Metropolis series, you'll come to the same conclusion. It's evident from the first surge of cinematic strings of the album's opening track, the orchestral "Suite II Overture," a grandiose beginning to a bold conceptual undertaking. Concept albums are few and far between, and artistically successful, commercially-accessible ones are practically unicorns. Where Monáe excels is building an album upon a rich storyline (a dystopic future of social inequality and android oppression loosely based on Fritz Lang's 1927 sci-fi film, Metropolis), yet still crafting music that feels emotional, present, and relevant to a mainstream listening audience.

The album skitters through genres frenetically. Though it's all rooted in a funked-up soul sound, the influences that Monáe, along with co-producers Nate "Rocket" Wonder and Chuck Lightning, layer atop result in unexpected, exciting musical fusions. The frantic insistence of Suite II's "Cold War" is unclassifiable. The drum line is a fast frenzy, the guitars zoom, and above all, Monáe's voice wails. It's James Brown on a spaceship, a cybertronic Marvin Gaye. This musical notion of intergalactic soul, once the provenance of George Clinton, has found a new avatar in Monáe. Her conception of Afrofuturism, though so fully realized, doesn't seem gimmicky.

Perhaps it's the way in which she so deftly works with the sound, like through the sunny soul triple play of "Dance or Die," "Faster," and "Locked Inside" that opens up Suite II. They each feature small tweaks that give them their futuristic quirkiness, whether it be the odd electronic bleeps that skitter through "Dance or Die," or the just-too-fast tempo of the (appropriately-named) "Faster." "The writers and the artists are all paid to tell us lies / they keep us locked inside," she warns on "Locked Inside," a track that borrows its sonics from Michael Jackson's early work, right down to a drum roll snagged straight from "Rock With You."

The album has a mild obsession with itself---songs are frequently re-referenced and sampled, melodies from earlier and later tracks weaving through interludes. Most explicitly this happens with "Neon Gumbo," which replays the coda of Suite I's "Many Moons" in reverse. The result is both eerie and striking. Given the conceptual nature of the album, it probably means something. But I have no idea what that is.

And that, quite frankly, is the album's major strength. While there is an overarching narrative, and a concerted effort made towards cohesion, it all just sounds really, really great. So when the references, lyrics, or intention become too oblique, the music itself is still fascinating and fun. Though it's meant to work as a whole piece, individual songs remain just as enjoyable out of context. It's an album that welcomes both the casual listener and the lyrical deconstructionist, searching for post-modern meaning in Monáe's words. Some of the album's boldest experiments are its most successful, like the bratty, punkish ranting of "Come Alive (War of the Roses)," or "Mushrooms & Roses." The latter filters Monáe's sweet voice through an acid trip haze, cushioned by guitars blazing. It's a soaring, triumphant finale to Suite II, and yet its languid groove foretells Suite III quite presciently.

Suite III, in contrast to Suite II, is more romantic, more nostalgic. Its main conceit is the forbidden love affair between android Cindi Mayweather (whose persona Monáe adapts for much of the album) and a human, Sir Anthony Greendown, in the year 2719, and their attempt to break free from android slavery. If Suite II is the courtship of Greendown and Mayweather, Suite III is their battle to topple their oppressive overlords, separated by society and pining for each other across the miles.

If it sounds silly, it should be. And yet Monáe musically renders it with such tenderness that it feels weighty and meaningful. The strings of "Neon Valley Street" soar behind Monáe as she intones "May this song reach your heart / May your ears love the sweet melody / Every note, every chord / I've arranged them for you and for me." She manages to sum up the history of Mayweather and Greendown in a succinct moment within that song, via a tweaked spoken section: "We met alone forbidden in the city / Running fast through time like Tubman and John Henry." It's not an easy feat to construct a relationship between an android and a human in the far future as a paradigm of classic, star-crossed lovers, and yet...it works.

This idea of Mayweather and Greendown as some sort of classic romantic trope is furthered by "57821," probably the riskiest moment of the album. A three-minute vaguely Gregorian chant of a song about a man searching for the post-apocalyptic android messiah whom he loves? Yes, please. It's striking. Perhaps it's the intensely mixed and layered harmonies, or the fragility with which Monáe delivers the final lines of the song. Either way, it's one of the more affecting ballads I've ever heard.

As both a conceptual experience and a commercial offering, The ArchAndroid excites and compels. Upon my first listen to the album, my immediate reaction was that Monáe had created something really, uniquely special. After sitting with it longer, I've realized that, more than just "special," this album is a rather transcendent musical experiment. Who would have ever thought that androids could be this artistic?

Album of the Week: Monica, Still Standing

R&B music has been going through an odd midlife crisis in the past few years. As album sales have continued to decline across the board, many traditionally soul artists are attempting a more global sound, incorporating more pop, dance, and hip hop elements. Hell---Mary J. Blige is covering Led Zepplin with Travis Barker. It is this musical context that makes Monica's sixth studio album, Still Standing, so incredibly satisfying. In what plays like an homage to the early offerrings of Whitney Houston, Anita Baker, and Toni Braxton, she eschews most current trends and settles into a midtempo groove across the album's well-edited 10 tracks, allowing her voice to carry the minimal production.

The album focuses, above all, on Monica's voice, a powerful instrument which has only grown more rich and interesting in her 15 years as a recording artist. The Missy Elliot-produced, Jazmine Sullivan-penned first single, "Everything to Me," is a glorious showcase of her vocal talent. Built around the instantly-recognizable orchestral track of Deniece Williams's "Silly," it serves not just as a reintroduction to Monica, but a reminder of just how formidable a singer she is. The song features extensive riffing, nearly every line modified by some sort of vocal flutter. It's the rare case where melisma actually services the emotion of the song. There's an air of desperation to the lyrics, one which Monica's almost indulgent vocals heighten to a palpable level.

The super-sized vocals continue with seductive "Here I Am," possibly the disc's best track. It features an addictive fuck-me-gently bass line not unlike Ciara's "Promise" (and delivered by the same producer, Polow da Don). The drums clack as though played in an echo chamber, providing a sparse yet expansive sonic space for Monica's voice to fill. In a song about sexual enticement ("Morning, noon, and night/You can have me any time you like" she pleads), one might anticipate a breathy, seductive delivery. However, she starts out big and blows it out from there. And yet, she's still effectively restrained, never overselling the emotion.

The album's Whitney moment comes on "Love All Over Me," a song that could have easily been featured on Nippy's debut. It begins as a simple piano ballad, but grows with synths and a snapping bassline. Once again, it's Monica's voice that soars above the rest, with a grand, belted chorus. It's this album track which, more so than the rest, reinforces this idea of returning to the heyday of big-voiced balladeers such as Karyn White and Stephanie Mills. Ballads have lost a considerable amount of traction at both urban and mainstream radio over the years. And yet Monica has delivered many on this album, "Love All Over Me" among them, that show that perhaps there is still a place for them to succeed.

Though the album is heavy on balladry, it takes a few tentative uptempo steps. Elliot and Sullivan return for "If You Were My Man," a slick rewrite of Evelyn "Champagne" King's post-disco classic, "Betcha She Don't Love You." As the album's only certifiably uptempo track, it injects a strong dose of 80s funk energy. But even the midtempo tracks feature smart production tricks that keep them from dragging. The Jim Jonsin-helmed "Mirror" has enough surging synths and twitchy drums to keep the album from devolving into ballad-driven monotony. Even "One in a Lifetime," which can be easily written-off as a retread of Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You," has a tumbling drumline and a sense of urgency that allow it to transcend the typical boring ballad trap.

The album's only major failing is its brevity. Many artists have released classic 10 track albums that, despite their short length, still resonate as large musical statements (D'Angelo's Brown Sugar and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black come to mind). While each individual track on Still Standing is enjoyable, it does seem to be lacking in some sort of amorphous, general sense. A few of the early leaked tracks may have brought it a better sense of completion, such as the plaintive "Taxi," or the hip hop soul throwback "Let Me Know." Despite this, Monica's accomplished something quite special with this album---amidst constantly shifting music tastes, she's offered an album that feels current and yet still representative of the artist she's always been.

Listen Up: "Here I Am," "Love All Over Me"

Back to Reality

So I disappeared for quite a while.

Whoops?

I thought that I would have the energy and time and inspiration to keep two blogs updated. I should have realized that, since I could barely keep one alive, adding another one to the mix probably would make things worse.

But it looks like there's been a foreclosure on my second home, and I miss writing, and my head is sort of messy today, so here I am.

I don't want to make any promises, because I know I'm pretty good at breaking them, but I'm going to try to write more. I think that I've realized that I'm not writing for anyone but myself these days, and that's a good thing.

So if you're reading, thanks. If you're not, that's okay too.

New Lows

I'm watching Camp Rock right now, and I'm, like, mildly disappointed. This is no HSM, son.

Also? Watching the Jonas Brothers makes me feel like a pedophile, and I'm not okay with that. Time to change the channel.

Taxi Cab Confessions

I just took a hilariously wonderful cab ride.

My driver was a Tucson-born Mexican/Navajo Vietnam vet who's been driving his cab for 38 years. We struck up conversation about traffic jams and flipping fares, and then I asked him about where, after all these years, he still gets lost (Brooklyn, and occasionally down in the Financial District).

When we got closer to my neighborhood, he started telling me about what it was like when he lived there, in high school. The Lower East Side was all Spaniards and Puerto Ricans, with the Italians on the other side of the Bowery. "Orchard Street," he told me, "had the best shopping. All these shops. It was the best time then. Everyone got along. It was the best place to be. Not the same anymore."

When we got to my place, I sat in the cab for another 10 minutes and he told me about trying to earn street cred in high school without joining a gang (it involved befriending the Spanish gang leader, Carlos, and helping defend Seward Park on Essex Street from a takeover by the Italians). "Right around the corner, on the corner of Clinton Street, there used to be a theater, with people playing music and doing The Twist all night. I miss it."

I knew I had to get out, but part of me felt guilty leaving. He was fully enthralled in the rush of his past that met him once we hit the LES and was excited to share. More than anything in New York, you must respect your (neighborhood's) forefathers. I needed to indulge him, and I wanted to. His story wrapped up, and I got out and told him I enjoyed listening to his local lore. "I always get nostalgic when I come down here," he said with a smile, and drove off.

And the funny thing is, in my short Manhattan life, I do too. So many people come to Manhattan because they love the idea of how it reinvents itself continually (giving us the chance to do the same), but we still grip viciously to the past. When I walk through the East Village, my mind flips through a series of what-was-here-before and remember-when-we-went-here and I-can't-believe-they-closed-that-down. There are always two New Yorks---the one of the present, and the one of the past, and they seem to run parallel, one transposed on the other. It's a disjointed life---I guess we like the disorientation.

A New Home, Pt. II

So I failed to mention that, not only have I moved to a new site, but I also moved into a new apartment this weekend. Probably because it was an EPIC FAIL. I didn't, um, really pack too much before Saturday, which was the big moving day. My sister Femina and her fiance Erik graciously volunteered to help me out, which was a BAD DECISION on their part.

I kind of sort of decided to go out for Trina's birthday the night before instead of actually, you know, finishing my packing. I had been prepping all week---I literally threw out 10 TRASH BAGS OF BULLSHIT. I live in a tiny studio---lord knows how I was keeping it in the first place. So I spent Saturday morning attempting to pack, which the hangover slightly impeded.

But the major impetus was the size of my apartment. I got to a point where I literally could not pack anything else because there was NO ROOM LEFT TO PUT SHIT. I called Femina having a mild panic attack, which she quickly assuaged.

So basically two car trips later, I got all of my shit there. The hilarious part? I moved four blocks. Literally. But the thing is, my new apartment is on the fifth floor. Do you know what it's like to travel up and down 5 flights of steps, over 20 times, over the course of a single day? I'll give you a hint: it feels like this.

Regardless, I'm officially moved in, and really in love with my new (one bedroom!) apartment. It feels good to finally have space to move around in, to actually have DOORS THAT LEAD TO OTHER ROOMS. And while it was only four blocks, the neighborhood is completely different. New cafes, new bars, new restaurants (I'm in one right now, on Clinton St., drinking too much wine and typing this up).

What I've always loved about Manhattan is that you can travel 2 blocks and find a completely new world, and I'm ready for a bit of a change of pace. Goodbye, Cafe Pick Me Up. Hello, Cafe Falai. After three years in a small cage, I'm ready to live like an actual person.

A New Home

Linda and I have decided that, since we tend to offend people so much on our own, we should join together and start a little joint site where we can spew the verbal equivalent of genocide, even though genocide isn't funny (except when it is).

You can find us both at Why Are You Yelling? There's no real specific focus for the site (not surprising) other than it's just the two of us dicking around and chit chatting about shit (cultural, racial, sexual, and otherwise) that catches our collective eyes.

But don't you worry---I'll still be posting here with the same sporadic irregularity that I have been. So bookmark and comment away.

This is why I don't have cable

(Click to enlarge)

Breaking News: John McCain Is Old and Bitter; Will Probably Lose in November

Clearly, I've pretty much given up on that whole let's-not-talk-too-much-about-politics thing that I tried out for a while.

So anyway, the presidential race is now officially down to two contenders: Obama and McCain. I think it's quite obvious where my loyalties lie. Frank Rich's Op-Ed in today's issue of The New York Times, One Historic Night, Two Americas, is incredibly effective in demonstrating how, even with his relative youth, Obama has delivered a surprisingly comprehensive, sustainable, and utterly modern vision for America. More importantly, he understands his message from all angles, and how to effectively describe and disseminate it:

He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to rip it off.

The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.

Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naïveté do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.

And those political killer instincts have been what have allowed Obama to effectively out-wit, out-strategize, and out-message the most well-known modern Democrats, the Clintons. He built a campaign built on change, on rebuilding the American brand both domestically and internationally, before many Americans had truly articulated what it was that they wanted from the next president.

The consistency of this message has allowed him to push past the gaffes he's had in the past few months. Ultimately, his message has the same sort of fluidity as his multiracial identity---it's agile and adaptable in a way that feels genuine, rather than reeking of political pandering. Because of this, McCain will have a lot of trouble nailing him down. McCain clearly defined his maverick persona years ago, but his recent voting record, coupled with his regurgitation of far-right talking points in order to appease the Republican Party's conservative base, has diluted it to a point where his "Straight Talk Express" seems laughable; it's all flip-flopping and pandering to garner votes. In the face of someone like Obama, who deftly deflects criticism and turns it into his opponent's weakness, McCain is going to have to put himself on solid ideological footing. He's been working on that lately, but it seems that, as he's moved further to the right, he's eroded his brand that made him popular in the first place.

But more than that, Obama is such an utterly modern political identity, and the Republican bag of tricks and smears is so dated that they don't know really how to be innovative enough to take down Obama, other than character assassination. And while that works in many cases, it seems like America is starting to get a little tired of those dirty games:

Mr. McCain’s speech in a New Orleans suburb on Tuesday night spawned a cottage industry of ridicule, even among Republicans. The halting delivery, sickly green backdrop and spastic, inappropriate smiles, presumably mandated by some consultant hoping to mask his anger, left the impression that Mr. McCain isn’t yet ready for prime-time radio.

But the substance was even worse than the theatrics. Incredibly, Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama for being insufficiently bipartisan while speaking to the most conspicuously partisan audience you can assemble in today’s America: a small, nearly all-white crowd that seconded his attack lines with boorish choruses of boos. On TV, the audience came across as a country-club membership riled by a change in the Sunday brunch menu.

You all absolutely must watch the highlight reel of McCain's speech on Tuesday. Three weeks in the making, and it was just painfully embarrassing. The creepy smile, the disingenuous delivery. It's surely not going to be a campaign decided solely on oratory, but it makes a considerable difference. All I can say is this: I CAN'T WAIT FOR THEIR FIRST DEBATE. And it's not just to see how laughably bad McCain will be in terms of speaking off the cuff and controlling his temper, to see how Obama rhetorically spanks him. For so many people, especially long-time Democratic voters who, still grieving over Senator Clinton's departure from the race, have threated to vote for McCain in the fall, there is a resounding image of the Independent McCain. In a recent poll, a significant number of female Democratic voters (I think it was upwards of 20%) who were contemplating voting for McCain, had wrongly assumed that he supported a full-slate of reproductive rights. HE THINKS ROE V. WADE SHOULD BE OVERTURNED FOLKS.

Once Obama and McCain get a chance to go toe-to-toe on policy, I think that a lot of people are going to realize that McCain is just another conservative trying to cut a Democratic stance where it suits him. And Obama? Well, I think that they'll see that his youth is what has made him what he is: a modern politician who understands modern concerns, who wants to solve issues in innovative ways rather than rely on the same solutions that will ultimately fail us in the end. Change is scary, but we're at a place where we have no choice. And I think that Senator Obama is the best choice to lead the nation where it needs to go, to remain a world power and regain the sense of prosperity that seems to be fading.

Really, I think we'd all like to just be able to dream again. And Senator Obama provides that chance.

One Historic Night, Two Americas [The New York Times]