Neo-Soul On A Roll
A new crop of artists is blending hip-hop, funk and unfiltered passion
into subtle, lovely music
By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon's landmark work of
revolutionary theory, the famed psychiatrist and social critic states
that "the colonized man who writes for his people ought to use the past
with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and
a basis for hope."
Fanon, who published his treatise in 1961, intended his words to apply
to Third World artists struggling to shatter the psychological and
metaphysical shackles of European domination. How could he have
predicted that, 37 years later, his writings would succinctly summarize
the raison d'etre of a new musical movement in R. and B. and hip-hop?
Musical genres, like city streets, need names to make things navigable.
Artists rage against categorization, but it's a useful tool to define
the boundaries of a given phenomenon. Neo-soul is the best name to call
the latest emerging genre. Simply defined, neo-soul describes
artists--like song-stylist Erykah Badu--who combine a palpable respect
for and understanding of the classic soul of the '60s and '70s with a
healthy appetite for '90s sonic experimentation and boundary crossing.
Neo-soul artists tend to create music that's a good deal more real, a
good deal more edgy than the packaged pop of, say, teen-oriented groups
like the Spice Girls and Cleopatra. And they tend to write lyrics
that are more oblique and yet more socially and
emotionally relevant than those of gangsta rappers.
Neo-Soul is not an entirely new musical category. The Artist Formerly
Known as Prince, for example, has been creating experimental R. and B.
for two decades. And remember Terence Trent D'Arby? No? Well, he was
that guy...never mind. The point is, in the '90s, the face of cool in R.
and B. has been the face of a gangsta. Puff Daddy, Dr. Dre, Master P and
the like dominate the aesthetic space in black music. Boyz II Men may
sell more albums, but when you think of what's hot, what's hip, what's
real, what's representative, gangsta rap has symbolized the cutting edge
of R. and B.
Now there's another way to be cool. Last year Badu, with her Afrocentric
head wraps, sensuous grooves and searingly beautiful voice, captured the
attention and imagination of record buyers, selling more than 3 million
copies of her debut album Baduizm; this summer she's a headliner on the
Lilith Fair tour. Other new neo-soul artists such as Maxwell, with his
enlightened ladies'-man charm, and laid-back auteur D'Angelo have also
managed to garner critical and commercial success.
In the next few months there will be a flood of neo-soul releases.
Maxwell's quietly mesmerizing second CD, Embrya, is out this week;
D'Angelo's second release, Voodoo, is due out this fall; and neo-soulman
Rachid's assured debut, Prototype, recently arrived in stores. Tony Rich
and Des'ree also have CDs due out soon, and Seal--a veteran who could be
considered the godfather of neo-soul--is coming out with an album this
September.
Lastly, Lauryn Hill, a singer-rapper-songwriter with the hip-hop trio
the Fugees, is releasing in August her solo debut, The Miseducation of
Lauryn Hill. Her album is the kind of galvanizing work neo-soul needs:
unabashedly personal, unrelentingly confrontational, uncommonly
inventive.
Miseducation is a musical education. The CD's songs range from the
Jamaican patois-tinged rap of Lost Ones to the unexpected hip-hop
harmonizing of Doo Wop. Hill proves herself a master of many genres, but
she's no dabbler--what makes this album a wonder is how personally she
takes everything. Hill's songs detail, painfully, intelligently, her
problems with manipulative men, her childhood in New Jersey, her
decision, as a young single mother, not to abort her baby boy.
"Sometimes it's hard to really make any statements when you know that
the industry caters to hit singles rather than to developing artists,"
says Hill. "[But] I definitely felt like I wanted to push the envelope
of hip-hop. It was very important to me that the music be very raw...and
there be a lot of live instrumentation."
Maxwell's nuanced new CD might not make as big a chart splash as Hill's,
and it might be dismissed by some as overly subtle. However, the album's
subdued tone shouldn't be misread as timidity. Maxwell wants to draw you
in, cast a spell, and by singing in falsetto, by crooning and cooing, by
whispering his way through songs, he forces listeners to really listen,
to confront the emotions in his songs rather than avoid them through the
cathartic escape hatch of volume.
One song, the gorgeous, unhurried Submerge: Til We Become the Sun, is an
abstractly worded ballad about two lovers flowing into each other and
facing up to their deepest selves. "I think people are a lot smarter
than they are credited for being," says Maxwell. "I like to challenge
what some people think most people will accept and listen to,
particularly African Americans and particularly in the R. and B. genre.
To me, it's important to reflect the alternative."
D'Angelo too is looking for alternatives. His 1995 debut, Brown Sugar,
sold more than a million copies; more recently he recorded a sultry,
spacious duet with Hill, Nothing Even Matters, that will appear on her
solo CD. He's now holed up in Electric Lady Studios (where Jimi Hendrix
recorded) working on his new album. "I avoid the radio," says D'Angelo.
"I want to take hip-hop and funk and make it new again. I want to take
it back to basics. I'm tired of all the synthetic stuff."
In his search for a fresh sound, D'Angelo has recruited an eclectic crew
of musicians to work on the new CD, including jazz trumpeter Roy
Hargrove. "The mid-to-late '60s was the golden age of soul and funk,"
says D'Angelo. "It wasn't like now, where you have one producer working
for a slew of artists, who all sound the same. Artists are no longer
self-contained and are more prone to conform. In the '60s, people were
defying what people expected. That's what's missing now."
No longer. Hill, D'Angelo and Maxwell are distinct performers, but they
share a willingness to challenge musical orthodoxy. For too long,
critics, taking the public with them, have looked to rock and gangsta
rap to fill the pantheon of pop heroes. But there was a time when
auteurs had soul, when Marvin was asking what's going on, when Stevie
was singing songs in the key of life, when Aretha was demanding respect.
This season, with the ascension of a new generation of neo-soul stars,
the past may be present again, and, to paraphrase Fanon, the future may
be opening up.
--With Reporting by David E. Thigpen /New York
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