Surprised no-one's mentioned Erykah Badu's "Mama's Gun" here yet.
Wasn't sure what to expect of this, what with the rumours that Motown had
held it back in the wake of Jill Scott's debut, worried that it wouldn't
hold up in comparsion. They shouldn't have worried... it's a killer.
The opener, "Penitentiary Philosophy" is a bit heavy metal, but the rest of
the album that follows is in a style that could be considered an evolution
of her earlier work. And a good one... Baduizm had a lot of catchy tunes,
but apart from "The Other Side Of The Game" I got kind of tired of it after
a while**. This is overall less catchy, and I suspect will not sell as well,
but overall I'm feeling the tunes on this a lot more than I ever did those
on Baduizm. I put this one on for the first time and was pretty much gripped
the whole way through (a lot of the tunes segue into each other, which does
make this a "whole album" listen.)
Highlights: the highly funky "Booty", "Cleva", "Orange Moon", "AD 2000" and
the amazing 10-minute epic "Green Eyes" (which Vikter Dupliax contributes to
in some unspecified way.)
Lowlight (singular - there is only one): Stephen Marley's strictly
karoake-class imitation of his father on "I'm In Love With You". Awful.
Like the review at 24-7 says, you wouldn't have believed Badu had it in her
to produce something this good. It's not only better than "Baduizm", but
better than "Words & Sounds vol. 1" and maybe even "Voodoo" too.
**obviously I don't know for sure about this one yet.
While I'm at it, Omar's new album is real nice, a massive improvement over
his last one. Overall the quality is high, but there are some moments of
Lewis Taylor-quality "weird genius" here, such as "To The Top".
And I'd also like to say a big welcome back to... my right hand, which has
been out of operation for nearly three weeks since I broke my collarbone
(it's a long story... you really don't want to know.) So anything you've
seen from me in the last weeks has been a strictly left-handed operation...
..Mark..
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