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I got the CD in the mail today, and it is a bit different from her later work but not quite.
There are some songs that are quite poppy and owe more to American pop/R&B, circa 1991, than anything. "Wagamama" (produced by "DJ Kurush Posse") has her talking about her being bi-racial and she even manages to add a fuck within the angry lyrics. There's even a Japanese guy rapping in it and I'm thinking wait, I've heard this guy before, he sounds like the guy from Microphone Pager. MC Muro. Took a look, and it's the same guy. Now is this the same Muro who is now a DJ? As for Monday, she raps like Tairrie B. meets The Real Roxanne.
Lyrically, her songs were just as poetic as it is now. In "Just Pretend" she sings about a man whom she wants to love, but he misses someone else, so he tells him to just pretend she is that other person. "Do It Again" is a George Gerswin cover which begins sounding like an old 78, kind of like the last track on the latest Erykah Badu album. She even pouts like a baby when she sings "mama may scold me/'cause she told me/it was naughty but then/please do it again".
Her cover of Todd Rundgren's "Pretending To Care" (one of my favorite songs by him) is reinterpreted as a jazz song, and she even reaches the high note Rundgren did on the original.
The only song that truly shows shades of what she would become is the last song, "A Thousand Dreams" (or "A 1000 Dreams" as listed on the cover). This song features her mom, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and her stepdad, Lew Tabackin.
The album also features Kenny Garrett and Snowboy. There's a series of photos inside the booklet that make her look like something out of "Sassy" or any other teen girl magazine. But there's one picture that has her lying her head down on her arms and a moon behind her, a concept she would bring back again on her 4 SEASONS album (her mom also did an album called FOUR SEASONS).
p.e.a.c.e.
-John Book
"by the way..."
X-Clan, pretty much every song
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Mar 06 2001 - 09:18:38 CET