This Is Book’s Music

When the decade started, it was announced that Q-Tip would be releasing a new album combining a bit of the old and the new. It would be called Kamaal The Abstract, and a number of tracks surfaced in the hopes of getting him into the spotlight after the mixed reviews of his debut solo album, 1999’s Amplified. But for whatever reason, even as a steady buzz was climbing and Q-Tip was doing the rounds of promoting the next wave for him, the album was shelved. Rumors started, and for the most part everyone was waiting even as Q-Tip got involved in other projects.

After an eight year delay, the album now finds a home with Battery Records, who will be releasing the album on September 15th. Back then, Q-Tip found himself in a wide range of magazines, including jazz magazines where he shared his love of playing music and the kind of set-up he had at home. Q-Tip had always been musical, and I say this because as a rapper you were once expected to do nothing else but rap, the stereotype being that if you rapped, you couldn’t play or do “real music”. But go back to the remix of De La Soul’s “Buddy” or him singing a bit of Funkadelic on an old home video by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a musical side many rappers used to be afraid to share, so perhaps the world had to catch up to the reality that yes, someone in hip-hop can make “real” music. As Q-Tip might say, all music is real music and the eight year delay means the world will be able to get the reverb and echo that’s about to hit them.

Will this broaden Q-Tip’s musical horizons? He’s been able to share his talents with the world for the last 20 years, I don’t think the world would mind another 20.

There’s jazz I love, and there’s jazz that’s so-so but tolerable. Then there’s stuff that gets on my nerves because in truth, it’s not to my liking. Case in point: Big Moon (Capricopia) bu Faith Gibson. The album begins with a nice song called “Scratch It”, where she sings about having an itch that needs to be scratched. It was nice and bubbly and I liked it.

For me though, that type of bubbly feeling, where it’s all about being on Broadway and wanting to do jazz hands, is not something I can tolerate for a full album. I love the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon but I don’t know if I’d want to hear that style of jazz for even a full hour.

If this was released as an instrumental, I would be happy, as the band are great. I am sure Gibson has a great voice for some, but just not for me.

In jazz circles it is said that if you have the musician on the album cover with their instrument, it limits their sales potential. If you see them with a saxophone, guitar, or drums, it immediately says “jazz”, which normally isn’t something to complain about but sometimes it can mean the difference between decent sales and selling something in the 5 or 6-digit range. Bassist/vocalist Mimi Jones has released a great album called A New Day (Hot Tone Music) and she is seen on the cover with her left hand on the neck of a stand-up bass. Beautiful, right? It is, but she could’ve easily used the photo on the inside tray card, a nice portrait of her standing. With a big enough push, it’s an album that could break her into new markets.

I’m sure you’re asking “what does this have to do with the music?” Let’s be honest here, some of the best music sells well by marketing, without proper promotion you’re selling in the 4-digit range. But as I played this album a number of times, I’m thinking to myself that Miss Jones should be playing on The Today Show, The Carson Daly Show or even Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. In other words, she is deserving of mainstream success and I’ll tell you why.

The music on A New Day is like a cross between Cassandra Wilson and Me’Shell NdegeOcello, not so much in their vocal style or tone but in the passion they put into their music. There’s a newness to the music that is nice and refreshing without having to overcompensate by adding hip-hop beats or dollar store keyboards over it, it’s very professional sounding and she sounds well versed in jazz as she does in soul and funk. The funk is not done overly so, a lot of times artists will push it just to say “heyyyyy, I’m funky”. No, it’s subtle and in that subtlety is where her talent shines.

The album is a mixture of instrumentals and vocalized tracks, so one gets a chance to hear her play incredibly. Then when she sings, you want to stop everything that you do and take her in. I like a seductive voice that’s also strong, maybe that’s the man in me but it pulls me in. I hear someone who sings and plays with confidence and I want to put faith in that and become a believer in what she does. You hear what comes out of the speakers but there’s also that something more, that unknown quality that you can’t describe well but you know that this is someone with talent, and someone who knows this and wants to make sure people are impressed while also being humble in the mission to get her music across.

In 2009, marketing can make the worst sounding music sound like the best thing you ever heard in your life. But marketing cannot take away pure talent, and Mimi Jones is someone who has this in abundance. Soothe and groove but never too rude… well, sometimes she gets locked into a groove that may be rude but discover that for yourself.

(A New Day will be released on September 15, 2009. You can find out more about her by visiting MimiJonesMusic.com.)

Punk rock comes in all shapes and sizes, and if you are a fan or collector of the music, it means it comes in various forms of sound quality. Rusted Shut hasn’t been around in years but Dead is an album that documents their early sound by taking some of their old recordings and having the fans decide for themselves.

It sounds as if these were transferred directly from cassette, and while that’s far from a bad thing, the original recordings were not up to par. What you hear though is a sense of energy that comes from a band who sounded like they just wanted to rip shit up because they can. The CD is properly indexed so you can access each track, but a lot of times it sounds like there are seven or eight songs in one track, with no way of telling which is the proper song, where things begin or end. But it’s fun, loud, raunchy, nasty, and disgusting all at the same time.

DJ Scream endorses this new mix CD by Archie Eversole called Back Like I Never Left and if you know who Archie is, you’re going to eat this up.

Archie has a proper album coming out later this year and there apparently will also be a Back Like I Never Left DVD too, but on this CD he offers up a wide range of styles to show who’s boss in his own world. He knows how to churn out the street anthems, he knows how to work the club but still make it worthy enough for the head nodders, and there are also a few surprises along the way too. It’s quality stuff for anyone who wants quality hip-hop, and he may dominate things if he keeps at it like this in 2010.

Top picks: “Show Must Go On”, “I’m Back”, “I Got It”, and “Drip Drop”.

(free MP3 download)

It’s not The Big Bang Theory we’re talking about here, but a Big Band Theory (Kotteb), and in this case it’s in reference to the big band era of jazz that vocalist Bethany Smith Staelens represents on her new album.

Now, vocal jazz is something that I’m not too fond of but I like it when someone does something with class and style. Staelens never goes overboard with her singing, as one can here in her versions of “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone”, “Here’s That Rainy Day”, and “All Or Nothing At All”, the latter which opens up the album. I found myself wanting to hear more as it sounds like she truly loves the music and truly loves to sing, and what works for me: she’s in key. Sometimes I hear a lot of “dentist jazz” and I think damn, this is really awful. The Big Band Theory is not.

As for the band, they remind me of Doc Severinsen’s band from The Tonight Show or The Airmen Of Note where every note is precise and on time, no time for fooling around. At times it sounds a bit telethon-y, but when you know what you’re doing, it’s better than hearing the opposite.

One of my favorite bands out of Seattle, Maktub, are back with a brand new album called Five and you can download the entire thing for free through SeattleMag.com by clicking here

However, if you go through Maktub’s official site, you can choose the price you want to pay. In other words, “fee is optional” so if you want to show support, do so by clicking here.

What happens when you release a song that has a devoted following? A friend decides to create his own video for the song. This is the result, a video for Jon Kennedy’s “Shiftee O Matic” created by Yujelsyv.

Brand new video by Maleko on a track produced by DVS.