This Is Book's Music

Like many, I’m someone who looked forward to hearing what Justin Timberlake would be doing with his third album. It has been almost seven years since his last release, during a period in the music industry where if you don’t have new music every three months, you’re considered a has-been. Arguably, Timberlake has the luxuries of not having to bow down to the industry at all, but there comes a time when the demand is great, be it from the public or your own. Timberlake has always been someone, at least from interviews, who loves music. He had wondered why MTV doesn’t cater to more music at a time when they have become everything but music, to no avail. With the release of “Suit & Tie” as a first single, the reception from it was enough to reveal what everyone had already known: don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years.

The 20/20 Experience (RCA) is a unique album for a number of reasons. It is very much a pop album, but its roots are very much in soul and that soulful touch is never distant from these songs. It is also a reflection of the soul music and albums that once were dominant in the 1970′s. The album consists of 10 songs, what used to be considered the ideal album length, but can you release a 10-song album in 2013? If you’re Timberlake, you can. If fans felt his FutureSex/LoveSounds had songs that were too lengthy, you may want to watch out for these tracks, as seven of the songs are over seven minutes in length. That might not be the path most artists are taking today, but I’m glad Timberlake feels confident enough to go at it with these lengths, and it works very well. The Wikipedia entry for the album has Timberlake quoted as saying “If Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin can do 10-minute songs and Queen can do 10-minute songs then why can’t we? We’ll figure out the radio edits later.” As someone who enjoys it when an artist explores music and themselves with a long song, this is truly ear candy.

What exactly is The 20/20 Experience? Perhaps for Timberlake, it’s a collection of songs that brings together his full vision of what good music can sound like. With Timbaland handling all of the production on this, it was already a guaranteed hit from the start although there are some fans and critics who may not have been pleased with some of Timbaland’s productions in recent years. His sound here is a mixture of what he did successfully with Magoo, Missy Elliott, and Timbaland in the late 90′s, the best of what he had done with Timberlake before, but also a few new things for this new album. It’s not reliant on sampling other people’s work, although samples do exist. A good amount of the sounds are played by him and his musicians, including what may sound like samples but are not. I found myself listening to this tracks and wondering what a 34-year old Aaliyah would have sounded like if she was alive today, whether as her own tracks or doing back-up for Timberlake. What also made these productions work is not just the sound for each song, but as one cohesive piece of work. It’s solid from start to finish, and it flows beautifully.

As for Timberlake, I’ll keep track of what people are saying on Twitter and Facebook considering who he is trying to copy these days, everyone from Robin Thicke to Mayer Hawthorne. It’s as of Timberlake wasn’t doing this since “Like I Love You” or “Cry Me A River”, if not during his time with *N-SYNC. That sweet falsetto voice is one of Timberlake’s trademarks, and he’s a champ at it throughout this album. In a track like “That Girl”, it almost sounds like he’s trying to carry himself with a Prince vibe, complete with lowered background vocals that is straight out of Prince’s multi-track playbook. Part of it also seems to be a reflection of Timberlake’s Memphis roots, if the nice Stax vibe is any indication, although I also sensed a bit of Staples Singers in the vocals too. “Let The Groove Get In” has a nice Brazilian influence too, but I also sensed that there might be an Earth, Wind & Fire groove involved as well, which might make sense if who he’s trying to cite in the song is Maurice White, who was born in Memphis. In the second half of the song, the track seems to go into a transformation (similar to a DJ segueway) between Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Runnin” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”, as if he’s exploring the beauty of that period in music between 1977 and 1979. The album version of his latest hit, “Mirrors”, is eight minutes in length and while the first half shows how well his talents travel in the pop world, I love how the song seems to dig a bit deeper in it second half, with background vocals that shows hints of Missy Elliott. The album beautifully ends with “Blue Ocean Floor”, where he gets poetic and talks about a love that he hopes and wishes will be eternal:

“If my red eyes won’t see you anymore
and I can’t hear you through the white noise
just send your heartbeat out there to the blue ocean floor
where they find us no more.”

It uses the ocean as a metaphor for a mystical and mystical place for romance and companionship, as a final resting place for an everlasting love. Earlier in the album he’s comparing parts of her body to a snack (“Strawberry Bubblegum”), as well as his own (“I’ll be your blueberry lollipop”). It gets very sensual at times but it’s quite playful in its execution. Also playful is the musical games he and Timbaland play sometimes, this is very much an album that was mutually and organically created. What I found great was the play in “Tunnel Vision”, where Tim will say “I got that”, followed by Timberlake singing “tunnel vision for you”, only to lead to someone saying “I know you lyin’”, as if they’re just shooting the shit with each other but understanding exactly what they’re doing. They compliment each other quite well, and it’s the small minutiae in Timbaland’s productions that Timberlake seems to help spotlight and magnify with great results. By the conclusion of the album, the sensual and romantic tones get serious before it ends where the song itself sounds like it’s sinking underwater. Listeners may find themselves wanting to get lost with Timberlake down on the blue ocean floor.

The 20/20 Experience works on so many levels, not only as a solid pop album, but as a soul album, one that is heavily influenced by the music he has listened to over the years. One can listen to it as “two sides”, in the old way where the songs are divided evenly, in this case the first five songs being Side 1, the last five being Side 2. What I also loved is how in-depth these songs are, and the fact that I’m able to listen to two halves of a song, or hear a song with different movements within. It goes back to those classic albums by Pink Floyd, Yes, or King Crimson from the 1970′s where you were at one with the artist because you put faith in their journey and experiences expressed. Too much music these days will go through the same style and tone for four to five minutes, but Timberlake is taking these tracks on for six to eight minutes. Just as one may get used to a certain style or feeling, he and Timbaland will switch the song into something else and take you up a few notches. It sounds like Timberlake is traveling and taking the listener around the world with him, so that you can “see” what he sees, hears, and feels. In the album’s second half, the music comes off like he’s returning home, if a sense of home can be sensed through the vocal and musical stylings, and the fantastic production. In other words, Timberlake may be a world traveler to most, but home is where the heart is, and his heart seems to be in a very good place, metaphorically and realistically. If radio edits are a concern, that’s fine, for it would be easy for someone to create edits for potential singles. I feel the strength of these songs would allow Timberlake to get away with having a 7-minute hit, which is unheard of in 2013 but not impossible. The 20/20 Experience is a well-crafted album that a lot of artists will have to fully examine in order to discover and rediscover what great music is about, and can be about. This is a fantastic representation of an artist showing a few people “a good thing”.

MTV recently did an article on this video and asked “what does it mean?” This, coming from a network that used to be questioned for all kinds of nonsense images for fun, now making a massive profit from running bullshit on their network, trying to ask about something actually creative? You’re a laugh, MTV: a real laugh. Go take a bubble baff, and I do mean bath.

This is “Otis”, one of the more talked-about songs online in the last few weeks, now see the visual component. It was directed by Spike Jonze, and it’s a nice one.

There was a time when a good rap album was based on quality “rap” and some damn good production, but somewhere down the line, it changed to where it was based on a publicist’s marketing efforts. The Greatest Story Never Told sounds like an album that would’ve been perfec if it was released in the mid to late 90′s, with the kind of integrity and freshness coming from someone who has a love for the music, and with confidence says “damn, I got a really good voice to do the job”.

The Greatest Story Never Told (Suburban Noize) features a number of guests that a lot of younger artists wish they had the luxury of knowing, including Q-Tip, Swizz Beatz, Bun B, Faith Evans, and a young cat ripping shit who goes by the name of (check this out) Jay-Z. Ha ha! But in the music’s essence is Saigon, who sounds like he’s ready to bust out on everyone with the kind of lyrics and music that make you want to say yeah, cheer, cry, and just go “damn, now this is what hip-hop should feel like”. It would be nice if this music became an inspiration for a generation, and if you don’t believe me, hear it for yourself. A quality hip-hop album that today’s revolutionaries should hear so they can hear what they’re not doing.

Let me tell you what My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella) is not. It is not another pop album from Kanye West, in that it doesn’t cater to generic pop music standards. With that said, pop music at its best has never been generic, but the artist who chooses not to take risks with what they are given, be it a song, the music, or their own talents. Hip-hop and pop music: we like to think that they should never be bed mates, but hip-hop has been one of the more popular forms of mainstream music for decades. That means longer than a few years, shorter than a century. It’s as if there’s still a fear that hip-hop will be bigger than life, when the music itself is meant to make you feel that way, or as if life didn’t matter and all is good and great in the world. A lot of artists who choose to call themselves hip-hop create music with fear, with hesitation, and that’s why there’s that non-existent community of naysayers called haters. Despite everything you know, understand, and/or believe about Kanye West as a persona, it’s not his music. At his best, West is someone who takes risks, is willing to try new or previously-at-rest techniques and present them in a fashion that makes him look and sound bigger than thou, and that’s cool. It benefits him as an artist, producer, and entertainer. Put the jazz hands in your pockets, that’s not what I mean. What exactly is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s his fifth album with a five-word album title. It’s a metaphor for his music, his outlook in his career, the ultimate glory in what any artist wants from his fans. He’s living his fantasy, he’s bathing in the glory, and most of all, we’re all in it for the ride.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an accumulation of everything West has experienced in his life following the release of an album that has fans as it has enemies, 808′s & Heartbreak. It was an album that had him singing and creating pop songs, by someone who really doesn’t have a singing voice. Was he trying to say that hip-hop broke his heart, as so many have tried to do but failed? After the grief he went through following the passing of his mother, and some of the peaks and valleys of his music and life in the media, he shut everyone out and create a unique tale that became his mock fantasy, told in album form. It’s an album made to be listened to as an album, which may seem old and outdated by the general populace, but for West it is always about the show. He is a showman, and without the show, he is nothing. Albums are meant to be experienced as a sonic show, a sound play, something that jazz artists and classical composers understood for years. As music became profitable as popular music, the emphasis was on one song, as it was believed one song could change your life. The album was not a big deal in the pop realm until the late 1960′s, when rock’n'roll would take cues from jazz and classical and explore the idea of making unique worlds in 40 minutes or less. Other genres would follow. Hip-hop has always been about the power of that one banging song, but hip-hop at its best was when hip-hop became a generation’s CNN and “the new rock’n'roll”. As hip-hop became more mainstream and found its audience growing, it lost touch with the idea of long-distance and exploring and chose to have a stay-cation in the clubs. Meanwhile,those who chose to explore found themselves with small packs of associates who were willing to go on the trip.

In the last year, West has talked about this album being a return to a time when hip-hop meant the world to all of us. Some bloggers said it was the return of the boom bap in 2010, the idea that almost every new single, album, and artist coming out was celebrated for good and bad, not for how many jail terms they had or who was the mother of their child. The first cue of what this album could be like was the release of “Power”, a song co-produced with Symbolyc One. S1, as he is known, has a great style of production that dips back to the glory days of sample-based production, and I became a deeper fan when he produced a track for Portland rapper Braille called “It’s Nineteen”. I’ve been a fan of Braille for awhile, and while I am not religious by any means, I always got into the positivity he shared in his music. So here’s a track where he’s talking about understanding the limits of life, but why not go one higher? S1 pulled a much-used beat and placed it in the track, and along with vocalist Ragen Fykes, they both said “in my meditation I saw a manifestation of elevation.” I was sold: Braille’s positive lyrics mixed in with an incredibly funky track from S1, mixed in with beautiful vocal accents from Fykes, and I wanted to hear more. He did other tracks, but then it became known that he was collaborating with Kanye West. WHAT? How did that happen? Then the song leaked, and that King Crimson sample did it for me. As someone who has sampled King Crimson in my own works but failed to be heard, it was great to hear someone pull this off, use a progressive rock classic and make it work within the context of what West was doing, what West has become for some people. Was he describing himself as the schizoid man, or are we as crazy as he wants us to be, and he’s laughing at us? The lyrics have West getting into a very dark place, and then wishes for a beautiful death. Was this him talking about a suicide, or is he thinking in metaphors of pleasure? The term “instant death” is an old school phrase for “orgasm”, something Eddie Harris and Beastie Boys knew all too well when they used it. If it’s meant to say that life could begin and end in an instant like the feeling of orgasm, then West was going to see his death, his career, as something that comes and goes like a shooting star. Was he describing himself as the shooting star, or was he shooting something else across the universe? One version of the song surfaced, and then other versions would have added lines, so it seemed even as fans became aware he was about to release new music, he was changing and evolving his song in real time. Then the title of the album became known, which was also changed slightly in the last minute. The album cover was revealed, said to have been banned but may have been nothing more than attention grabber to get people to talk. I felt the cover may have been one of a number of images meant to represent the music. Very few in hip-hop have ever explored the idea of alternate/multiple covers, the exception being The Roots for their 1999 album Things Fall Apart. It is something that has been done in rock’n'roll by everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Police, and now it seems with a King Crimson sample and Cold Grits break as the key, and an album title as the red carpet, it was now time to walk into the castle and kingdom that is Kanye, Willy Wonka style.

Upon waking up on this, the first day of November 2010, I head to Twitter and a number of people in my timeline are talking about the new video by MC Hammer. Now, if you are to cater to what people say about artists who are “past their shelf life”, then MC has been irrelevant for over 15 years. He has become reality show fodder but yet you cannot deny that he was the man partly responsible for moving rap music into something deserving of “rock star” status, and not just something that was good for basements. Say what you want about his music, but some of it was damn good, the guy can entertain, and he knew how to promote himself.

But then comes this new video that comes from nowhere. It’s a song called “Better Run Run”, and it disses Jay-Z for something that the public accuses himself of being: Satanic. You know, there was a time when rappers kept it real by blasting someone for something you actually saw or heard. But blasting someone for an accusation, then going in the video to show how top dog you are, and then committing yourself as a holy man to baptize him for his sins… Hammer, I’m sorry but you’re not hurting Jay-Z, you’re hurting yourself.

In the video, he is shown in a business meeting with what I assume is supposed to represent “his people”, those involved in making sure his career is in check. But look at the people in the conference room: is this really a true representation of Hammer, or is he trying to say that this is what hip-hop has become, a bunch of P.E. teachers who bought a laptop at Best Buy and said “we know what’s best for you” Then to make things interesting, Hammer is not just MC Hammer, oh no, there was a time when being an MC meant you were on the top of your game. However, Hammer dropped the MC from his name for awhile because he felt MC was too old school, too tired. That coincided with the demise of his musical career, he revived the MC but it was too late. In 2010, he is King Hammer.

Now, I’m not into validating one’s status in any fictitious hip-hop monarchy, I like who I like and I respect who they are and what they may have been. L.L. Cool J of today is certainly not the kid on American Bandstand doing “I Can’t Live Without My Radio”, or the guy who was so bad he could suck on his own dick on his Walking Like A Panther album, but for many years he reigned supreme, just as Hammer once did. But Hammer, I know you still feel you are too legit to quit, but this video and song was unnecessary. Are you unhappy because you feel, as a Christian man, that Jay-Z is walking down the path, holding hands with the devil? Hammer, were you not the man who signed a contract with Capitol Records, a contract that like all others, is a way for your music to be exploited by a company so that you can prosper and make money? Hammer, were you not the same man who wore leopard skin bikini briefs, did your pumps and a bump in a video with you outside strutting yourself in your decadent ways, displaying what you had earned with your music being exploited so you could achieve that status? Hammer, were you not only the same man who may have done a few bad financial transactions so that you were forced to file bankruptcy? Did you blame that on the devil too? What do people think about Hammer?

Let’s be honest, we all love it when artists talk trash, it makes our unfilled days worth it. Well not really, but the last time someone was serious about dissing MC Hammer was twenty years ago, back when guys like MC Serch and Prime Minister Pete Nice had a legion of fans who liked them not because of skin tone (although that was a factor), but because they had skills that were true to the NYC traditions of hip-hop. Those guys were blasting “that silver spoon having, buckshot acne showin, L.A. weak-ass sellout
Non-legitimate, tip-dogging, Jethro pseudo intellectual, Dust-smoking, pretty boy playright posing, Folks wigging, whining annoying Def Jam reject devil, White bread no money havin slum village people clonin’ step children!”,

As I’m watching this video of Hammer being chased in a forest by a devil, I wanted Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie & The Banshees to run out and tell him how spellbound he could be if he understood that Jay-Z’s alleged evil aways are nothing more than lures that he uses to solidify his longevity, perhaps a tip Hammer himself should take to heart. Nonetheless, keep running Hammer. You might find the devil you’re running from is yourself. Spellbound, indeed.

This performance got a huge buzz from a desert in California when, during Jay-Z‘s performance, he brought out his lady friend. This is from last night’s Coachella performance.

Jay-Z, through his label Roc Nation was to release “On To The Next One” b/w “Young Forever” as a 7″ 45 complete with picture sleeve. According to Amazon though, the record was “discontinued by the manufacturer”. Does that mean that all copies are accounted for, so that if 5000 copies were made, 5000 copies will be sold? Or was this 45 completely canceled? Please leave a comment if you know.

Since the video for the song made a lot of people wonder if Jay-Z had turned to Satan or was celebrating the occult, a 45 would have been perfect for discovering backward messages via backmasking.

The world may not be aware of who Chris Macro is, but if you’re from New Zealand and Australia, you’ll know him as someone who has worked with Katchafire among others. However, Macro is somewhat of a wiz in terms of creating electronic-based music, be it reggae, drum & bass, and hip-hop. If there’s a way to tap into the consciousness of American hip-hop fans, you’d do it right? The impact of the Wu-Tang Clan is worldwide, one sight of the sacred W and people will drop verses left and right. The Wu-Tang Clan have flirted with ska and reggae over the years, especially Method Man, who found himself dropping a verse for Supercat and years later doing a track for Capleton. In the days of the U-WU Newsletter I had suggested that Method Man do a full-length reggae album, or at least to do an album featuring various reggae and dancehall artists. It never happened, but Chris Macro shows what it would sound like with Macro Dubplates Vol. 1, an album that unites the classic dubs of King Tubby and unites them as nature intended with Wu-Tang and Wu-related acapellas. You’ll hear tropical versions of “Brooklyn Zoo”, “C.R.E.A.M.”, and “Pinky Ring”, but the one that works the best is “Criminology”, proving that Ghostface Killah sounds good on almost everything.

If the Wu aren’t to your liking, maybe you want to hear Hova over the sounds of Jamaica. Macro Dubplates Vol. 2 puts together for the first time the rhymes of Shawn Carter with Robert Nesta Marley, soi if you ever wanted to hear what “99 Problems” would sound like over “Small Axe“, or “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” over “Put It On“, now you can. When Jay-Z allowed fans to create unique mixes from his acapellas, I don’t think he knew how much fans, producers, and DJ’s would give life to the process.

(Macro Dubplates Vols. 1 & 2 are available as free downloads from ChrisMacro.com.)