The photos on the cover and within the booklet of The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 do not match the music. Does Jill Scott really have to hail a cab? Is she really awakened in the middle of the night by the need to write songs with an anguished look on her face? Really? Because these songs sound like they were written as she was fed chocolate-dipped strawberries while sprawled out on a bed cloaked with rose petals. Well, that's not entirely true -- there are some exceptions, like the furious "Hate on Me," and a couple songs involving deep heartache and sharp admonishments. For the most part (and considerably more so than Scott's first two studio albums), however, The Real Thing is for romancing couples. While some of the collaborators -- Andre Harris, Vidal Davis, Adam Blackstone -- are all over the singer's past releases, there's a handful of relatively new and significant associates, most notably JR Hutson. (Presumably the son of '70s soul great Leroy Hutson, he is listed as "L. Hutson, Jr." in the songwriting credits.) Hutson and Scott co-wrote four of the album's sweetest and steamiest songs, most of which have a few things in common with mid-'70s albums involving any combination of Minnie Riperton, Leon Ware, and Marvin Gaye. 4hero's "Les Fleurs" cover aside, "Come See Me" is the closest anyone has come to channeling Minnie, updating the slowest, most sensual sides of Perfect Angel and Adventures in Paradise. On the other hand, "Crown Royal" maintains that gooey, slightly sleazed-out sound of Marvin's I Want You while dispensing with the double entendres of that touchstone; Scott gets as erotic as ever, even raunchy at points, while making it all sound like poetry instead of straight smut. It's almost like she heard Janet Jackson's Damita Jo and figured, "Yeah, that's nice, but I can do it about ten times better."
Jill ScottThe Real Thing Words And Sounds Vol 3 Full Album Zip
Woodstock [Cotillion, 1970]"I left one thing out of my Woodstock article," says Tom Smucker, author of a good one. "I left out how boring it was." And though you can be sure it's not like being there, this three-record set does capture that. As is inevitable in a live album featuring stage announcements, crowd noises, and sixteen different artists, not one side is enjoyable straight through: CSNY are stiff and atrociously flat in their second gig, Paul Butterfield sounds wasted, Sha Na Na should never record, Joan Baez should never record, and so forth. But a substantial proportion of this music sounds pretty good, and three performances belong to history: Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home" (speed kills), Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help From My Friends" (mad Englishman), and Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner" (wotta ham). Also, the stage announcements and crowd noises are better than most. B
Everything New Is Old . . . Everything Old Is New [Ambient Sound, 1982]Like all formalist art, doowop is a cultist's calling. Not only is its view of romance willfully adolescent, its view of adolescence is willfully romantic, inspired in the face of irrefutable evidence by a few freak singles, most of them slow (which is a snap to duplicate) and preternaturally beautiful (which isn't). Even its oft-heralded vocalism serves this vision--doowop tenors are supposed to be mild, as moony as "a teenager in love." But by unerringly selecting the two best cuts from five brand new doowop albums, this sampler escapes cultdom. In the great indie-label tradition, it concentrates on the catchy and programmable, including five ingenious covers, so that most of the slow songs sound beautiful, though rarely preternatural. A-
Christmas Rap [Profile, 1987]First side's rap in the spirit of the season, full of good cheer and unabashedly materialistic from Mrs. McDaniel's macaroni-and-cheese and King Sun-D Moet's realism to all the name-brand shit in Ghetto Santa's bag before it gets stolen--Gucci and Jaguar, Barbie Doll and G.I. Joe, not to mention the gold and the diamonds and the pearls, not to mention the butler and the limo and the chauffeur. Second side's hip hop copping to the season, with the Disco 4's bass-and-jingle balls and the Showboys' cutups fronting for tales and boasts that aren't sucker, just snooze. Pop fans will settle for the Run-D.M.C. on A Very Special Christmas. Rap fans will prefer it to the Surf M.C.'s album, which said M.C.'s suggest you ask Santa for. Modesty wouldn't get them anywhere either. B+
Soundbombing [Rawkus, 1997]"You record label people gonna die and your family gonna die too motherfuckers." Far more eager than the militantly joyless Company Flow, far more songful than the secretly ambient Lyricist Lounge, this singles-plus showcase is "underground" hip hop's most convincing advertisement for itself. Reflection Eternal, a/k/a Black Star plus Mr. Man, add crowd samples and a chorus about Medina to an echoing guitar-piano hook, topping anything on Black Star's secretly smooth debut. Mos Def and Kweli freestyle with feeling. Company Flow give up their catchiest album track and devolve into the more complex Indelible MCs, who "keep tabs like Timothy Leary and/or ASCAP." And Ra the Rugged Man ("all information concerning Ra is currently unknown"), who swears he'll be into "this rap shit" "Till My Heart Stops," admits that actually he's "not succeedin' ": "They turn my mind state into evil 'cause I want everyone dead on this fuckin' earth/It really hurts/ 'Cause if music doesn't work I got nothing left to live for except dyin' in the poorhouse." Pray he returns on volume two. A-
The Music in My Head [Sterns, 1998]Although piercing vocals, contentious percussion, and kora guitar are constant, all that really unifies this feverish, coruscating soundtrack to the Mark Hudson novel is Senegal, with one atypically Islamic Franco track standing in for soukous's pan-African inescapability. Yet with half its tracks recorded 1970-1980 and the other half 1992-1995, so that they segue from 1977 to 1994, 1993 to 1980, it cleaves faithfully only to itself--crossover dreams notwithstanding, only a reggaeish Omar Pene unemployment anthem hints anything round, comfy, Euro. Franco elegy and Wassoulou hunting poem and not-for-export mbalax all project congruent rhythmic angles, and watch out you don't trip yourself as musicians jockey for position, vying with their bandmates while continuing to serve the band as they jam rock sonorities into salsa-inflected Senegalese grooves. Desert mystics conquer the fleshpots. Overloaded camions careen down a potholed road. Frantic macho coheres and clashes, stops and goes, crashes and coheres again. A+
Jewface [Reboot Stereophonic, 2006]Though these 16 dialect songs from 1905 to 1922 are generally performed by Jewish comics, gramophone megastar Billy Murray "goils" and "vys" through his only known Hebrew number, and jill-of-all-accents, Ada Jones, trills "Under the Matsos Tree." Like Irving Berlin's "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars," they're usually written by Jewish tunesmiths, but to the best of my knowledge neither Bert Fitzgibbon nor Al Piantadosi qualify. In other words, they're not only minstrelsy but on occasion blatantly exploitative minstrelsy, just as compiler Jody Rosen's album title implies. Nevertheless, they're good for many yocks on the order of "I'm a good Yiddisher/Buttonhole finisher" and often truly sharp, as in "He was sentimental/Not Jewish, but gentle" (that's a toreador) or "All Cohens look alike to me" (substitute the pet name of a masked, ring-tailed carnivore). They're catchy and well-sung--try Fanny Brice's "Becky Is Back in the Ballet" or Rhoda Bernard's "Nat'an"--and orchestrated with some variety. They're history; they make you think about the compulsion to racial stereotype in American humor. But mostly they're just a delight--talent enjoying itself without inhibition. If you disapprove, consult a proctologist. A-
The Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara [World Music Network, 2014]Volume two--its sequel status unnoted as usual--showcases quite a few of the individual artists whose voices emerged from what seemed a realm of barely differentiated mystery on its magnificent 2005 predecessor, and sneaks in extra music by the extra-dry Niger cross-tribalists Etran Finatawa, who back two other Wodaabe aggregations with dreams of escaping the cattle trade. This is a positive. Except for Sahrawi diva Mariem Hassan, who deserves all the kudos she can get, and Nubian master Ali Hassan Kuban, who provides his usual shot in the arm, these artists are better served by a single song than a whole album anyway, and both Wodaabe entries provide needed weirdness. There's also a bonus disc perfect for anyone seeking a whole album by someone who can't sustain one, because Mamane Barka comes damn close on a five-stringed harp you've never heard of perfected by a fishing tribe you've never heard of either. Not Barka's tribe--in the Sahara, a high school diploma is a broadening thing. A- 2ff7e9595c
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