WASHINGTON POST
Usher’s Sensuous Storytelling Matures in ‘Stand’
By Serena Kim
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 27, 2008; C01
In the crowded field of abdomen-undulating R&B boychiks, Usher has long been king, thanks to his tender and nimble vocals. But since his Grammy-winning 2004 album, “Confessions,” with its plotlines worthy of a telenovela, he’s weathered even more major personal changes: breakups, makeups, one wedding and the birth of his first child.
Catapulted firmly into manhood, Usher now revisits the booty-shaking, babymaking content of his material with a more confident and relaxed cool that smacks of — could it be? — maturity.
Bookended by a heartfelt prelude that sounds like a love letter to his wife and a socially conscious hidden end track that explores poverty and loss, his new album, “Here I Stand,” boasts a full plate of sensual crooning and titillating fantasy.
To a pulsing, new wave synth, Will.I.Am gives “What’s Your Name” an exuberant pop sensibility with his production and vocal cameo. And Jay-Z shows up to compare notes on “Best Thing”: “Seeds become plants/boys become men.” But the blue ribbon guest spots are not the main attraction on “Here I Stand.” The song concepts are.
For the sexy slow dance of “Trading Places,” Usher switches up gender roles in a vividly illustrated rendezvous. And the morning after: “I’ll wake you up to a cup of Folgers, pancakes and eggs/I owe you breakfast in bed.” Funny how female advancement comes from the most unexpected places — like a well-crafted Usher album cut.
But it’s not all toast and orange juice; there are scars and sadness, too. To a gloomy piano track with a thumping backbeat on “His Mistakes,” Usher conveys the sorrow of loving a woman with unresolved baggage from her past. His storytelling skills and flair for quiet drama ooze out of such lyrics as, “He left a scar across your heart/I understand, girl/Don’t let his wrongs tear us apart.”
The lead single, “Love in This Club,” fully explores in two separate versions the possibilities of illicit lovemaking on the dance floor. The Polow Da Don-produced track ripples like strobe light, inducing a subdued shoulder shimmying rather than all-out roof raising, like Usher’s monster freakfest from a few years back, “Yeah!” with Ludacris and Lil’ Jon.
Young Jeezy sneers through witty punch lines in the first version, and an intoxicated-sounding Lil Wayne and a kittenish Beyoncé exchange flirtations on the Sounds-produced remix. In both versions of “Love in This Club,” there’s a mighty pressure coming from three different male voices to persuade one woman to succumb to spontaneous sex.
Beyoncé is this sole voice of female reason, fending off her various suitors: “I strongly doubt this velvet rope would hold me up/And I don’t want security rollin’ up on us.”
Wayne croaks his wily seductions with the help of a little vocoder — “Meet me in the bathroom and you could be my secret lover girl” — as Usher exhales his breathy ad-libs in the background.
Illicit bathroom sex might not be the realm of fathers and husbands, but in Usher’s world, it’s all about flirting with fantasy.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “His Mistakes,” “What’s Your Name,” “Love in This Club”
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; C05
ALL I FEEL
Ray J
Poor Ray J. For as long as he’s been in the public eye, the 27-year-old R&B singer has suffered from a bad case of being known as Brandy’s good-looking little brother. But his new album is an astonishingly solid achievement from someone who was largely written off as a frivolous boy toy.
The CD addresses his notorious porno tape with reality TV star Kim Kardashian and other evidently self-generated scandals. “The critics say I’m out acting a fool,” he warbles on his intro song “Don’t Wanna Be Right.” “I’m tired of being accused of putting out these sex tapes, I’m just living my life.” Part of why this album succeeds where his others have failed is that Ray J finally understands what the public thinks about him. And rather than fight it, he embraces his sleazy Lothario image and pushes the boundaries with graphic lyrics and unmoored sexuality.
On “Boyfriend,” Ray J plays the role of the other man, but surprisingly advises his lover’s husband. “She says she needs you/She’ll never leave you,” he croons in his high-pitched voice over feathery high-hats and measured kick drums. “Just pull her hair sometime.” This pretty much sums up Ray J’s whole charm.
Packed with good songwriting, trendy crunk and R&B-inspired tracks, and a healthy ability to laugh at himself, “All I Feel” makes you wonder whatever happened to Ray J’s sister?
– Serena Kim
DOWNLOAD THESE: “Girl From the Bronx,” “Boyfriend,” “Sexy Can I”
Tuesday, February 5, 2008; Page C05
MARK RONSON PRESENTS RHYMEFEST: MAN IN THE MIRROR
Rhymefest
A bunch of commercial pop stars like Will.I.Am and Fergie are covering Michael Jackson hits on the 25th-anniversary edition of “Thriller.” But elsewhere in the universe, the King of Pop is being honored with more high art.
Rhymefest’s loving mix-tape dedication to Jackson is one of the best hip-hop albums out now and you don’t even have to buy it. It’s a free download on Rhymefest.com.
The Chicago rapper won a Grammy for co-writing “Jesus Walks” with Kanye West. And yet Rhymefest remains woefully obscure. “I’m big in the ‘hood, but you’re big in Germany,” he raps on “The Cipher” over Jackson’s syncopated beatbox. Which is too bad because Rhymefest is a funnier, less grandiose and more politically astute West.
Ronson and Rhymefest, who are better known in the United Kingdom, reach for esoteric references, nimbly sequencing long-forgotten Jackson 5 album cuts and Michael-tinged mid-’90s hip-hop on “Breakadawn” and “All That I’ve Got.”
Hilarity ensues when Jackson’s old studio outtakes are patched together with more recent Rhymefest quips. “I love you very much,” says Jackson tenderly. Fest responds: “Uh, I like you, too.”
Jackson inspires Rhymefest to look in his own “mirror,” spawning such street poetry as “Look at my bruises, beautiful because of how I got ‘em.” The depth of his lyricism goes well with the aching, yearning vocals that originally made Jackson famous.
– Serena Kim
DOWNLOAD THESE: “Never Can Say Goodbye,” “No Sunshine”
‘Growing Pains’: M.J.’s Rx
Mary J. Blige Sings About the Healing Salve Of Womanhood and Sisterhood on New CD
By Serena Kim
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 18, 2007; C05
Mary J. Blige knows your pain. She’s reached icon status crafting analgesic hits for lovelorn ladies. She can salvage your self-worth and help you locate your dwindling dignity. And if that’s not enough, on her excellent eighth album, “Growing Pains,” she can also make you dance.
“I hear you’ve been running/from the beautiful queen that you could be becoming,” she counsels on the jubilant, up-tempo, gospel-tinged lead song. “Work That.” It’s a courageous message, especially when there are so many other voices in media and society telling young women otherwise.
Blige’s lesson is not that women are invincible, but that men and women need to come together if they are to survive. She conveys this theme with lushly produced and melodious songs and her singular vocal style, which conveys the androgynous timbre of a pre-pubescent boy (think Chris Brown or Tevin Campbell) on the Jacksonesque dance single, “Just Fine.”
But Blige’s core appeal includes staying true to her often chauvinistic hip-hop roots while defining her own sense of womanhood. It gets tricky — and provocative — when those values collide.
“I feel sexy because everybody wants what they can’t see/and what they can’t have/and what they can’t grab and what they can’t buy/and baby that’s me!” she thunders on “Grown Woman.”
But Ludacris seems to be undermining Blige’s self-affirmations with his guest spot on the song: “She’s . . . a little lady in the street/but at home I give her a grown-woman whoopin’.” Then he goes on to appraise her taste in diamonds, her home cooking and her Stairmaster-toned thighs. It’s a dialogue that reflects a very real struggle that goes on behind closed doors between the sexes every day. Art does imitate life, after all.
Sometimes Blige buckles under the pressure of being a modern woman who must be strong 24/7. “I’m tired of screaming independent/I want to start depending on you,” she confesses over the Prince-y synthesizers and jingling bells of “Feel Like a Woman.”
“Stay Down” celebrates commitment — the antithesis to those lurid T-Pain booty songs that are all the rage on urban radio. Blige is not just talking about the morning after, but 10 years after.
The album concludes with the ultimate manifestation of maturity: a plea for unity with “Come to Me (Peace).” Blige boldly kicks down the boundaries of her native genre with this epic new wave ballad. Though the song is directed at her man, the way she repeats “peace” has a haunting quality that suggests something more universal — “I don’t want to fight/I just want to make everything right.” She’s come a long way, baby.
DOWNLOAD THESE:”Just Fine,” “Work That,” “Roses”
EPIPHANY
T-Pain
T-Pain may sound like another rapper/singer on a mindless
sex-and-booze bender. But really, he’s just drowning his sorrows. The
women on his songs are so fickle and reluctant, it takes a ton of
loin-quivering beats and “drank”-buying to get them to lie down with
him.
Luckily for him, he’s got the skills to pay the bills. He raps. He
sings. He writes his own lyrics and produces all of his own tracks –
a distinction in a time when most solo hip-hop albums are actually
highly collaborative efforts.
His complete artistic control makes for a startlingly cohesive vision
– a uniquely Floridian electronic sound with roots in Miami Bass, an
offshoot of hip-hop. “Epiphany,” T-Pain’s second album, skyrocketed to
No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on the strength of the ubiquitous lead
single, “Buy U a Drank.”
Like his forebears, Quad City DJ’s and KP & Envyi, he employs
sorghum-sweet melodies, warp-speed 808 rhythms and tinny high-hats
that sound as if they sprang from a Casio keyboard.
But unlike the Miami Bass dance-floor workouts of the ’90s, T-Pain
brings a new level of emotional complexity to the genre and explores a
range of moods: rambunctious (”Church”), cautionary (”I Got It”) and
nostalgic (”Time Machine”).
On “Sounds Bad,” T-Pain awakes to sobering realities. “Got my whole
house runnin’ on a generator / No good food in my fridgedator / and
I’m late for work,” he intones. Forget horndog, T-pain reps for the
underdog.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’),” “Bartender”
RECORDINGS Quick Spins
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
HIP-HOP LIVES
KRS-One and Marley Marl
It’s a good thing KRS-One and Marley Marl long ago buried the hatchet,
because their union seems like destiny.
“Hip-Hop Lives” brings together two icons of hip-hop’s ancien regime.
KRS-One was from the Bronx; Marley Marl hailed from Queens. Each
represented warring boroughs in the primordial mid-’80s.
More than 20 years later, Marley Marl’s production style is as
whimsical and organic as ever, as if it were made from samples
discovered on old vinyl records. There are jazzy upright bass lines,
sinister piano stabs and rolling “George of the Jungle”-style drums.
These tracks could have been crafted on an antique SP-1200, the
perfect drum machine to accompany KRS-One’s purist message.
On “I Was There,” he says he was present at key moments in African
American and hip-hop history: the Los Angeles riots, Source magazine’s
founding, and the burial of Crips founder Stanley “Tookie” Williams.
Then he taunts rap historians with this refrain: “And where were you?”
In “Kill a Rapper” he reels off the names of the victims of unsolved
murders: Mac Dre, Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G., Big L and Jam Master
Jay. He wonders if the only meaning behind their deaths is to inspire
“kids to pull their guns faster / Trying to emulate and be like dead
rappers.”
This line of questioning has been asked before, but KRS-One’s crisp
and vehement way of saying “justice” carries that old-school weight
that just might be relevant now.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “I Was There,” “Victory,” “Kill a Rapper”
WAITIN’ TO INHALE
Devin the Dude
The syrupy-slow music of obscure Houston rapper Devin the Dude is a
guilty pleasure. He’s been called the Richard Pryor of hip-hop, and
his latest album, “Waitin’ to Inhale,” is so raunchy it makes Snoop
Dogg’s brand of commercial pimp-hop seem puritanical.
“Waitin’” explores a range of experiences with women — events comic
and tragic — resulting in a truthful portrait of a man and his
libido. But a listener can’t really take offense because his gentle
slur is irresistible and droll. Behind the bawdy lyrics lurks a
subtext of consensual kinkiness rather than blunt misogyny.
Of the album’s many funny tunes, “Useta Be” just might be the
funniest. Over a lackadaisical 89 beats per minute, Devin wisecracks
about a “hefty heifer” who was once an unattainable high-school crush:
“But 150 pounds and 10 years later / I seen her at the grocery store /
And she’s finally ready to holler at a player.”
Like all good comics, he’s charmingly self-deprecating. And for a
rapper, he does the unthinkable: He bares his soul, admitting to times
of being cash-poor and lonely. That hot cheerleader was out of reach,
but he’s not above accepting her advances 150 pounds later, either.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “Somebody Else’s Wife,” “Nothin’ to Roll With,” “Useta Be”
Jay-Z’s Comeback, Only Halfway There
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; C01
Fans have come to expect nothing short of miracles from Jay-Z.
Arguably hip-hop’s most successful artist, he’s respected in the
streets as much as he’s celebrated in boardrooms for his commercial
clout as the head of Def Jam records. But “Kingdom Come,” his
much-hyped comeback album, is a disappointment: uneven and skimpy on
substance.
At 36, Jay-Z is now a spokesman for an aging hip-hop generation, a
demographic that’s just as busy raising kids as it is collecting
sneakers — a maturity reflected in the album. “I’m so evolved, I’m so
involved,” he rhymes on the standout title track. “I’m showing growth,
I’m so in charge.” With his tightly truncated interpolation, producer
Just Blaze manages to bypass the obvious cheesiness of Rick James’s
“Superfreak” but captures the song’s mysterious, frenetic energy.
Jay-Z commissions a hand-clap-heavy ditty from Dr. Dre, who’s no
spring chicken himself, for “30 Something,” a verbal spanking of
nouveau riche rappers like the Game and the Diplomats, who were born
in the crack era. Then Jay-Z moves on to a substantive issue on
“Minority Report,” an unflinching deconstruction of government
negligence and his own superficial response to Hurricane Katrina.
The closely guarded album, the rapper’s ninth (and the first since his
“retirement” in 2003), is set to hit stores tomorrow; I listened to it
on Clear Channel’s official stream. From that hearing, it’s evident
that the man knows how to put together a CD just as he knows how to
pop a bottle of bubbly. Each cut transitions smoothly into the next,
culminating in the navel-gazing conclusion, “Beach Chair,” a dreamy
collaboration with Coldplay’s Chris Martin that ties together various
threads running through the album.
Although “Kingdom Come” is short, at just under an hour, it’s not
carefully edited. The album has five disappointing songs. I won’t
dwell on all of them here, but “Hollywood,” his duet with Beyonce, can
barely be classified as rap music. When she sings, “Ooh, it’s the
lights! Action! Hollywood!” on the hook, one feels an inexplicable
urge to make jazz hands. “Show Me What You Got” and “Anything,” with
Usher and Pharrell, are shallow, depressing imitations of earlier,
more vibrant Jay-Z songs.
In other words, “Kingdom Come” succeeds when Jay-Z is being wise,
heartfelt and expansive. It limps along when he dusts off his old hat
tricks. The filler songs that exist merely to fulfill the animalistic
needs of the dance floor don’t do the old man justice. As he ought to
know by now, tricks are for kids.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “Do U Wanna Ride,” “Kingdom Come”
MR. BROWN
Sleepy Brown
With his oversize shades and gleaming dome, Sleepy Brown casts himself
as the embodiment of cool, black male sexuality — an Isaac Hayes for
the MySpace generation. He’s good at impersonating other singers,
sounding like a competent Curtis Mayfield and putting a clever twist
on Lisa Lisa (”Come Dance With Me”), but his debut demonstrates that
he has yet to develop his own distinct voice.
Brown is essentially a great hook singer. His flawless falsetto
completed last year’s “The Way You Move,” an OutKast “Speakerboxx”
hit.
And he’s one-third of Organized Noize, a production team that helped
define Atlanta’s unique Boho hip-hop sound since the mid-’90s. But
Brown lacks the artistic vision and emotional range to carry a solo
effort. Most of the music is anemic and tinny, trying to reference
Motownesque horns and strings, which never quite mesh with the
preprogrammed drum track feel.
Brown’s better songs rely on other people’s star power, such as the
festive bongo-driven “Margarita” with Pharrell and Big Boi. And Andre
3000’s verse on “I Can’t Wait” gives color and wit to a silky Sleepy
Brown refrain: “Ascots to match the socks / What’s in your
Speakerboxx? / Pink and blue / You’re lollygagging / You’re
slowpoking.”
Too cool to push up his shirtsleeves and plumb his emotional depths,
Brown is a prisoner of his own sexiness, hoping to get by on a series
of forgettable baby-makin’ album cuts and an endless medley of erotic
“oohs” and “aahs.” But his heroes, like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder,
understood that complexity, and maybe some sorrow, was the secret
behind the sexual tension.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “I Can’t Wait,” “Come Dance With Me”
Lupe Fiasco Sure Doesn’t Live Down to His Name
By Serena Kim
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, September 20, 2006; C05
Lupe Fiasco’s excellent and daring debut, “Food and Liquor,” delivers
a novel idea a decade after hip-hop’s golden era: How about keeping it
really real? Instead of boasting about multiple bullet wounds or harsh
prison time, Fiasco raps about his neighborhood watch prohibiting
dealers from congregating on his stoop. He describes an adolescence
spent skateboarding with his rebel sweetheart rather than running
drugs. He forgoes the obligatory name-checking of European liquor
companies but shouts out Banksy, a British street artist with activist
tendencies. The scope and originality of Fiasco’s inspiration are
mind-boggling; his references include the obesity epidemic and Abu
Ghraib.
Sure, you could say socially conscious hip-hop has been done before,
and done well by acts such as the Roots, Talib Kweli and Kanye West.
But Fiasco succeeds where those acts have not: With his exceptional
lyricism, wordplay and delivery, he’s comparable to mainstream masters
such as Jay-Z and Nas.
As with classic albums by those two rappers, just about every song on
“Food and Liquor” is conceptual and visually complex. Entirely
original ghetto archetypes experience surprising plot twists and
discover hard-won truths. “The Cool” takes a page from Stephen King
and depicts a dead hustler who uses his gold medallion to scratch his
way out of his Hennessy-soaked grave. On “He Say, She Say,” the same
set of lyrics conveys two perspectives — a single mom’s and an
abandoned son’s — on an absentee dad. But with a shift of a pronoun
here and there, the verses fit together, like an M.C. Escher drawing
with a beat.
This mom, along with other women, finally gets a fair shake on “Food
and Liquor.” Coming from a devout Muslim man, it’s ironically one of
the most feminist hip-hop albums. A woman’s critical spoken-word poem
serves as the intro, giving a female the first word. And Fiasco
repeatedly fleshes out his female characters with sensitivity and
depth.
On “Sunshine,” he meets a beautiful woman at a club and simply enjoys
talking to her. On a lot of other rap songs, female R&B singers are
relegated to singing a mindlessly catchy hook, but on “Daydreamin’,”
Jill Scott’s girlish coos are allowed to bloom into powerful womanly
ecstasies.
It’s a remarkable and risky album in every way, except for the
production — a conventional sonic style that dates the album rather
than making it timeless. Fiasco gives too many chances to rookie
producers who can’t match the vision of the lyrics. The icky
world-music vibe of “American Terrorist” undermines his message. And
on “The Instrumental,” the overly sincere, sweeping orchestral,
rocked-out production borders on — please say it ain’t so — emo. But
you never know: Maybe emo rap is hip-hop’s next golden era.
DOWNLOAD THESE: “I Gotcha,” “Hurt Me Soul,” “The Cool”