What I'm listening to

It's been an interesting summer with so much more on tap as we head into fall. On the horizon loom new albums from OutKast, The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Common and others that I love. There's so few cats I'm genuinely feeling nowadays, I get excited when the ones I'm supporting actually put out new stuff. Partially thanks to a mini-CD spree I had at Best Buy lately and partially thanks to another raid of my sisters' old, left-behind LPs back at my mom's crib, this is what the kid's been on lately.

Pharrell -- In My Mind



It took me a couple spins to really appreciate but it's been getting heavy rotation in the Silver Bullet since I came back from Ohio. I've heard people saying this album isn't quite what they expected, but I think people just like to complain. I mean, he gave you the deceptively simplistic synthezied beats, he rhymed about Ice Cream, BBC and the seemingly endless parade of models who love his dirty draws. You want cameos, he gave 'em to you: Jay-Z, Nelly, Slim Thug, Snoop, Kanyeeze. So what if half the album sounds like Michael Jackson circa 1981? A lot of contemporary R&B is going in that direction. You think Beyonce's new album is gonna sound any different? You think Justin Timberlake's new album is gonna sound any different? And since when is sounding like the album that Mike woulda dropped between Off the Wall and Thriller a bad thing. A lot of Maroon 5's Songs About Jane sound like outtakes from Dangerous and that album went triple platinum!

Also gaining this album major cool points is track 13, "Our Father," the most sincere "thankyouforlovingmeJesuseventhoughI'mascrewup" song this side of Donny Hathaway's "Lord Help Me."

Corinne Bailey Rae -- Corinne Bailey Rae



I cannot stop listening to this album. I was semi-skeptical initially. Determined not to dig the first single, "Like A Star," even though VH-1 Soul kept playing it non-stop. Convinced that her whole persona was just a ploy by the government to distract me from the war in Iraq. She seemed too neatly packaged: how you gonna have a raspy voice, play the guitar and continue my unbroken string of crushes on bi-racial European chicks (from Sade on down to Zadie Smith) It seemed too good to be true. And then I bought the album.



What I like most about the album is that it sounds like a bunch of friends got together and made an album, with little deference to the grind of their daily lives. I know a lot of albums are made under those circumstances, but this album sounds like it. Rae's voice swoops, glides, and is more powerful than her wispy countenancy (or even her poetic name) would ever suggest. Her range of influences extends from Led Zeppelin to Erykah Badu and you actually hear those influences on this album. (Good, if I hear one more synthetic sounding R&B cat say their favorite singers are Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder, I'm punching them dead in the chest.) She reveals far more promise on this debut than simply being the "next Norah Jones," as some have labeled her. She sounds more like simply "the next."

Al Green -- I'm Still in Love With You



This album, like most of Al Green and Willie Mitchell's classic '70s work, is beyond reproach. In all it's southern-fried glory, this December 1972 release is simply one of the most soulful albums ever made. It sounds like heated up greens at your cool uncle's speakeasy at 2 in the morning, while the most beautiful girl in town is whispering in your right ear and the air is a vibrant shade of orange that you've never seen before. I don't have to tell you about the title track. If I do, there's something wrong with you. "Simply Beautiful" might make a Negro's eyes water up. "Oh, Pretty Woman" puts Roy Orbison's more well-known original to shame. And did I mention that "Love and Happiness" is on this album? Exactly. It's ridiculous. Go find someone you like and throw this jammie on. You won't be disappointed.

P.S. I know crate diggers might say I'm on the late freight, but at least relistening to this album solved my two year mystery of where Kanye got that sample for Consequence's "Gettin' Out the Game" that was on my voice mail for, like, four or five months.

The Jacksons -- The Essential Jacksons



As you probably already know, I have weird fascinations. About a month or two ago, I got really obsessively intrigued by the music of the Jacksons. Not the Jackson 5. The Jacksons. The group they became after they left Motown (and thanks to Berry Gordy, their name as well). The group that both preceded and weathered Michael's transition from almost washed up former child star to international phenomenon. The group that gave us so many disco era hits that Michael's success with Off the Wall seems as though it should've been less shocking in retrospect.

So I copped the CD and was floored by songs both familiar ("Blame It on the Boogie," "Can You Feel It," "Shake Your Body Down to the Ground") and unfamiliar ("Find Me A Girl," "Show You The Way To Go"). Say you will about Joe Jackson and his boot camp like relationship with his kids, but he masterminded and navigated the most talented and successful bunch of siblings in the history of recorded music. (I hear you Bee Gees fans, but Joe and Katherine had 10 kids and darnit if they didn't all have a hit song at one point. Except LaToya.)

A lot of negativity surrounds the Jacksons' name, and admittedly, a lot of it, they've brought on themselves. But if you need a reminder of how gifted the family from 2300 Jackson Street could be when they were all focused, you don't have to go further than this album.