Music in 2008: A Music Dude review

No intro needed...littered with typos, here's a look back at music in 2008 for your casual consumption as we kick off '09...

Most Poignant Example That Black Music Is Underappreciated: My favorite album of the year and the best album of the year is Q-Tip's The Renaissance. There have been many grown-up hop albums that are often actually hop albums struggling to grow up. Q-Tip's newest joint is the most effortlessly grown album ever. From the subject matter to the vibe to the production to the artist, it was an album whose target audience was grown people with grown taste. If my little cousin Kadara (17, i think) said she didn't like the the Tip album, I'd say, "That's cool. He didn't make it for you." If my little sister P (27) said she didn't like Tip's album, I'd disown her. The Renaissance is like Black on Both Sides, if Black on Both Sides were made by a Gen-Xr in his 30s in 2008 for fellow Gen-Xrs in the year 2008. Yet, you won't find this classic album on any of the year-end top 10s and it didn't garner ONE Grammy-nod. I have this theory that black artists suffer from the fact that black artistry is not truly appreciated in their music. You either have to be ultra-bombastic or ultra-popular to get recognition from fans and critics. Subtlelty, vibe and creativity is a an avenue that typically only white artists are priviledged to drive on. Keep in mind that, in the nearly 10 years between 1999's Amplified and 2008's Renaissance, Tip made Kamaal The Abstract. If you never heard or heard of Kamaal The Abstract, it's because Tip's label at the time, Arista, never released it. It's one of those hybrid black music albums that featured heavy doses of jazz, hop, soul and rock all fused into one composite entity that me and my boys coined Bridge Music (I wrote about it on our old music website). The album predated Andre 3000's Love Below and Mos Def's New Danger, Common's Electric Circus and everything from Cee-Lo's pre-Gnarls cuts to K-Os, etc. The album is astounding in ways that can't be articulated. But unlike rock and indie artists that are allowed to stretch out and create and boundary-push, Tip's label deemed that the public wouldn't dig this new music...and I mean that literally, it was basically the first sull manifestation of a brand new genre of music. Think about how groundbreaking that is! The thing is, Arista was half-right. Much of Tip's audience would have scoffed. Joints like Kamaal The Abstract and, germane to 2008, The Renaissance are the richest examples of black music, so it annoys me that these albums are generally ignored. I'm urging all of you to kop Tip's album (lord knows we don't have to pay for it) and listen to this joint and then tell your friends and then go see Tip in concert and do all that is entailed with supporting great art. Tip made this for us.

One Is A Rock Star, The Other is Literally The Corniest Human Being Alive: Did you hear Carter III? Of course you did. Weezy gets down. Did you see his performance on SNL? Of course you did, Weezy gets down (I need that SNL version of Lollipop in my life). Did you hear 808s and Heartbreak? Of course you did. Kanye goes in, this we can't contest. Did you see his pious, profoundly nauseating performance on SNL where he tried to mimick Chris Martin and Bono, while turning a vocal performance that was worse than the worst karaoke performance you've ever seen? One of these days, I'm gonna break into his LA studio and beat him over the head with his Auto-tone machine.

I'm Not A Hipster, But I Dig These Dudes: MGMT, I dig these dudes. I don't dig the whole album, but I dig these dudes because they made "Electric Feel", which is probably the most accessible of the cuts. It's the kind of song that slays me. And if you don't know (they probably don't know either); they can only make a song like that because Parliament/Funkadelic came before them. It sounds like a weirded out MJ tune, a little further out than some of Timberlake's stuff on FutureSex...but the way the track marches and chants forward, that's so P-Funk.

Proof That The New Generation is a Wack Generation: Yeah, I'm on that "old man ish"...when me and my nigs were growing up, you could be a Tribe or Mobb or Wu or Nas or Kast and get love from your peers and teenagers. I was a teen when Illmatic and 36 Chambers and 93 Til Infinity dropped. We actually LIKED dope hip hop. Nowadays, a young man like Black Milk drops Tronic and nobody under 25 is pumpin it unless they're with their older brother or cousin. And Milk is 23! Tronic might be the greatest ehibition of production prowess we've witnessed this decade...and this is a decade that gave us Fantastic Vol. 2, Madvillainy, Mama's Gun, American Gangster and Late Registration. The kind of robotic funk that Dilla started on Trinity and shaped more on Rough Draft (my boy Trav called it industrial which is probably the illest way I've heard it described way), he diverged from it when he made The Shining, like he dropped one toy and picked up another one. But Young Milk took those parts put it on a Motown assembly line (again shouts to Trav) made some kind of one-man rocket and took off to the cosmos. "Bounce" turns me into a caserole. "Give The Drummer Some" breathes so effin hard. And yet, only some old head like me digs it. The weird thing is that Milk gives you some of that same pointless swag that wacksters like Yung Berg and Plies drip with, except he does it in a hip-hop way, with classic production. Oh well. All I'm saying is that one day I'm gonna crash my car listening to "Hell Yeah".

If I Can Listen to Two Acts Right Now: I'd choose Muhsinah and J*Davey. Davey dropped in '07, Muhsinah rushed me in '08. I reviewed Muhsinah's EP Daybreak here. She's like an accessible Georgia Anne Muldrow. She's heavy enough to extract the prettiest melody from Pharoah Sander's 32-minute "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and coo "Once Again." She's a singer-songwriter-producer that is creating music thick as Pam Grier in the 70s.

Are You Kidding Me?: I'll never forget driving down Wilshire in L.A. and hearing Fellie Fell say the following: "This is a brand new hot joint from M.I.A. -- 'Paper Planes'!" Brand new?!?!!!! That album (Kala) came out in the summer of 2007! I thought I was late when I first got hip last winter! Then the Apatow gang uses the joint for Rogen's Pineapple Express commercials and I got my little brother asking me to forward him "that new M.I.A. joint." Insane.

Is She The New Mary J?: Every generation of females needs an artist whose voice and lyrics express the angst and anger that comes from living in James Brown's world, right? Gen X had Sade and Mary J. Well, there are artists that have, collectively, carried Sade's torch. Sade's music was reflective and moody and, in relative terms, quaint. Women like India Arie and Jill Scott inhabit that world these days. But -- and here comes some good ol' classic Vince stereotyping -- what about the greater sect. Sade sold millions, but we can all agree that not every 14 to 34-year-old in the 90s and early 00s was digging on Love Deluxe and Lovers Rock. But I can pretty much guarantee you they dug CD-skips into 411, My Life, Share My World, and Mary. Lauryn Hill seemed poised to grab that mantle and then ascend to strata that would make her one of the 50 Greatest artists of all time, regardless of genres. Unfortunately, she succumbed to whatever forces have put her on mute for the past 7 or 8 years. So Mary has continued to drop albums and womankind has continued to dig them, but, I'm sorry, those joints suck. It's not good music. I remember hanging with my friend one night and she put on Mary's Breakthrough for me, attempting to convince that Mary still made good music. Each track sucked, but she dug the snot of them. I just remember thinking, "Man, these women need a new Mary." Well, enter Jazmine Sullivan. I first heard Sullivan's "Need You Bad" this summer as I was standing outside a sneaker shop on Broadway in Manhattan. It kinda floored me. Then came "Bust Your Windows" which, as a man, didn't really impress me, but sounded exactly like something that would take off with women. Then her album, Fearless, dropped and, one by one, most ladies I talked to said the "loved" her album. I never want May to stop making music. If Madonna and her Oscar De La Hoya Arms can continue to drop albums, then so should Mary, she's a legend. But maybe a woman like Jazmine can inch Mary's Oprah-music off heavy-rotation a little bit. If I hear "Just Fine" one more time, my nuts are gonna fall off.

Two 2007 Albums That I Pumped Relentlessly in 2008: I'm gonna go to Sweden, impregante Yukimi Nagano and make us some Anthony Knights. Seriously, I'm gonna lover her down and seed some afro-asians. Little Dragon's self-entitled album dropped in September of 2007 (I wrote a review on it for All Music) and it has stayed in heavy-rotation. One day, I'm gonna make a short film about two young mutes falling in love and this will be the soundtrack...this and Miles' Nefertiti. A few months after Saul Williams gave the world The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust in November of 2007. If there were a such thing as predominantly black raves, this is what we'd play. I'm craaaaaaazy late on this. But I remember pumping this joint on the NJ Transit and when I took of my earphones, my ears were bleeding, it was a good bleed though. If it's black-rave-music ("DNA" "Banged And Blown Through", it's also black-protest-music ("Raised To Be Lowered"). One final note: I'm gonna throw a party just to drop "World On Wheels" and you better dance.

The Album That Takes on Great Significance Based On Recent News: When it first dropped, I dug The Root's Rising Down, but didn't love (although my boys did). "Get Busy" got really busy, making it on to most my playlists (especially the slept on Peedi Crack); "I Will Not Apologize" was slick; the album was dope. But then I heard The Roots were no longer gonna record and only periodically tour because they signed on to be Jimmy Fallon's house band when he takes over the Late Late Show when Conan takes over for Leno. The Roots -- since I became aware of them with 1994's Do You Want More -- have held me down. Not one wack album in the whole discography. Their worst album, Tipping Point, is slept on. And, for a swan song, Rising Down is stupendous. I'm hoping however, that Fallon falls flat on his smirky face and The Roots can resume.

Hardest Working Man in the Rap Business: Blu dropped Johnson and Johnson with Main Frame AND dropped the gem that was CRAC Knuckle's Piece Talks with my dude Ta'Raach. Both albums were stellar. The CRAC Knucks was my fav album for a good six weeks.

I Know They're Different, But...: This chick Adele is no Amy Whinehouse. How this chick gets all the acclaim for 19 just irks me. But people support her and I can dig that, since she is, at least, an artist. Meanwhile, Muhsinah and Georgia Anne Muldrow might as well being throwing tennis balls against the wall.

Other Albums That Tickled My Ears: Portishead's Third, Dwele's Sketches of A Man (this might be a classic), Badu's New Amerykah, NERD's Seeing Sounds, Gnarls Barkley's Odd Couple, Nas' Unlreased Nigger Album (the mixtape, not the untitled, more watered down label release).

RIP Freddie Hubbard

A lot of important, influential, famous people died in '08. Hometown legend Tim Russert was, perhaps, the most celebrated. George Carlin's passing hit me in a weird way, since I had recently started studying a lot of his performances. I wish my brain was as sharp as his was. But, by far, the death that hit home the most was Freddie Hubbard's recent passing.

Freddie died a couple days ago. He was a jazz musician, played some of the most stellar trumpet in the history of mankind, dropped classic albums in three different eras and, could arguably be considered hip-hop's most sampled jazz artist. If he isn't, he's right up there with Herbie, Miles and Donald Byrd in terms of hop's go-to jazz musicians. I am positive that Red Clay -- Freddie's most popular and influential album -- is the most sampled jazz album of all-time. Most famously, Tribe pulled the bass-drum-keys rhythm from the head of Red Clay's title track. What bugs me about this is that the obits in the big papers don't mention this, which is criminal. Anytime a musician has a profound effect on the foundation of a brand new genre, specifically the forward-thinking production we heard on Native Tongue recordings, then that needs to be mentioned near the top of his obit since it makes him more than just a giant in his own genre.

That's thing about Freddie, though. He's maligned. He started off as a prodigious young voice in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (tho he was overshadowed by Wayne Shorter who happens to be, probably, the greatest songwriter in jazz history). Then he dropped a string of albums as a bandleader -- Ready For Freddie being my favorite -- that showcased what was an unparalleled expertise on his horn (tho, for all the greatness of that music, it seem staid when compared to what the Miles Quintet was doing at the time). Then he dropped two early 70s albums -- Red Clay and Straight Life -- that are among the greatest albums ever made...in all of music. Freddie is one of those jazz artists that can give you some cred with me. If namedrop Freddie (or Billy Harper or Joe Henderson or Tony Williams, etc) and have a working knowledge of his discog, then I know that you aren't one of the zillion jazz impostors out here that simply SAY they dig jazz. What happened to Freddie, though, is that, by the mid-70s, he was making some fairly corny albums. I say that with a heavy heart, but it was true. Even still, there were some gems on those joints.

As I write, I'm listening to "Kuntu" off of Liquid Love. It's a storied album around these parts, an album my Pops sold when he was a young father in a financial bind then spent years trying to track down. But because Columbia hadn't re-released much of Freddie's mid-late 70s catalog, it remained unattainable. (This was before EVERYTHING was koppable on mininova, isohunt, itunes or some pirate-blog). At any rate, my boy Rek tracked down the elusive vinyl copy about six or seven years ago, had it transferred to CD and dropped it on us during one of our sessions. I think my Pops' brain burst. I went into a coma. The track has this afro-cuban rhythm with Freddie going berserk on top. Liquid Love stands out as a tremendous effort in the midst of a bunch of duds. Freddie's labels, chiefly CTI, wanted to make pop-jazz and Freddie followed suit, often with disastrous results. Then, Freddie busted up his top-lip and lost his chops, had trouble blowing his horn in his later years. I just think that the stupid four or five year period in the 70s unjustly mars an incredible career.

Whenever I listen to The Black Angel's title track I swoon -- same thing with "Sky Dive". Straight Life's "Mr. Clean" is filthy. Freddie's rollin on "Far Away" off Breaking Point. He may not have emoted and influenced like Miles or created new language and vocabulary like Satchmo and Diz, but Freddie could do ANYTHING on that horn. He'd probably win a game of Trumpet HORSE on his horn...and he made great music for a good 20 years. He deserves a better eulogy than what he got.