Sometimes my tastes do coincide with popular opinion. I think that the new Outkast double CD is sensational. Outkast has always been eclectic in the best sense of the term: they mix hiphop with earlier strains of black music (soul, r&b) as well as with (both black and white) rock ‘n’ roll. Their last album before this one, Stankonia, was something of a peak – as close as popular music gets to a perfect rush. The new album doesn’t try to outdo Stankonia, but instead pushes onto new paths. Well, Big Boi’s disc, Speakerboxx, sounds to me like more of the same (not that there’s anything wrong with that – and the album is full of wonderful little details, like the female chorus of “Ghettomusick” that doesn’t come in until several verses into the song; and see clap clap blog for a fabulous discussion of “The Rooster” that really gets inside the song in the way a non-musician like myself never could). But Andre’s CD, The Love Below, is wildly experimental and strange – and yet, for all its risks, a complete success. Musically, it explodes in all sorts of directions – from lite jazz to hard rock to a sort of drum ‘n’ bass (!) stylization of Coltrane’s stylization of My Favorite Things. And it’s something of a concept album as well, being all about love. It moves from Dre’s conversation with God (who turns out to be a woman!) about how he just wants someone to love, through mounting excitement, and lust, the morning after, love, disappointment, terror at the prospect of giving one’s self away to another. Along the way, there are love songs, lust songs, seduction songs, out-of-love songs, hate songs, let’s-make-up-and-get-back-together-songs, masturbation songs, even sort of a rap confessional. I’m not sure what more to say… It’s one of those rare albums that escapes, or squirms outside of, all the categories that I am usually so ready to tag nearly anything I listen to with – and thereby reduces me to incoherent babbling.
Outkast
Sometimes my tastes do coincide with popular opinion. I think that the new Outkast double CD is sensational. Outkast has always been eclectic in the best sense of the term: they mix hiphop with earlier strains of black music (soul, r&b) as well as with (both black and white) rock ‘n’ roll. Their last album before this one, Stankonia, was something of a peak – as close as popular music gets to a perfect rush. The new album doesn’t try to outdo Stankonia, but instead pushes onto new paths. Well, Big Boi’s disc, Speakerboxx, sounds to me like more of the same (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But Andre’s CD, The Love Below, is wildly experimental and strange – and yet, for all its risks, a complete success. Musically, it explodes in all sorts of directions – from lite jazz to hard rock to a sort of drum ‘n’ bass (!) stylization of Coltrane’s stylization of My Favorite Things. And it’s something of a concept album as well, being all about love. It moves from Dre’s conversation with God (who turns out to be a woman!) about how he just wants someone to love, through mounting excitement, and lust, the morning after, love, disappointment, terror at the prospect of giving one’s self away to another. Along the way, there are love songs, lust songs, seduction songs, out-of-love songs, hate songs, let’s-make-up-and-get-back-together songs, masturbation songs, even sort of a rap confessional. I’m not sure what more to say… It’s one of those rare albums that escapes, or squirms outside of, all the categories that I am usually so ready to tag nearly anything I listen to with – and thereby reduces me to incoherent babbling.