Surfacing once more from another busy year of…whatever it is that he does, North Carolina MC (Mad) Skillz gives us his annual take on events of the year. Enjoy, and please stay safe and non-incarcerated tonight.
Happy New Year!
In a sad day for jazz fans, trumpeter, Freddie Hubbard passed away this morning in Los Angeles. He suffered a heart attack in November and passed away in the hospital. He was 70.
Never quite as big a name as contemporaries like Miles Davis, Hubbard was nevertheless an important contributor to a variety of jazz styles spanning several decades. His full, bright tone played centrally on important albums like Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch, John Coltrane’s Olé Coltrane, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, and Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz.
In the 1970′s he became a bandleader and recorded several very good soul-jazz albums on CTI, among them Red Clay, and one of my favorite albums of all time, Sky Dive. He slowed down later in his career, but he continued performing into the 2000′s.
Freddie Hubbard was an extremely talented and influential musician, and even if you are not aware of him, chances are that if you’ve heard many of the most important and commonly played jazz records of the 60′s, you’ve heard him. I encourage jazz fans to take a look at his catalog, both as a side man, and as a band leader.
Peace to him and his family.
I leave you with one of my favorites:
Obit from his hometown newspaper, the Indianapolis Star.
Happy holidays y’all. I’ll be back next week with a Scarface album review, and maybe some other goodies. Y’all be safe, and tilt back a glass of eggnog for me. Payce!
Common – Universal Mind Control
Geffen, 2008
Rating: 3 of 5
On paper, this looks like my kind of Common album. Com drops the fatherly boho schtick he’s gradually grown into and makes a *fun* album! Not a pedestrian Kanye beat in sight, and no sign of his flaccid mixes, which have run 2 consecutive Common albums into the ground. Instead, he calls in the Neptunes and Mr. DJ for a retro, electro vibe (Where do I sign up?!). I was all set to fly in the face of my hater contemporaries and tell them to loosen their crocheted pants and take that nag champa stick out of their ass. Loosen up and have *fun*! The sad fact of the matter, however, is that for the most part, they were right.
UMC is a set of 10 songs, totaling less than 40 minutes in length. It would fit on a single 12″ record. If that’s not retro, I don’t know what is. The record opens with the title track, a Bambaata-aping electro party bounce with the aid of Pharrell on the hook. So far, so good. Common is flowing fairly sparsely, but after all, it’s an electro song. The fast tempo makes it tough for most people to squeeze bars too full of syllables. True enough, but as the tempos slow back to normal on later tracks, it becomes clear that Com is on straight elementary mode.
Now Rashid Lynn has never been a complex emcee, structurally speaking. This is the man who gave us “I’m a child of the unh…the ’87 unh…,” and we loved him for it. If he wasn’t a verbal acrobat, he also wasn’t one to waste words, and there was a lot of impact in those easy-flowing rhymes. I suppose the most troubling aspect of this album isn’t that he lightens up and sacrifices gravity for accessibility. It’s that he sucks at it.
“Sometimes the best things are not in your plans/You came to the sand and got more than a tan.” The man who told us if he’s going to change the world, it’s going to be through [his daughter] is now a free and easy beach bum that doesn’t write well? God I hope he wasn’t wearing capris when recorded this. The album mostly alternates between mindless fluff like this and hopelessly blunt sex rhymes that are the rap equivalent of sex scene dialog written by pimple-faced high school boys. There is a little standard hip hop bragging, but even that mostly falls flat.
On a slightly more positive note, there is some good production work here. The grooves are cooler, and more synthesized than on any past Common album, except maybe the musical pariah that is Electric Circus. Unlike EC, however, this album is too short for any extended flights of…whatever. Aside from the title track, the Clipse-esque Neptunes guitar licks and synths on Announcement, the anthemic stomp of Gladiator, and the frenetic electro bounce of Everywhere are all winners. The latter is probably the best-executed track on the album, with Martina Topley-Bird dropping reverb’ed-out vocals that sat nicely with the groove, and once again, Com’s hyper-simplified flow fitting with the overclocked beat.
I really wanted to like this album, and I’m still probably going to easy on it by rating it a 3, but this is simply not up to par. Whether Common is pulling a Jay-Z, and completely giving up on creating anything stimulating in his late career, or this is just another left turn by a man who has now made three (EC, Be, and this one) in his 15+ years of rhyming, is hard to say. It’s time to admit, however, that it has been about a decade since Common was in his prime as a rapper, and he may never reach that level again. Then again, four left turns and you’re going straight.
A little DC hip hop for y’all, remixed by Philadelphia producer, Aeon. Peep it, and have a happy hump day.
So if you didn’t download the mixtape like I told you earlier this week, and/or you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you may be unaware that Clipse has been hyping up their new clothing line, Play Cloths. A quick perusal…there’s a lot of stuff that’s decent. I’d rock a few things, although I’m not big on the idea of investing in $40 designer t-shirts right now (didn’t Jeezy tell y’all? It’s a recession).
That’s not even the news, though. I’m probably late as fack on this (about 3 months, to be exact) but they also have a blog with some very nice free goodies that you’d be well-advised to comb thru. I was geeked.
Anyway, that’s all I got. Have a good week.
(that’s officially all the free advertising their clothing line gets from me)
Yup. Got me a domain, and a wordpress blog. Fancy.
I had to take 2007 off, but back once again is my annual mixtape, recapping the best in hip hop R&B and every goddamn thing in between. Enjoy, and feel free to post up some seasons greetings in the comments.
Download here*.
Track Listing:
* If you need me to get you a CD for some reason instead of the download, ask me very nicely. VERY. nicely.
Go here. Download.
Thank me later. This is the best thing since sliced cocaine. I cannot wait for next year when the album drops.
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