This is an email I received from a true friend of mine, as well as a student of real hip hop music... I just felt it was surely worth sharing, since I agree with him word for word:
Caveat: you know me, I listen to one song 'til it's played-out, then I listen to it until my iPhone breaks down and Siri's like: "gotdammit nikkuh, when you gonna play somethin else?!!!?" Hip hop and me have an odd sort of relationship nowadays. I basically try to stay away from stuff produced through the Music Industrial Complex (read: the commodities manufactured and marketed by the labels, billboard, MTV, BET, award shows, etc.), but of course that's impossible and not even desirable. It might actually be imprudent, but it's an easy thing to do when media (including all forms of music) istoo accessible and relentlessly deployed to be meaningfully processed by a single consumer, as it is today. I try to cull most of my new hip hop listens from below (Mixtapes, etc.) using filtration devices (iTunes, blogs, Amazon, etc.) to control for quality and type of content. I am very bad at capturing and consuming a wide breadth of music that I enjoy primarily because I do not have the time (the principle asset to invest inquality art of any kind, in my opinion) to devote to the the process of exposure, evaluation, and consumption of music.
Statement of Opinion: Her Favorite Colo(u)r, Blu's mixtape, reissued as an album, is one of the most significant works of art to emerge from hip hop culture that I've had the pleasure of experiencing. This is especially reinforced by the fact that it emerged in hip hop's most recent era.
Brief Background: In May 2010, I traveled to St. Louis for our reunion of sorts, and you introduced me to what was then Blu's mixtape. I remember asking you something like, "What're those dialogues in the background?" You responded something like, "He's sampled some of his favorite films for their dialogue and used throughout." I had trouble really digesting the album for sometime, but Amnesia very quickly stuck to me, as I'm sure it did for many first-listeners, and it became my entre to the album as a whole. You put me on dog, I'll always owe you for this one.
Blu - Amnesia
Highest Praise I Can Pay: I listen to the whole album, all the way through, without repeating one song. A lot.
Explanation: A track-by-track analysis would take a while for me. Suffice to say that, as a whole, I find it well-conceived and rigorous, but easily accessible. It promises easy listens, but is multi-layered and uneven. It is not only emotionally mature, but also provocative, egalitarian, and empathetic. The samples pay homage to Blu's impression of jazz and soul, but they don't seem overly contrived or disjointed. It retains an unfinished, bare quality that I've warmed to and find myself looking for in other works.
Highest Praise I Can Pay: I listen to the whole album, all the way through, without repeating one song. A lot.
Blu - Amnesia (Remind)
No comments:
Post a Comment