Tuesday, April 03, 2018

This will read as a stream of consciousness-like post, so please humor me...

I kept hearing how good Meshell Ndegeocello's new cd was--it is called Ventriloquism--but up until a couple of nights ago, I really had not gotten around to taking a listen. I started it two nights ago while I was in the shower, and I finished it just a few minutes before I sat down to write this here blog.

Meshell takes some of her favorite 80s classics and puts her own unique Meshell touch on them. Some of the songs like Al B Sure's "Nite and Day" and Janet Jackson, "Funny How Time Flies" and Prince's "Sometimes It Snows in April" work like a charm while others like George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" and Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" fell kind of flat in my opinion. But it is hard to ever get truly mad at any missteps on this album, because Meshell's voice is so damn sexy and the music is good.

So after I listened to Meshell's version of "Nite and Day", I went and listened to Al B's version right after that, and it took me back to the summer of 1988, when I couldn't figure out whether Al B was a man or a woman. I didn't watch videos regularly back then so there was no visual evidence for me to lean on, and even though his name was Al B, I thought that was some type of gimmick because his voice sounded like a damn woman---which is why it was perfect song for Meshell to cover. I finally figured out later that summer that Al B was indeed a dude, and his whole album was so good, it really ended up not mattering.

After listening to Al B's "Nite and Day", I decided to stick with that same theme, and I cued up Tevin Campbell's "Alone with You" which was produced by Al B and his main man Kyle West. I was a freshman in college when this song came out, and I made it my business to put it on every slow jam tape I made. I had lots of slow jam tapes but no one to use it on, but that didn't stop me from curating a quality product. But when I look back on that song, it is little weird that 16 year old Tevin (not exactly a pillar in the masculinity community) could make a sexually-charged song that had the proper amount of begging, urgency and accuracy. I think that last sentence danced awfully close to the politically incorrect line, but you know what I meant right?

Anyway, I found myself wondering if Al B Sure sang "Along With You", would that song still have resonated with me and others. Then I found myself wondering why there are no more quality slow jams. These days, there are slow rap songs that lack any scintilla of romanticism, or there are slow R&B songs where the singer "sings" in a rap cadence, which doesn't exactly inspire romance. Although I supposed there is something to be said for listening to rap songs while you and your partner/spouse have hot, sweaty sex with urgency on the stairs.. I get that. But slow jams aren't always about the sex, they are about a mood, a state of relaxation and yes, maybe a little coitus on (or in) the back end.

This concludes my rudderless rant.





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