Strolling in the park, watching winter turn to spring
Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...
...hmmm - two albums I've barely heard of, let alone heard any of the tracks. My suspicion is that D'Angelo is going to bore me and the Wu-Tang Clan are going to annoy me - and the winner will be the one that bores/annoys me the least.
#28 : Voodoo - D'Angelo (2000)
In the five years following the release of his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, D’Angelo grew disillusioned with the genre that had just anointed him a rising star. “I don’t consider myself an R&B artist,” the then-26-year-old told Jet. “R&B is pop, that’s the new word for R&B.” In his quest to create something new, he looked to both the masters of soul (Marvin, Curtis, Stevie) and contemporary innovators (Lauryn, Erykah). The end result was Voodoo, a moving, inventive masterpiece that stands as the ultimate achievement of the neo-soul era. Crafted with producer and drummer Questlove, who called the LP a “vicarious fantasy,” Voodoo places Pink Floyd-style cosmic jams (“Playa Playa”) next to Prince-inspired erotica (“Untitled [How Does It Feel]”). “I’m just looking at Voodoo as just the beginning,” D’Angelo said at the time. “It took a while, but I’m on my way now.”
I didn't know quite what to expect, but D'Angelo's previous two visits on this list have not exactly left me raving about the man, and "neo-soul" is not a phrase that fills me with excitement. All in all, it's some smooth sounding tunes with some pleasing harmonies and background bleeping noises going on, although the lyrics are a somewhat incongruous mix of Smokey/Marvin "lovin' the ladies" smoothness, Prince "clothes? where we're going, we don't need clothes" rude-smoothness and generic hip-hop "effing them bees" not-quite-so-smoothness. I didn't find listening to it an unpleasant experience - but not exactly memorable either though. Having finished listening to it, I struggle to remember any tracks other than "Feel Like Makin' Love" which I remembered from the George Benson version, but had no idea who'd done it first - I'd have guessed Smokey, but it was Roberta Flack with a fine if slightly cheesy rendition (although less cheesy than George, obvs). So, going back to the album, it wasn't quite as boring as I expected, but it did drag a bit towards the end. The album only has 13 tracks on it - but if you'd asked me after my first listen, I've have guessed the number was closer to 130 because it goes on for 78 minutes with a LOT of aimless vocal noodling (there are only 2 tracks less than 5 minutes long - and 3 over 7 minutes!).
Wikipedia states confidently that it is actually "a creative milestone of the neo-soul genre during its apex", so that's me told. He actually took 4.5 years to produce it after his well received debut Brown Sugar - 2 years touring and then a nasty case of writer's block. Wikipedia spends a lot of time explaining how they put the record together, I'm afraid it somewhat lost me but I did notice a lot of names we've come across on this list so far - Questlove, J Dilla and Q-Tip - so they must be good, right?!? The section on the drum tracks is particularly bizarre - I can't claim to understand it but this is a sample quote "He makes programmed stuff so real, you really can’t tell it’s programmed". But basically, the critics loved it (it was on a LOT of "Best of 2000" lists) although it didn't sell as many as some of the others around it on the list - "only" a million or so. Poor guy.
The tour is where it all started to go a bit wrong for the lad though - the video to "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" portrayed him as a sex symbol, so audiences started to expect him to take off some clothes, which made him feel they didn't appreciate his art, which all kinda spiralled out of control and lead to him cancelling shows at the last minute because he "wasn't prepared". And audiences really don't like that. All I can say is that these are not problems I can relate to in the slightest (and I'm not belittling his troubles, just saying that software testing has never resulted in anyone being portrayed as a sex symbol). His Wikipedia entry relates how things got even worse for him, but we know he came back with the well received Black Messiah and there are plans for another album this year, so I wish him well (and he can always consider a job in software testing if things don't work out).
"Customers also listened to" Erykah and a load of other people I've never heard of, I can only assume that they too have "produced creative masterpieces of the neo-soul genre at its apex". I think the various albums we've heard from the genre suggest I find it "almost interesting" - and I'm not sure whether that counts as praise or damnation, but this album falls squarely into that category.
#27 : Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan (1993)
The first Wu-Tang Clan album launched rap’s most dominant franchise by inventing a new sound built around a hectic panoply of voices and spare, raw beats. RZA, the group’s sonic mastermind, constructed the Wu’s homemade world, he said, from a mix of “Eastern philosophy picked up from kung-fu movies, watered-down Nation of Islam preaching picked up on the New York streets, and comic books.” On “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Protect Ya Neck,” and the non-metaphorical “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” RZA’s offbeat samples (Thelonious Monk, the Dramatics, fellow New Yorker Barbra Streisand) create a grounding for the group’s nine members, including future solo stars Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, GZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg had established L.A. as the center of hip-hop innovation and daring, but the Wu reclaimed the crown for the music’s birthplace.
Our first visit with the clan, although we've previously met Raekwon, GZA (pronounced "jizzer" apparently) and Ghostface Killah on solo albums (often accompanied by other Wu-Tangers) - my verdicts have ranged from "surprisingly fun" to "bearable, I guess" (with Ghostface actually winning his round of 4 albums in the face of some very mediocre opposition) so I wasn't expecting to hate this but I also wasn't expecting the time of my life.
I'd say it's more on the "bearable, I guess" level - the tracks are generally quite "hooky" and some of the links are amusingly creative, but some of the other stuff is a bit juvenile and/or unpleasant. They seem like they're having a good time but it feels quite unpolished (certainly compared with a lot of the other hip-hop stuff we've heard) - I guess your view on this can vary from "it's more real, man" to "they could have made more of an effort, man" (or, possibly more likely, "I can't say I care, man"). If I had to pick a track as a highlight, I'd go for "Method Man" - it was actually pretty catchy. I'm desperately trying to think of anything else to say about it and coming up blank - it was fine but I can't see exactly what it has that is going to justify the adulation that Wikipedia is going to talk about and there's little danger of me revisiting it, methinks.
So, does Wikipedia indeed announce it to be the best hip-hop album since the last one? I suspect you can guess. Apparently, it's "widely regarded as one of the most significant albums of the 1990s, as well as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time". However, moving on to more important matters - what's the 36 chambers stuff all about? Basically, it's to do with their being 9 of them and the heart having 4 chambers - but Wikipedia expands on this with "Also, while the human body has 108 pressure points (1 + 0 + 8 = 9), only the Wu-Tang martial artists learned and understood that 36 of those pressure points are deadly (9 + 36 = 45) (4 + 5 = 9). The lyrics and rhymes of the 9 members are to be considered as 36 deadly lyrical techniques for pressure points". However, it then somewhat spoils it by saying "this is just a theory; the true significance of the title is not definitively known" which is Wikispeak for "I could be talking bollocks here". Although the album was well received critically, it didn't exactly storm the charts but ended up selling over 3 million copies, which ain't so bad, I guess.
The group's Wikipedia entry is, given that they've had 10 members over the years who have done a lot of other stuff at the same time, unsurprisingly unstructured. I was, however, intrigued by the story of their seventh album, Once Upon A Time in Shaolin. They made just the one copy of it and they toured it around various galleries and museums, never actually playing it. They then auctioned it online, where it was bought by Martin Shkreli (not a nice man!) for $2m, making it the most expensive musical work ever sold - and he wasn't allowed to exploit it commercially for 88 years. He then tried to sell it on eBay but was arrested for various bad things he'd done before he could do so, which resulted in the FBI impounding it and current estimates of its worth suggest something close to $0 - so that album has most definitely lived an interesting life!
"Customers also listened to" all the various Wu-Tangers, some of which we've heard from, some of which we haven't - never mind, eh? This one goes into the already heavily populated "not completely awful" hip-hop bucket - we've still got another 4 possible candidates to join it, but I actually have some hope some of them may avoid that fate.
So what am I supposed to do now? D'Angelo was boring in places and The Wu-Tangers were annoying in places, but neither really did enough to warrant instant disqualification - so I'm going to have to go for a tie, aren't I? But you have to understand I can't imagine any scenario whereby either of these albums would make my top 30. Or top 300.
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