Show Review: Gil Scott-Heron Today

I tried to curb my anticipation for Gil Scott-Heron’s performance at the recently made over Regency Ballroom last Friday. But how could I? I wanted him to amaze, to enrapture with his musical poetics, and most secretly, to redeem my nebulous view of a 70s era, politicized soulfulness unrivaled by today’s musicianship. It’s an idealistic and surely ridiculous image we children of the 80s have learned of the decade before ours. But it’s one so ingrained and endlessly reminded that we can’t seem to shake it free.

While Los Angeles revival funk band Orgone grooved (peep their solid cover of “Funky Nassau”), singer Fanny Franklin expressed an equal excitement about bearing witness to the legend. And when Scott-Heron finally stepped onto stage, strutting choppily to the microphone, the audience erupted in wailing applause and shouts. He looked older and moved with certain difficulty, his body appearing thin underneath his loose fitting clothes. His face was angular and gaunt with patches of gray hair pouring from the sides of his hat and from his chin. A lady sitting in front of me asked incredulously if that old man indeed was Gil. I nodded with certainty but really had no idea. After all, he’s hardly recognizable compared to his younger self clad with the iconic afro and psychedelic garb. Today, it’s a rare occurrence to see Gil Scott-Heron. He has been in and out of prison for the past decade on drug and parole transgression charges. Some reports imply his suffering from being HIV positive, something Scott-Heron addressed perhaps indirectly when he told the Regency that a media frenzy on the internet continues to concoct all sorts of chimeras about his life.

Ebbing our immediate impressions, Scott-Heron opened with a consciously cheesy comedy routine where he got comfortable with the crowd. It reminded me of the legend’s simple humanity -- like a venerable uncle who still tells bad jokes at a family dinner. As soon as the routine verged on the unbearable, he transitioned into a monologue and solo song in tribute to Sister Fannie Lou Hamer. And when Scott-Heron’s voice boomed forth from his brittle body, everyone immediately felt his unparalleled soulfulness and brilliance. With age, Scott-Heron’s bright voice has gained a hoarse resonance, adding even more layers to his street inspired poetics and wisdom.

Gil Scott-Heron guided his soul-jazz outfit, the Amnesia Express, through some of the strongest moments of his catalogue. The band retained a decidedly solid hold on their expressionistic 70s earthliness but bent towards a lush, jazzy psychedelia. Although technically rusty and hiccuping occasionally with offbeat rhythms, it worked. Scott-Heron bellowed “We Almost Lost Detroit” to set the mood for a conflicted era shaped as much by violence as hope and love. He lamented today’s popular understanding of jazz as a sterile and passive musical style with a charging take on “Is That Jazz?” And in waxing poetic to introduce “Winter In America”, Scott-Heron pondered whether the season’s indifferent coldness might be revenge for us cherishing the other seasons more. A fifteen minute version of “The Bottle” -- sung in a dreamy, melancholic tone -- swept the climax. The performance swayed from lyrical musings to groove laden songs and improvised solos, each song extended into a prolonged and interwoven narrative.

Despite the real possibility of coming off trite, there was a remarkable sincerity to Gil Scott-Heron. His creative expression stemmed from life experience rather than a need to perform a spectacle and preach a message before a crowd. Song reflected life and life in turn was shaped and illuminated by song. For a moment I felt that magnitude of revolutionary spirit burning distant in another hazy generation. It was aged and hardened in one man’s beautiful, gravely voice, and filled the auditorium with its sweetness.

Album Review: Nickodemus' Sun People

My editor at the Guardian just passed me the new Nickodemus record, Sun People, for a review. I'm usually hesitant of world music despite my absolute love for all sorts of outernational sounds, from Mulatu Atstatke to Turkish psych and Brazillian bossa nova. You just never know whether the producer will pull off a uniquely multiculturally inspired sound, or just reap the benefits of marketing to the crassly cultured NPR audience who fiend for the next opportunity to bust stagnant salsa moves on the next fundraiser galla dance floor. Nickodemus is far beyond this cheese. Dude makes an excellent brand of uplifting, groove heavy music.

Live Review: Erykah Badu Gets Out of Her Mind

In anticipation of releasing her brilliant sound odyssey, New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008), Erykah Badu, a.k.a. “Analogue Girl in A Digital World,” a.k.a. “Fat Belly Bella,” a.k.a. “Low Down Loretta Brown,” clarified her artistic objectives on an Okayplayer form. Posting as analoguegirl, Badu affirmed, “As much as I would love to be just a recording artist, I am not. There’s a difference. I am a performance artist first; there’s a difference.” Having the chance to see Badu perform live at the Warfield June 6, I could not agree more with her distinction.

Erykah Badu performs at L.A.'s Club Nokia June 5, 2009, the night before her San Francisco gig. Photo by Beth Stirnaman via LA Record.

Dressed in a mystical mauve kimono, golden skull cap, and gem encrusted space goggles, Badu strutted onstage in profile, tracing her steps forward like a celestial, hieroglyph narrative. A cinematic whirling rainstorm of bleeps and lasers and synth bubbling keys reverberated in the background, aspiring to transport the audience to the far reaches. This intergalactic resonance would remain the most consistent frequency throughout the performance; each transition of song and style marked by its cosmic joy of noise. Badu’s enigmatic presence recalled Sun Ra’s theatrical myth making, framed by an open ended aesthetic in Egyptology and a surreal space age, radicalized belief in the power of music to free the soul from its rusty, earthly shackles.

But this outlandish and historically rooted ethos did not restrain Badu’s emphasis on the contemporary. The high priestess of hip-hop soul incorporated the gods of our musical past into the urgency of the now. The tensions of old and new styles and sounds continuously pressed against each other throughout the remarkable performance.

Sometimes the antagonisms felt dramatically sharp. To introduce the set before Badu entered stage, her solid boogie funk outfit played a couple of the original tracks sampled in the production of 4th World War. The tribute to these musical foundations was contrasted by the DJ dropping Lil Wayne’s gutter poetry banger, “A Milli,” a wild song that encapsulates the sonic zeitgeist of the youngest generation of hip-hop heads. At other times Badu chose -- in a smoother fashion -- to synthesize contrasting musical elements with her own highly original, personal touch. Armed with a vigorous back catalog, Badu redefined some of classic soul grooves like “On and On” and “Didn’t Cha’ Know” in accordance to 4th World War’s coarsely textured and somewhat dissonant sonic landscape. While crooning her smoked-out throwback joint, “Back in the Day”, Badu cut in and out of the song to channel her muses, tracing the aggressive and playful soundscapes of Ice Cube and Slick Rick to feel good soul jams and real old school bluesy ballads. At one moment Badu reinvigorated her moniker, jazz scatting to sing the cosmic electronic keys in Afrika Bambaata’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat” all while reproducing the unforgettable bass line on the drum machine. To arrange such a complex performance -- seamlessly referencing and remixing musical history in a compellingly contemporary style -- Badu succeeded in translating and expanding the formal aesthetic of the hip-hop DJ into the art of the composer-singer. I’m not even overstating it.

While unraveling the many historical layers behind her sound, Badu slowly unburdened herself of wardrobe layers. Each shedding of an item enabled one of the many schizophrenic characters which make up the complicated being of Erykah Badu to manifest. The initial, arkestral space creature transformed into a golden headed free flowing being, and for the second act, Badu changed garb completely into a simple red summer dress. She whisked around the stage like a funkified ballerina, singing from her younger-aged repertoire of intimate coming-of-age joints. Shining the spotlight on her own personal struggles, Badu showed us the conflicted trajectory which led her to the apotheosis of her new mythological project articulated most transparently in “Healer,” the cyphered song marking the opening and closure of the first act. In “Healer,” Badu refines her musical vision, declaring a mysteriously therapeutic and transcendental power of hip-hop as more expansive than religious or governmental entities. The meaning behind this notion of spiritualized hip-hop is left vague, but there might be a clue in Badu’s closing actions. The sorceress sips her tea and implores the crowd, “Get out of your mind!” Badu is certainly out of her own.

This article was co-published on SFBG.

Dancing in the Rain: Hiphop in the Park '09

Bayonics - Live HHiP 2009


J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science - live HHiP 2009


Blu - Dancing in the Rain - live HHiP 2009


Yo god, I been bloggin' for a minute! The 13th annual Hiphop in the Park comes around, and I realize that this is the first time I'm scribin' double on an event. But more amazing than my own silly ass jazz, let's meditate a moment on UC Berkeley's Students For Hiphop group holding it down for the thirteenth year straight!

Think of it, each four years the torch has to be passed on to next generation of Hiphop heads in student form. In that case this is the fourth generation of beat driven park slangin' youngins who follow through with tradition and still push it forward on the next level for the new kids comin' up on the block. Thanks to yall for providing the livest jam for the whole community!

For those unfamiliar with the ritual, Hiphop in the Park is an annual celebration of the ultramagnetic spirit of Hiphop for the people by the people, and harmoniously enough, in Berkeley's very own People's Park. Breakers boast commandos on the linoleum, DJ's cut it up on the decks, graffiti writers bomb the boards, spit flows from MC's like hot blooded revolution, poetry expands the mental to the most high, and on the absolutely fundamental tip, the people from all walks of life celebrate the joy of living.

I admit I was worried this year. The rain clouds cast a dark spell on my expectations for the course of the Saturday afternoon. But even when I arrived at one, the park was already bubbling with over 100 heads, posted up with hoodies and umbrellas unwilling to let nature's gloom take away from their high spirits. By the time the ten piece funkified Hiphop outfit Bayonics hit it off, the rain had already subsided to occasional drizzles. And once Bambu ripped the mic with Phatrick cuttin' it up on the clocks, you could feel the shadowed rays of a sun just slightly reverberating in the clouds.


I definitely have to credit the highlights of the afternoon to J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science and the ever talented headliners, Blu & Exile. J-Boogie along with his brass band and a hoarde of mad decent lyristics delivered an amazing set in the lines of his recently dropped "Soul Vibrations" album sprinkled with more than a couple tracks of new material. And while Blu might have inhaled a little too much of that North Cali herb for his own good (memory loss!), he still together with beat conducta' extraodinair Exile, showed us why the duo is making some ridiculously potent music for the two thousands. Who knew dancing in the rain could sound, and feel, so fresh?

If you missed it, I got the live cuts, if the live cuts ain't good enough, rituals come consistently. See you next year!

Live Cuts: James Got Ants in his Pants

Live Cuts: James Pants SF 2009


Little did I expect to sneak into the Great American Hall to see the Stonesthrow Records DJ tour. After all, I already bought tickets to peep the label originator, Peanut Butter Wolf's, on the video spinning tip and a couple live shows by the likes of James Pants and the newly signed old skool soul stunna, Mayer Hawthorne. But damn. Handheld recorders are not allowed in elite venues like the GAMH. I would hope for a little more openness from a historic venue of counter-culture San Francisco, tucked neatly in the Tenderloin quarter's strip club turned early bird special prostitute haven.

For the sake of steady bloggin', you know I got to break the rules. For this edition of "Live Cuts" James Pants freaks out a fresh monster jam, "Let Me Brush", with his band, Royal Zodiac. While not much is known on the blogosphere about the newly formed outfit, they certainly can rip some unadulterated funk. While the band holds down a heavy backbeat, flooded with high tonal keys and bass guitar riffs, Mr. Pants flops around like a wild salmon on stage maneuvering between a cowbell, percussion, keyboards, and the microphone all while trying to keep his cool. Although staying debonair might be too much to ask for anyone trying to fill the role of three other band members, Pants puts in an exceptionally entertaining and sonically pleasing effort.

The live sound from Pants and Royal Zodiac feels more new wave funk than the electro-boogie overtones of last year's refreshingly original debut album, Welcome. The leaning towards improvising on the keys and manipulating synth laden atmospherics experiments with the vibrance of the lush arrangements but without too much finesse, interrupts the steady groove. Adorned with a poof-ball beanie, Pant's exercises the most astutely ironic, pop antics, as he bounces sporadically and thrashes his hips in diamond like angles akin to a slightly confused and feverish David Bowie gyrating with ants in his pants. The show certainly adds much needed cohesion to the multi-flavorded music, he just doesn't look all that comfortable playing the role.

Live Cuts: The Windy Budos

Caught the Budos Band blast out their latest afro-soul powered set last night at the Independent. I wanted to experiment with some in crowd live recording on that mad clandestine level with my handheld. Fuck pictures, I got the imagery of sound baby.

Budos Band live 04-15-09 Ind. SF 1

Once "Los Barbudos", the bearded black haired members of all possible styles shortened their name to Budos after someone decided to shave off the face scruff. Well, now they thrive fully bearded again, funkifying the spectrum of afro rhythms and psychedelic melodies off the highly successful soul revival label, Daptone Records.

The eleven piece outfit (short on some brass this time) played a range of songs from their discography and new joints off the up and coming album. The sound journeyed through adrenaline charged dance numbers, springing horns and funky backbeat, to far out meditative jams serrated with electric keys laced upon an endless, hypnotizing bongo percussion.

While Budos enthusiastically thrives in pumping the dance floor full of sweaty grinding bodies, I found them strongest in their spacey experiment with psychedelified afro-funk. These tracks are definitely in debt to the original arrangements of Mulatu Astatke', Ehiophia's premiere jazz / funk virtuoso. They sway with the wind of the Mediterranean, soaking up the African sun, and finally washed over the dirty Summer waters of their home place, Staten Island New York.

Album Review: RZA Loses Focus w/ Digisnacks

Last winter, New York's seminal Wu-Tang Clan dropped the highly debated 8 Diagrams, marking the fifth and perhaps final chronicle in their kung fu Hiphop mythology. Powerhouse members of the Clan, primarily Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, met widespread criticism and poor album sales with fingers pointed at their musical director and spiritual leader, Robert Diggs, known to most simply as RZA.

Devoted Wu-Tang connoisseurs shrugged their shoulders at Digg's unworkable sonic explorations, hoping that a second coming of RZA's alter-ego, Bobby Digital, the futuristic street hustler sage, would vindicate the co-founder by proving the genius of his beatsmith experiments.

However, not only does Digi Snacks never venture into the unchartered psychedelic Hiphop territory of 8 Diagrams, it also fails to weave together the brooding cinematic coherency that typically marks RZA’s grime-soul production.

Digi Snacks fumbles endlessly for a sense of identity, jumping abruptly from introspective meditations on death in the slicing “Long Time Coming,” to the flailing club banger, “Straight up the Block,” that negotiates Digital’s slowed down clunking rhymes en français, hyper-speed Jay-Z vocals formed into the hook, and silly thug rants courtesy of David Banner.

The sonic environment parallels the schizophrenic lyrical content, steering wildly through spacey video game sound effects mismatched over crisp syncopated drums that only occasionally pull the flows back down to earth.

RZA pushes his idiosyncratic gritty-shaman style on a few singles, but the most notable joints lose their credibility when placed within the washed out context of the album as a whole. The hardest hitting joint on Digi Snacks, “You Can’t Stop me Now,” a soul powered epic devoted to the Wu-Tang legacy, made many (including myself) prematurely believe Diggs could rejuvenate the prowess of the Clan.

Featuring the ubiquitously sampled chant “No matter how hard you try / you can’t stop me now” from psych-soul group Whatnauts’ single, “Message From a Black Man,” RZA interweaves melodic chords of lingering bass plucks over crunchy percussive claps. Nonetheless, upon completion of listening to Digi Snacks, the championing flow of the song rings hollow, and might keep you second guessing whether it was just the sample that made Digital sound fresh in the first place.

We might give Diggs the credit that the personality disorder inflicted Bobby Digital reflects the ongoing internal battles that plague us in the digital age, as the album commences with a short introduction to the conflicted savior-gangster as a character “that struggles between the good and evil within himself.” But Digi Snacks glides on the boundaries of any spiritual synthesis, succeeding in providing the listener with only what the title offers, a haphazard assortment of decadent side dishes that not only feel gluttonous, but also leave the listener hungry for a fulfilling meal.

Here's the track list. The last song is ill (so, listen to tracks 2, 3, and 16)

01: Digi Snacks (feat. Understanding)
02: Long Time Coming (feat. Danny Keyz)
03: You Can't Stop Me Now (feat. Inspectah Deck)
04: Straight Up the Block (feat. David Banner, Beretta 9 & Monk)
05: Booby Trap (feat. Dexter Wiggles)
06: Try Ya Ya Ya (feat. Monk & Thea)
07: Good Night (feat. Reverend William Burke, Thea & Crisis)
08: No Regrets
09: Money Don't Own Me (feat. Monk, Christbearer & Stone Mecca)
10: Creep (feat. Black Knights, Christbearer & Thea)
11: Drama (feat. Monk & Thea)
12: Up Again (feat. Beretta 9, Reverend William Burke, George Clinton & El DeBarge)
13: Put Your Guns Down (feat. Startel)
14: Love is Digi Pt. II (feat. Beretta 9, Crisis & Thea)
15: O Day
16: Don't Be Afraid

Waste your time and download it.
Waste your money and buy it off koch records.

Review: Erykah Badu's New Amerykah

Ten years ago Erykah Badu ushered in the birth of what we now know as neo-soul music with her trend setter Baduizm. Expect to hear the nu soul conventions broken, twisted, and completely transformed in the 4^th World War, part one of an ongoing concept project entitled New Amerykah. Finding inspiration in Funkadelic cosmic grooves, the loving croons of Minnie Ripperton, and the playfulness of De La Soul contrasted by the street smarts of Eric B. and Rakim, Badu takes the listener on a chopped up musical voyage of heartfelt sound and imagery. Leaving behind the simple coherence of Baduism that championed headwraps, ankhs, and astrological lyricism, Badu achieves a more authentic voice with her broader, more complex perspective.

Hiphop’s finest funky soul crate diggers of today (sorry Pete Rock) – Madlib, 9^th Wonder, and the Sa-Ra collective – provide Badu with the head nodding smooth production that really allows the power of her voice to ride the sonic waves. On the opening track, the Healer, Badu proclaims an ode to Hiphop culture, “bigger than religion... bigger than the government,” and specifically, praise to the legacy of the late J Dilla. Badu steadies her penetrating voice over a gritty Detroit hand clap boom bap that sounds part like a rebirth of the culture and due to a ghostly background chant, an eerie funeral oration of its demise.

As if the track did not remind one enough of Dilla, Badu slams it into our ears with her flipped up rendition of the seminal Donuts joint, My People, where she puts new soul into the original Eddie Kendricks cut. Badu chants “my people,” elongating the syllables as they fade into the break beat, swaying hypnotically with the thrusting momentum of fast synth clips charged with a resounding bass line.

Adding complexity to the album that warrants its replay value, Badu shifts styles right in the thick of it. The contemplative melodies of the beginning tracks are complemented by the body jerking funk groove of “The Cell” where Badu skillfully crafts together multiple styles of singing from aggressive raps to jazzy skatting. She unifies the uplifting sound into a critique on poverty, drug abuse, and violence that avoids cliché thanks to its potent visual language, “Mama hopped up on cocaine, Daddy on spaceships to no brain.”

The album finishes with the “bonus track,” Honey, the catchy single bumping a heavy wa-wa guitar that reaches towards tying together the P-Funkish introduction but strangely fits the least with the conceptual scheme of the preceding tracks. Honey nonetheless stands on its own as an impressive balance of playfulness, “I’m in love with a bumblebee,” and a serious proclamation of joy.

The varying tracks are drawn together by Badu’s delicate mastery of merging the personal with the political reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield. Knowledge of Erykah the woman in the largest sense sheds light on the overall situation of our people on the planet Earth. The pun of the title, New Amerykah, therefore makes perfect sense even if the subtitle of 4^th World War gets lost in the bumbling shifts from one subject to the next that sometimes forgets its central insight.

In flipping the rules of the neo-soul game, Badu is not only reconstructing her own personal mode of expression, but also perhaps more daringly, seeking to achieve the most ambitious objective of music - to move the world in a different direction.


If you haven't peeped the video of Honey then check it. How many classic albums do you recognize?