I confess, I’m confused as to the current status of Carolinian Hip-Hop crew Little Brother. They’re a group I’ve long championed. Me and Emeyesi broke their first single in our region via mixtape and late-night radio spins. And we burned the shit out of their debut LP, giving it extra-special attention after we found multiple radio-clean promo copies of it in the radio station trash. I’ve also supported a whole stack of records from members of their Justus League crew with radio and mixtape spins and reviews elsewhere on the internets. But since the departure of 9th Wonder and Phonte’s leak of Getback the trajectory of Little Brother as a group has become increasingly difficult for me to follow.
Which isn’t to say I haven’t noticed projects from the group’s members popping up across the web. The group’s always been prolific when it came to side-projects though. Phonte in particular stepped out early on with The Foreign Exchange, his Postal Service-for-the-internet-age collaboration with Dutch producer Nicolay. Their debut LP Connected, which married slick Sophistipop-ish jazzy R&B vibes, ’80s synthesizer-Pop melodies, bump-bump drums, warm sub-bass and vocal performances that shift between soulful histrionics and conversational rhymes imbued with LB’s signature grit and real-talk, was mesmerizing. But it also pissed me off because the accessible sheen of its melodic, some might say pretty, songcraft was often clouded by coarse language that diffused the image of timeless classicism it verged on displaying.
Granted, rappers’ abuse of the “potty mouth” was a common gripe of mine when I was playing records on the public airwaves every week. I was especially frustrated that so many Hip-Hop artists complained about lack of media exposure when they made music that just wasn’t appropriate for radio play. And I was doubly frustrated when that music, like The Foreign Exchange’s, would otherwise have widespread appeal to radio listeners if only I could play it for them without rousing the ire of the FCC. That shouldn’t be as much of problem when it comes to Leave It All Behind, the new full-length from Nicolay, Phonte and company (a cast that includes longtime J-League collaborators Darien Brockington and YahZarah, and Washington D.C.-based Future-Soul wunderkind & Blogarhythms dandy Muhsinah) which has been available via iTunes since last week and hit all other retailers this week.
Expletives aren’t the only thing Phonte’s left (largely…) behind on Leave It All Behind as he spends most of the album’s 44+ minute playtime cooing and crooning smoothly in full-on R&B loverman mode and only kicks a rough-n-tumble rap now-and-again. Like I said at the top of this post, Little Brother was always my shit, but I’m even more impressed with the Phonte who’s emotive kin to the likes of D’Angelo, Stevie, Smokey and Marvin than the one who’s a younger sibling of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth. I mentioned a couple of weeks back in reference to recent albums from Solange and Jazmine Sullivan that a modern commercial R&B record has to be really spectacular for me to want to blog about it. Well, Leave It All Behind is a spectacular fucking R&B record, and a great deal of its success in that respect has to do with how convincing Phonte is as a smooth, sensitive Soul-man and how skilled he is as a vocalist.
The rest of Leave It All Behind’s success is due to Nicolay’s expertise as a musician, composer, arranger and producer. He pulled a Quincy Jones on this shit. And it should be the record that establishes him unquestionably as one of the major talents in modern classic-inspired orchestral Soul and sophisticated Pop music production. Seriously, he’s the dude that someone like an Amy Winehouse needs to be looking at when she’s ready for that grown-up post-”Rehab” makeover. Like Pharrell was the kid who everybody thought could put Michael Jackson back on that “Rock With You” shit, Nicolay is the guy who could get Jacko singing about “The Lady In My Life” again and have everybody convinced. His work on Leave It All Behind is just that outstanding. It’s like a masterclass in modernizing authentic old-school sounds without sounding “retro.”
Prince-ish synths caress muscular drum programming on “All Or Nothing.” Proggy Jazz-Fusion, Electronica and experimental Indie-Rock melt together on the Muhsinah-assisted “House of Cards,” which — with it’s sputtering drum-machine, layers of keyboard & synthesizer instruments, crashing cymbals and stumbling drum-beat — sounds like Radiohead covering George Duke’s “For Love (I Come Your Friend).” Another primitive drum-machine beat moves the swaying, Samba-influenced title track, which is Bacharachian Pop-Soul (with a smattering of Terry Callieresque Folk) of the most beautiful stripe, and should make the likes of Zero 7 jealous. While the stripped-down mix of synths, piano and jazzy drumming on “Sweeter Than You,” which also boasts a righteous electric guitar solo, recalls Stevie Wonder during his Innervisions and Songs In the Key of Life era. The same goes for the thumping, Latin-tinged coda at the end of “If She Breaks You Heart” (a cover of a song from Stevie’s soundtrack to Jungle Fever where YahZarah gets her Deniece Williams on) which verges on downtempo House or Broken-Beat, a style explored in-depth on “If This Is Love.”
The Foreign Exchange “House of Cards” feat. Muhsinah
Not only is Leave It All Behind the best R&B album I heard this year, it’s the one of the best albums of any genre that’s been released during 2008. Beyond that it might be my favorite R&B album since D’Angelo’s Voodoo, and may even be my favorite Little Brother/Justus League-affiliated record of their entire history. It’s quite simply one of the most progressive yet still “classic” sounding records I’ve heard recently, something I don’t expect to say about contemporary R&B projects, which are often stuck in a post-Uptown/Bad Boy Hip-Hop/Soul rut, crunked-up and thugged-out, or content to mine the past for whatever traces of vintage authenticity they can revive.
Those are all things The Foreign Exchange wisely leave behind. And the result is a near timeless record no self-respecting music lover should dare to.
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