Robin Thicke – Something Else

Well, we’re coming up on my favorite time of the year again.  I’ll be able to wear jackets soon, I’ll have an extra hour of sleep on Sunday, and soon the airwaves will be free of these incessant political ads.

I hate that fucking shit.

I rarely use my land line at home any more, and I never answer it because anyone who really needs to get a hold of me has my cell phone number.  So I was pretty surprised the other day to check it and find eight messages.  My first reaction was that maybe I had forgotten to pay a bill…or the Elks Lodge autodialer was on the fritz and called me eight times.  Wrong on both counts.

All eight were recorded political messages.  Why anyone thinks these things are effective is beyond me.  I just erased all of them without listening.  And while I don’t hate Robin Thicke and his fucking mind-blowingly awesome new album “Something Else,” I would certainly like to.

I mean, come on…look at him!  He looks like a million douchebags out there.  Pretty boy good looks, rich pimp of a dad, connections up the ass.  It’s almost a shame that he kicks so much ass.

Born in 1977 to actress Gloria Loring and actor Alan Thicke, Robin showed an interest in music from an early age…especially the sound of classic soul music.  It probably didn’t hurt that his father was a well known theme music composer and writer who wrote the theme songs to “Different Strokes,” “The Facts of Life” and a slew of popular game shows. So at 16 he decided to pursue music as a career and was soon to Interscope subsidiary Nu America recordings where he started writing songs for artists such as Mya, Usher and Marc Anthony as well as writing and co-producing his own album under the name Thicke.

The album, 2002’s “A Beautiful World” was released on the strength of it’s ‘Fifth of  Beethove’ sampling single ‘When I Get You Alone.’ But, without a strong second single and minuscule promotion, the album didn’t do very well. 

At 28 he had his first Grammy for his work on Usher’s “Confessions.” He signed with The Neptunes Star Trak label and  started work on his sophomore effort “The Evolution of Robin Thicke.”  After building the hype with the first single ‘Wanna Love U Girl,’ released in 2005, the album was released a year later and eventually went platinum.  I love that album a lot, and had considered using it here, until I heard “something Else.”

While I enjoyed Robin’s previous work and his amazing retro sound, “Evolution” seems to be a lot like it’s title…an evolution towards something better.  With “Something Else,” it seems like the evolution is over and Robin Thicke has finally made it to where he was going. Whether he’s channeling Jimi and Curtis on ‘Hard On My Love,’ or Marvin on the smooth ‘Loverman’ Thicke looks back affectionately at the past while blasting into the future.  When my friend Sean played it for me in his car on the way to the Clippers game, I prayed the drive would take long enough for me to absorb the entire album without stopping.

It would be easy to dismiss his work as just a throwback sound-alike if he wasn’t such a great songwriter and producer.  The problem with most new soul and R&B artists is they tend to sound alike.  Reaching back to bygone hits, taking everything that made them great and making it his own…Robin pretty much just kills it here.

It really is that good, and with a range that swings from “getting busy” to “getting down” it’s as versatile as it is awesome.  Gets my vote for R&B album of the year.  No doubt. 

I can’t wait to see where he goes next.

Michael Jackson – Thriller

A lot has been said about old MJ over the last 20 years. 

All rumor and innuendo aside, he strikes me as a kind of tragic figure in the music world.  Here was a guy who hit it big as a child star in The Jackson 5, then went out and became an international superstar almost over night.  He literally ruled the pop world, putting out two consecutive classic albums, and one “sort of alright” album before the musical downhill slide really began.

Now living as a pariah somewhere (Dubai?) I look back and think “It’s too bad he surrounded himself with the wrong people.”

Too many “Yes Men” seems to be the root of the problem, at least to me.  Michael strikes me as someone who didn’t have anyone telling him “no” very often…or didn’t keep them around if they did.  So, instead they all just nodded at everything he said, and kept telling him he was brilliant.

There was no one to tell him that hanging around young boys all the time might not be a good idea, and could be viewed as “creepy.”  No one got through to him and said “Mikey, you might want to invest some of this money you have lying around instead of buying a zoo.”  No one suggested he just “own” his skin condition and stop walking around wearing masks, or perhaps not dressing like some sort of glittery circus ringmaster.

Or maybe people tried, but no one was successful.

But most of all, MJ was not made to understand that if he just stopped whining about conspiracies or being misunderstood, and just go back to making awesome, no nonsense R&B again…he might still have a career.

Seriously.

For years I kept asking myself, why doesn’t he get The Neptunes to produce his next album?  Why isn’t he working with Timberlake?  Why is he still trying to relive the 80’s?

For the love of God, this is the kid who made “Off The Wall” when he was twenty-one years old!!! And then , for an encore…he made “Thriller!”

The year was 1982, and still reeling from his fathers recently admitted affair, Jackson teamed up with his “Off The Wall’ producer Quincy Jones to begin his second album in April of that year.   Michael had one vision for the record, summed up with his question of  “Why can’t you make an album where every song is a hit?”  Unlike his previous albm, “Thriller” took on a much darker tone from the beginning, as Michael dealt with issues in his life and clashed with Jones in the studio. 

Out of the nine songs on the album, Jackson wrote four:  ‘The Girl is Mine’(with Paul McCartney), ‘Wanna Be Startin Somethin,’ ‘Beat It,’ and the seminal dance floor destroyer ‘Billie Jean.’  Better yet, he never wrote them down on paper, but instead dictated them into a recorder, then sang them later from memory.

I think its important to note that not all of Jackson’s arguments with Jones were misguided, as was the case with ‘Billie Jean.’  Jones wanted to leave the song off the album, as he felt it wasn’t strong enough.  When Jackson insisted on keeping it, Jones wanted him to cut down the intro instead…but Michael held firm saying it “made him want to dance.”  We came that close to being denied one of the greatest dance songs of all time.

Wanting more of a rock song feel to ‘Beat It’ that would appeal to all tastes, they spent weeks looking for an appropriate guitar player to accompany Michael on drums.  The kid they settled on was Eddie Van Halen.  The title song, ‘Thriller’ was written by by songwriter Rod Temperton, who had collaborated with Michael on his previous album with ‘Rock with You’ and ‘Off The Wall.’  (Unfortunately for the rest of us, he also penned the Michael McDonald hit ‘Yah Mo B There.’)

When all was said and done though, “Thriller” had become the best selling album of all time with seven of it’s nine songs becoming hit singles.  That and it was one of the first albums to use the new music video genre to it’s full marketing potential…especially with the John Landis directed 14 minute mini movie that was ‘Thriller.’ 

Shit, I remember staying up late to see that one premier on MTV!

So, in closing, I’d like to pretend that the Michael of today just doesn’t exist…because with the brilliant promise of the album at the time, it might have been better if he retired to producing afterwards.  Nuff said.

Maxwell – Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite

Black folks and white folks don’t always agree on everything, and when they do find common ground, it’s always an occasion to celebrate.  But they sometimes find things in common that you wouldn’t expect.

Like line dancing.

I was at a party at the Elks Lodge the other day and was digging the DJ’s selection when he started throwing down r&b line dancing songs…and the ladies went wild.  As I sat with jaw agape and watched as the scene played out, I pondered how one of the strangest white people dance crazes had made the cultural transition.  The moves were the same…just sans boots and hats, but only the music was different. 

It had to be the music. 

Speaking of music that all folks can agree on (minus the line dancing,) I had pretty much written off the chance that any new soul or r&b was going to impress me when this album dropped in 1996.  Who could blame me?  Even Columbia Music had doubts, since the album  was finished in 1994 and shelved for two years over concerns that the public wouldn’t get it. (once again the labels show their infinite wisdom) 

But get it they did. 

With a sound that hearkens back to the early seventies soul sound, Maxwell dropped the bomb on us before we even knew it.  Just the opening chords of ‘The Urban Theme’ melting away into the sweet stickiness of ‘Welcome’ are enough to make panties drop at twenty paces.  Before this album, I didn’t know they could make em like this anymore.  A perfect accompanying piece to any lounge night, cocktail function, or doing the nasty.  Other notable sounds  are ‘Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)’ and my personal favorite ‘Til the Cops Come Knockin.’ 

Some of his later work is good too, but this one is so…butter.  Check him out below doing a smoking cover of the Nine Inch Nails classic: ‘Closer.’