Author: Jeff Giles (Page 1 of 41)

Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday

November 24, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Rihanna, Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim

Kick off your first album with a track titled “I’m the Best,” and you’re making a hell of an announcement — either you’re more gifted than your peers, or you’ve just got the biggest balls. With Pink Friday, Nicki Minaj displays a bit of both: though it’s admittedly an uneven affair, this album contains some of the best hip-hop/R&B you’re likely to hear in 2010, and while it doesn’t play to Minaj’s otherworldly rapping talent as often as many fans would no doubt prefer, it still makes for an intoxicating, eclectic debut.

Of course, unlike most new artists, Minaj has the advantage of being a known quantity before her album even reaches shelves; she’s been all over the charts as a guest artist for months, popping up on songs by Lil Wayne, Trey Songz, M.I.A., Drake, Usher, and others – including Kanye West, whose “Monster” features an incendiary Minaj verse that outclasses everyone else on the song, including Jay-Z and Rick Ross. Nothing on Pink Friday comes close to “Monster” – not even “Roman’s Revenge,” her profane, rapid-fire showdown with Eminem – but that isn’t really the point. Minaj has a lot of weapons in her arsenal, and this album is meant to display them all, while aiming directly at Top 40 radio.

What’s somewhat surprising, given her aggressive/aggressively weird image, is just how savvy Minaj’s pop instincts are – and how successfully Pink Friday makes room for them while incorporating plenty of singularly Nicki moments. This is an album that makes heavy use of Buggles and Annie Lennox samples, and features will.i.am, Rihanna, and Natasha Bedingfield cameos – but it takes the fetid roar of “Roman’s Revenge” and “Did It On ‘Em” to tell the whole story, and she brings both halves together in the stunning “Right Thru Me,” which takes breathless verses about reckless love and leads them into a chorus that brilliantly, nakedly asks: “You see right through me / How do you do that shit?”

That kind of duality is hard to distill in a pop song, and with Pink Friday, Nicki Minaj doesn’t always succeed. But her punches connect more often than they miss – and if that’s mostly because she never stops throwing them, well, that only makes it that much harder to stop listening. Her peers had better lock in those guest spots now – a few more albums like this one, and the words “feat. Nicki Minaj” will be a lot more expensive than they are now. (Universal/Cash Money 2010)

Nicki Minaj MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Hip Hop, R&B

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Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

November 23, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco

In these days of PR flacks and image groomers, the era of the divisive, unpredictable pop star is almost a distant memory – now that we’re living in a world of infinite niche audiences, conventional wisdom says the only safe bet is to try and be all things to all people. But then there’s Kanye West, a guy whose propensity for water cooler-worthy gaffes seems to grow along with his sales; one of the few true stars left in the music industry, he’s also one of the least “managed” celebrities around, and while his actions have a tendency to alienate and offend, there’s something undeniably refreshing about a guy who blurts out whatever’s on his mind.

As an artist, West has always been just as messy – and just as captivating. It’s a shame that some people will never listen to his albums simply because of the things he’s said and done outside the recording studio, but part of his music’s appeal is how unfiltered it feels – the dude just can’t shut his mouth. In fact, for most of his fifth studio outing, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he sounds so blanketed in creative impulses that he can barely breathe – this is a record that careens from one emotional extreme to the next with dazzling urgency, so stuffed with ideas that it takes an army of guest stars and a series of wildly inflated running times to get them all out. On paper, it’s an ungodly, unwieldy mess, and further proof that West desperately needs an editor.

But through the speakers – where it counts – Fantasy lives up to each of the words in its title in equal measure: it’s a startlingly rich artistic outburst from a guy who’s made a career out of exceeding expectations, no matter how high they get. An about-face from 2008’s cold, insular 808s & Heartbreak, it signals a return to the anthemic, eclectic form he displayed on 2007’s Graduation, but it isn’t a retreat; rather, it’s a deepening and an extension of West’s playfully broad aesthetic. An album that incorporates a King Crimson sample, Bon Iver cameos, and a Chris Rock skit before closing with a dose of Gil Scott-Heron shouldn’t work; a song featuring Rihanna on the hook, Elton John playing piano, and Fergie rapping should collapse under the weight of its own ridiculous ambition. Fantasy contains all these things and many more, and defies the laws of pop physics as it goes – it’s the kind of record that keeps the ideas coming so quickly you don’t even notice the songs routinely stretch out past the five-minute mark. (In fact, four songs clock in over six minutes, with “Runaway” leading them all at 9:08.)

If there’s any real negative to draw from Fantasy, it’s the overriding sense that West is frantically pouring out ideas as quickly as they come; he’s too captivated by his muse to slow down – or to consider the consequences of failure. He won’t be able to maintain this pace forever, and when he finally does take a breath, it might be hard to resist the urge to think before he speaks. That’s just nervous nitpicking, though – and there’s no reason to waste your time with it when one of the best albums of the year is waiting to swagger its way into your brain. God only knows how West will top this one; here’s hoping it isn’t long before we get to hear him try. (Roc-a-Fella 2010)

Kanye West MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Hip Hop

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Norah Jones: …Featuring Norah Jones

November 16, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Diana Krall, Eva Cassidy, Bonnie Raitt

Since beginning with the smash hit Come Away With Me in 2002, Norah Jones’ recording career has been a study in slow, carefully measured decline. Clearly not willing to pigeonhole herself as a crooner of piano ballads, Jones has tugged away from the dulcet tones of her debut – but because she has label bosses to answer to (or maybe just because she’s smart enough to stay the course), she hasn’t totally broken with the sound that made her famous, and the result has been a string of lukewarm records that hint at the artist Jones wishes she could be, if only the stakes weren’t so high.

The shame of it all is that Jones’ kitten’s purr of a voice, while perfect for selling lattes, sounds just as fine – if not finer – out of its established context. Over the years, Jones has built a reputation for herself as a terrific guest vocalist with a wonderful sense of humor, popping up on recordings by everyone from Outkast to Ray Charles, and singing about everything from Chex Mix (on the Lonely Island song “Dreamgirl”) to motherfuckers (Peeping Tom’s “Sucker”). Sadly, neither of those songs made the cut for this collection, but you get the idea: …Featuring Norah Jones might bear the unmistakable stink of a contract-fulfillment release, but by bundling up 18 noteworthy collaborations, it does an arguably better job of highlighting her strengths than anything since Come Away With Me.

If there’s a real quibble here, it’s that the really left-field stuff (like the Lonely Island and Peeping Tom songs) was left off, and while you do get to hear Jones doing stuff she can’t do as a solo artist (like playing hook girl for Q-Tip and Talib Kweli on “Life Is Better” and “Soon the New Day,” respectively), much of …Featuring‘s charms are more subtle, like hearing her slip inside Joni Mitchell’s “Court & Spark” alongside Herbie Hancock, or her lovely vocals for Charlie Hunter’s “More Than This” cover. Taken as a whole, it doesn’t reinvent Jones’ sound the way she often seems halfway inclined to do, but it’s a damn sight more interesting than, say, 2009’s The Fall. Here’s hoping she listens to this compilation often while composing her next full-length set. (Blue Note 2010)

Norah Jones MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

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Rihanna: Loud

November 16, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera

Like any pop princess, Rihanna is only as good as the songs she’s given – which inevitably becomes a problem once sales drop and the label stops paying for top-shelf stuff (just ask Brandy, Monica, etc.) But on the occasion of her fifth album, Loud, she’s shining as brightly as any star in the music business, and the result is a singles-stuffed collection that, while certainly uneven, reestablishes Rihanna as a capable, charismatic vocalist.

As the title indicates, this isn’t exactly an introspective disc; even by the rather limited standards of modern R&B, the lyrics are a noticeable weak point. Fortunately, it usually doesn’t matter; for instance, although it’s redeemed by its earworm chorus and a goofy Drake cameo, “What’s My Name” is about as annoyingly basic as it sounds, while “Cheers (Drink to That)” is an average club anthem enlivened by strong production (including a nifty, unexpected a cappella interlude) and “Only Girl (In the World)” is a stone dumb club banger that perseveres by sheer virtue of insistence. Meanwhile, “S&M” and “Skin” are your average boudoir tracks, set apart only because Rihanna’s one of the better singers working in the genre.

Production and vocal power can’t save everything – power ballad “California King Bed” is a lumpy disaster that sounds like something Diane Warren found stuck to her shoe (“In this California king bed / We’re 10,000 miles apart”), and “Complicated” is the kind of love-to-hate-you number that Rihanna’s done better before (like on, say, “Hate That I Love You”). On the whole, though, the wheat-to-chaff ratio is admirably high; in such a singles-driven genre, it’s rare that you hear an album this light on filler, and given Rihanna’s hectic recording schedule, it’s easy to imagine a radio-worthy track missing single release. The gently stuttering “Fading” is the best kiss-off ballad she’s ever done, while the aggressive, reggae-tinged “Man Down” and the stomping “Man Down” (featuring Nicki Minaj, as required by law) find Rihanna dabbling, ever so slightly, in new directions. None of it feels as heavy as last year’s Rated R, but that’s obviously the point – this is the sound of a talented young singer getting dumb, and doing it in style. (Def Jam 2010)

Rihanna MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, R&B

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Kid Rock: Born Free

November 15, 2010 / Jeff Giles

RIYL: Bryan Adams, Bob Seger, Glenn Frey

It still hardly seems possible to those of us who remember the gleefully profane, barely conscious persona he cultivated with his first four albums (including his 1998 breakthrough Devil Without a Cause), but Kid Rock has somehow become the heir apparent to Bob Seger’s Motor City rock ‘n’ roll throne. In fact, modern rock is such a graveyard that Rock is damn near an elder statesman of the genre – the kind of artist who routinely draws fawning reviews from Rolling Stone, along with interviews where he’s given a forum to roll his eyes at Steven Tyler joining the judges’ table on “American Idol.” Actually, on that last count, Rock’s no guiltier than the rest of us. But you get the point – that stringy-haired honky rapper with the glassy-eyed stare and the fedora-and-wife-beater wardrobe was never supposed to grow up and give us songs like “Rock N’ Roll Pain Train,” “Rock N’ Roll,” “Rock N Roll Jesus,” and “Rock On.”

But here we are with Kid Rock’s eighth(!) studio album, the flag-wrapped Born Free, offering up a dozen mind-numbingly bland alternatives to actual old-time rock ‘n’ roll. If Seger’s classic records are as solidly unassuming as a cold can of Stroh’s, consider Born Free the equivalent of Natty Light – it’s cheap, and it’ll get the job done if you’re desperate enough, but it really should be better. Really, for the most part, this sounds a lot like an early ’90s Bryan Adams record – which is sort of fitting, considering that Adams’ Canuck take on heartland rock was just as counterfeit as this corny, Rick Rubin-produced collection of would-be anthems and motel ballads.

It feels strange to miss the guy who made songs as proudly brain-dead as “Bawitdaba,” but at least that song had balls and a dangerous vibe, however slight; these days, Rock’s gelded, commercial-ready music is slickly competent at best. On the Born Free album cover, he’s reclining in the back of a convertible, feet up on the seats, amber waves of grain in the background. You can’t tell that the car is rolling gently down the middle of the road, but you can definitely see that no one’s in the driver’s seat. (Atlantic 2010)

Kid Rock MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock

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