Music
The SB Best of 2007 Mixtape
By Mark Anthony Neal—SeeingBlack.com Contributing Editor
Dec 31, 2007, 15:59

1. Jill Scott—“How’s It Make You Feel” from The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3
Admittedly, I’ve never gotten over the Jill that I fell in love with after the release of Who is Jill Scott?: Words and Sound, Vol. 1 in 2000. There was just a magic—an innocence about Jill and the music “they” called neo-Soul—that was embodied in those bright eyes that peered out on the album cover. Seven years later the bitterness of never really breaking through to the mainstream, a failed marriage and the apparent invisibility of fully grown—and fully formed—Black women in the popular realm stick to The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 like honey on Formica. It’s hard to know if the Rutgers’ women’s basketball team, Megan Williams, or the victim in the Dunbar Village gang rape were on Scott’s mind when she wrote and recorded “How It Make You Feel.” In a moment though, when it is so difficult to locate the subjectivities of Black women in popular culture and media (and let’s be real Oprah and Condi have never been simply “Black women”),Scott ups the ante by daring to ask, what if my ass—and those of every Black female in this culture—disappeared?

2. Rahsaan Patterson—“Oh Lord (Take me Back)” from Wine & Spirits
It’s been a decade since Rahsaan Patterson broke through with his debut recording for the MCA label. For those up in corporate though—Ronnie Dyson, one of Patterson’s primary musical influences, or the image of a sanctified little Jimmy Baldwin (I always loved how Amiri Baraka simply called the legendary writer “Jimmy” during his eulogy for him, 20 years ago this month)—simply didn’t register. Patterson has long been off the mainstream radar. Wine & Spirits, Patterson’s latest offering, is his second independent release and “Oh Lord (Take Me Back)” is brilliant riff on the sanctified world that birthed him.


3. Pharoahe Monch—“Welcome to the Terrordome” from Desire
Desire won’t get love that Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool will on most year-end assessments (and indeed most read like an accountant’s index rather than a measure of artistic merit) and that probably has to do with Pharoahe Monch outgrowing the “hip-hop smarty-pants,” to quote my man Bakari, that drive the marketplace of so-called conscious rap. Whereas Fiasco can’t remember lyrics to the music of some of the genre’s true geniuses, Monch dares to remake Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome,” rendering the song more politically relevant than the original was when released in the spring of 1990. And let me clear, there was nothing more politically relevant for the Black, the young and the proud crowd in the late 1980s and 1990s than Public Enemy.

4. 4Hero featuring Darien Brockington—“Give In” from Play with the Changes
For years Darien Brockington has toiled along with Carolina’s Justus League, in relative obscurity and unfortunately, Brockington’s solo release Somebody to Love did little to change that. Leave it to North London’s 4Hero to give a brotha a reprieve. With fellow Justus leaguer and remaining Little Brother member Phonte in tow, Brockington’s “Give In” is a sweet taste of cosmopolitan Soul—much like the work of the woefully forgotten Charles Stepney (somebody get Maurice White, Richard Rudolph, or Terry Callier on the phone) whose legacy 4Hero continues to celebrate.

5. Stephanie McKay—“Rainbow” from the Soul-Patrol Digital/Virtual Album
Culled from Stephanie McKay’s self-titled EP, “Rainbow” is one of those beautiful tracks that will never find its way onto the playlist of your local urban station—even the ones that claim to play classic soul and adult R&B. And if it we’re not for internet innovator Bob Davis, founder of the influential listserv “Soul-Patrol” I would have been oblivious to McKay’s solo work. “Rainbow” appears on the Soul-Patrol Digital/Virtual Album, a spirited attempt to undermine the corporate gatekeepers, providing the platform for independent artists to be heard at a fraction of the cost ($.19 percent per song) that the evil apple—I mean empire—offers songs for. McKay is among the 20-something artistz that contribute to the virtual album which features new music from legends like The Dells, Mandrill and Public Enemy.

6. Anthony Hamilton—“Do You Feel Me” from American Gangster (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”
Anthony Hamilton does Dianne Warren? And that’s why Hamilton is such an American original (bout time we put away those comparisons to Bill Withers, Syl Johnson and Bobby Womack). Who else could take the middle-of-the-road schmaltz of Warren and her ilk and make sound like it was dripping with some of that East Carolina ‘que? “Do You Feel Me” is from the American Gangster soundtrack and sure we hear nods to the Dap Kings in the background, but Amy Winehouse (damn, forgot to put her on the list) can’t sang like brotha’ Anthony do.

7. Herbie Hancock featuring Tina Turner—“Edith and the Kingpin” from River: The Joni Letters
Following up the success of his Possibilities recording, Herbie Hancock offered his take on the music of Joni Mitchell, garnering Grammy nomination for best album in the process. River: the Joni Letters manages to negotiate that space between smooth jazz accessibility and Hancock’s signature improvisational impulses. With Corinne Bailey Rae, Leonard Cohen, Sonya Kitchell and Mitchell herself among those contributing vocals, the biggest surprise is Tina Turner’s performance on “Edith and the Kingpin”. Turner is as assured and confident as ever, but as she hangs up her touring high heels, there’s a whole world of jazz and pop interpretations for her to conquer.

8. Kanye West—“The Glory” from Graduation
Kanye West begins “The Glory” warbling—ever so cautiously—alongside the vocals of the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro. But by the time that first bass line hits, West is talking his “s--t again” on top of the defiant and even celebratory loops of Nyro’s voice. It’s a fitting moment for a woman, whose career was largely defined by the hits that others had singing her music including Blood Sweat and Tears (“And When I Die”), Barbara Streisand (“Stoney Road”) and the 5th Dimension who had major hits with Nyro’s “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Save the Country.” It is Nyro own version of the latter—written as a tribute to the Civil Rights Movement—that West reimagines. I’d like to think that the earnest vocals that open the track—“[I got fury in my soul] fury gonna take you to the glory goal/in my mind I can’t study war no more” suggests that West’s fury has fueled more than him simply making great music (or to paraphrase a well-known mogul, West has a body of work; them other cats got some albums) but has inspired others to indeed “Save the Country.”

9. Ann Nesby—“I Apologize” from This is Love
For the past few years, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings have, for all intents, defined the notion of “throwback” Soul. But I’m gonna make a pitch for Ann Nesby, former lead singer of Sounds of Blackness. Like “Put it on Paper”, her throwdown ballad with Al Green from a few years ago, “I Apologize” finds Nesby giving us the Soul of a grown-ass women. Whereas Sharon Jones recalls the music of 60s sirens like Bettye Levette (still on this journey, by the way) and even the late Linda Jones, Nesby’s sound is more like late 70s era Quiet Storm from the likes on Jean Carn (“If You Don’t Know Me by Now”), Betty Wright (“Tonight is the Night”) and Evelyn Champaign King (“Don’t Hide Our Love”).

10. Angie Stone—“Half the Chance” from The Art of Love and War
The Art of Love and War is arguably Angie Stone’s finest recording and if Mike Epps didn’t show up in that video for “Baby” would anybody even know? On “Baby” Ms. Stone shares the mic with Betty Wright and later trades riffs with James Ingram on “My People”. Truth be told, Ms Stone’s sensibilities have always been closer to that of Ingram and Wright’s generation, as opposed to Mr. Archer or Mr. Richardson’s, so it’s fitting the The Art of Love and War appears on a revamped Stax label. And much as I have always loved Angie’s sassy thickness, for sure, it’s on ballads like “Half the Chance” that we are treated Ms. Stone at her best.



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