0015: Al Green: Simply Beautiful

The first time I recall hearing this song was when Maxwell returned to the spotlight at the 2008 BET Awards and covered this Al Green classic. I don't know how I could let a bearskin-rug song like this slip past my radar.

Al Green is the master of wails. Soulful, unintelligible sounds, replete with desire and admiration. It's as if he couldn't find the words for what he wanted to say but also couldn't hold it in any longer. He may not be saying anything per se, but you know what he's talking about. 

Damn. I've got plans for this song.

Simply Beautiful.

0013: Musiq Soulchild: Just Friends (Sunny)

I received this album as a birthday gifts from a very good friend a loooong time ago. He had heard this song and figured it was something I would dig. And I did. IMMENSELY. 

I think I'm a sucker for the organ keyboard and hand claps. Or maybe effortless lyrics and the way they're conveyed. Simply a wonderful, badass song.

Again, proof that songs can be about the simpler things - like flirting and attraction - and still turn heads and volume dials.

0012: Faith Evans: All Night Long

I can't believe I slept on this song until I heard it as a closing song on an episode of Entourage. The chorus is beautifully sung by a handful of Faith harmonies, and the beat, although simple, is perpetually compelling. 

This one surprised me. When I realized it was a 90's Bad Boy track, I had to go back and rediscover their library. For what little lyrical skill Puffy/Diddy has, he definitely knows how to pull a crowd by their ears.

One of Bad Boy's best offerings.

0010: Billy Paul: Me and Mrs. Jones

Do you hear how Mr. Paul is singing this song?

Cot DAMN Mrs. Jones had something damn GOOD goin' on!

I may conceive my first daughter to this song and name her Mrs. Jones.

If anyone still believes in slow dancing, this ought to be the song you dance to right before you make sweet love by the fire. And maybe this song should be preceeded by this one.

0009: Shai: Yours (Acappella)

Shai (Egyptian for personification of destiny or fate) churned out a bunch of great singles off their first album, starting with a true acappella song called If I Ever Fall In Love. This kind of introduction to the public gave them a solid identity as a talented vocal group. They enjoyed a string of subsequent successes afterward, up to and including a true live performance of a new song, Yours (likely an extensive version of an album song, Baby I'm Yours).

This is quintessential acappella for me. Every part is gorgeously sung. I don't know how else to describe the song. It's plain, gorgeous.

I remember wishing I was a member of Shai when I first heard this song. They must have gotten so much pie for singing this.

0008: Jon B: Don't Talk

Copped the latest Jon B offering yesterday (I'll give it a whirl and let y'all know what I think in a later post). I hadn't seen this cat in a while, so as I picked up his new joint I recalled his older library. And then I got stuck on Don't Talk.

This is a straight-up good-time song. Beautiful dichotomy between the subdued/whispered chorus and the energetic and perpetual beat. This song is smoooooth as hell.

Lyrically it's ideal. Sometimes I don't want to hear someone sing about love or sex or hating or inane things like that. Sometimes, you just want to hear about the little things that happen when you're out and about in a lounge. No angst, no drama - just buying drinks, flirting, and having a good time. 

Reminds me a bit of Musiq's Forthenight. 

Proof that great songs don't have to be controversial.

0006: Bilal: Sometimes

Now THIS song... this song is pure soul to me. I heard it for the first time a few years back while spending the night at a lovely friend's house. She put on some music from an iPod playlist called "sexytime" for us to fall asleep to and this song came on in the middle of the night when I had dazed out of sleep for a moment. It was a bit ethereal, most likely because I was still a bit sloshed from our drinking and partying exertions from earlier in the evening, but the impression it left on me was long-lasting. When I woke the next morning, she and I went through the list to find the song I was jonesing for, and when we found it, I couldn't get it out of my head. 

D'Angelo once said that the organ is the sexiest instrument in modern music, and songs like this make me believe it. The instrumentation, the sultry melodies and harmonies, the crescendos and subsequent mellows, the screaming, shameless wails... good god. 

Sometimes is honestly seven of my favorite minutes I spend on any given day that I listen to it. Periodically it's 49 of my favorite minutes when I drive to the city. I've had a very good night where it was 182 AMAZING minutes. Well, perhaps it wasn't the only song that played through that night, but the energy and lust it evoked were there in spirit, certainly. 

Moody, sultry, sexy - this is what foreplay and making out would look like if it were a string of musical notes.

0005: Jamiroquai: Butterfly

I ALWAYS forget about this song. I'm always displeased with myself when I figure out that I do. But I can't realize that I've forgotten about it unless I rediscover it, and THAT is why I started posting about my rediscoveries. 

More soul than electronic or synth-pop, this song has a fleeting quality I dig so much. Perhaps the long drawn out flowy notes he sings at the end of his lines, maybe the elongated strings all throughout, but most definitely it has a lot to do with the subdued background chants of, "I want it, I want it" - that's some sugar right there.

Reminds me of driving on a long, endless road with no one else around, backdropped by rolling hills, the setting sun, and the sky. And oddly, it feels right in the winter, too.

0001: Maxwell. Let's start this off right.

Maxwell changed my life. 

Right out of high school, I listened to what my friends listened to: Green Day, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, The Offspring, blah blah blah. That's what was popular at that time, and I don't think I was mature enough to have developed my own musical tastes. I was a sheep. 

I also read GQ and Details quite a bit - yeah, I was training to be a man and that's how I did it. In one particular issue of Details, there was a one-page article about a new artist named Maxwell, accompanied by a photo of him - a quiet, charismatic, suited cat with a lush afro. The article went on about this kid from Brooklyn who bought a keyboard and made music in his bedroom. It further went on about his freshman offering, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (henceforth referred to as UHS). It was a concept album which told the story, chronologically from song to song, about how this young gentleman met a woman, flirted with, became infatuated with, loved, parted from, reunited with, and proposed to. 

Now aside from the alternative stuff I was listening to at the time, I was also starting to pick up some old soul sounds like Al Green and Marvin Gaye. Though I didn't reveal this to anyone at the time, I was kind of a fan of these cats. Something clicked when I heard their wails and falsettos and yearning cries for women and... other stuff. I was definitely susceptible to this old stuff, and I'm almost certain that they got me ready for Maxwell before I knew I was ready.

Intrigued, I drove to the CD shop right then and picked up a copy of UHS. I tore it open, played the disc in my room, and when it was over, I played it again. I think I may have listened to it five times or so before I decided it was time for bed, and when I woke the next day, I listened to it twice more before I brushed my teeth. 

Although I feel like I had a pretty good starting foundation with soul music, Maxwell was different, still. He was definitely soul - the wails, the yearning, the booty-on-a-bearskin-rug-next-to-the-fireplace sound - but the way he sang about women was... amazing. He's the cat who thinks you're the highest of the high, who just wants to kick a lil' sumthin' sumthin'... who gets driven crazy from the smell of she. Yeah, the smell of SHE. Strictly badass.

Maxwell loves women for all the reasons all men love women, but he loves them even more because they ARE women. I'm a big fan of intimacy and romanticism, but before any of that happens, there's flirting, there's profound attraction, there's dinner, there's wine, and then there's the next time you do it all again. I can have dinner with one of my boys, but I'd honestly much rather have dinner with a worthwhile lady. 

He doesn't unapologetically jump into a lady's pants, he digs on her first. The pants thing comes later. 

So after about 24 hours with this album, I changed. The alternative stuff my friends were listening to was fun, but I wanted to live these songs I had just listened to. UHS gave me a profound appreciation and love for women. I opened doors. I pulled chairs. I walked on the streetside. I made eye contact. So in a sense, Maxwell made me strive to be a gentleman. 

Shortly after, I found out that GQ was short for Gentleman's Quarterly. How appropriate. 

That album opened the doors into a whole genre of music for me to discover. D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Bilal, Musiq - the list goes on and on. I went back and picked up more from the Reverend and Marvin, along with Aretha and James and Stevie and others. 

With no disrespect to the modern originators of soulful music, I doubt I'd ever have gone through the old school libraries if I hadn't first been truly mesmerized by UHS. My musical chronology is a bit backwards, but it all got me to the same place.

Now I'm less of a sheep, more of a gentleman.