I love Lyrics Borns' new album.
It's called Later That Day... and I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but I'm ready to say it's my favorite album of the year, although because I've been so broke I've only heard a dozen or so of this year's new albums. Even so, Later That Day... is a truly original hiphop record, and nearly flawless from beginning to end, and I just can't stop listening to it, so I'm ready to say it's the best. And now, a track by track breakdown of what I love so much
1. Dream Sequence (Intro) - A quick sonic collage of (mostly) spoken-word material from various vinyl sources. It's held together by the concept of a recurring alarm clock buzz and heavenly chorus, giving the impression of repeatedly hitting the snooze button as barely coherent flashes of the last night's REM activity run through your head.
2. Bad Dreams - The first of several minor-key downtempo numbers dwelling on themes of frustration and depression. There's a strong autobiographical feel to these songs, hardly a new thing in rap, but it's seldom that the listener is invited to empathize or sympathize with the MC. Lyrics Born, and a few others, have made a point of speaking from a personal perspective that won't neccesarily be shared by their audience and instead of filling their first-person musings with unbelievable boasts and braggadoccio treating the vocal booth as a confessional booth. Continuing the 'wakeup time' theme from the intro, the alarm clock noise returns at the end of this track. The main lyrical subject matter here is, as the title implies, LB's troubled sleep - his nightmares aren't fantastical horror-movie stuff but manifestations of feelings of helplessness and stagnation.
The opening verse explains it perfectly
"Woke up in the middle of the night
Cold sweat eyes stinging feet clinging to the bedside
Hard pressed just to get a little rest every night
Same shit can't remember last time that I slept right
This situations gotten out of control
With all the stress and confrontation I just might overload
My problems follow me to sleep at night, won't let me go
The more I hide the more they thrive deep down inside of my soul."
Despite the morbid subject matter, though, LB makes a rolling synth-funk bassline the center of the song's structure, alternately augmenting it with Joyo Velarde's gorgeous singing, his own sing-songy rap vocals and DJ D-Sharp's funky scratch acrobatics.
3. Rise & Shine - A continuation of the previous mood, and with as the third song in a row to be about getting up in the morning (or failing to do so) we're threatened with the possibility of a concept album. Joyo's vocals are more central here, singing both intro chorus and bridge. LB lowers his voice to a stage whisper and begins for the first time on the album begins his trademark double and triple-speed emceeing style. This serves (along with the relatively subdued musical setting) to draw the listener in on his verses - I actually find myself leaning forward to try and catch more of what he's saying, and I almost always listen to music on headphones. At about 4:15, though, he starts to move more to a sung than rapped approach and at the same time slows down his delivery enough and refers to classic vocalese scat to rachet up the tension still further. The song ends on an unresolved chord (I think), which makes what comes up next such a relief.
4. Callin' Out - Finally, Lyrics Born lightens up a bit! The tempo picks up, keys change from minor to major, and the menace of the plucked basses and muted horns sampled on earlier songs gives way to a little slapping and chicken scratching. Lyrically, it's just a fancy version of your basic old-school party jam. He doesn't actually say "Throw your hands in the air like you just don't care." but he might as well. Joyo Velarde appears again, this time sounding almost like Sarah Vaughn or Gloria Gaynor in that big, brassy diva way. Say, this is looking like a duet record more than a solo project, isn't it?
5. U Ass Bank - A skit featuring LB checking his account balance and finding out he's broke from the rudest computerized phone voice in history.
6. Cold Call (feat. Gift Of Gab) - His good mood ruined by the discovery that he has no fucking money, LB calls his old buddy and collaborator Gift of Gab from Blackalicious. They commiserate a little bit, but can't really get their conversation on because telemarketers keep breaking into their call. Finally one of them, "Gertrude Werner" outgabs Gift and ends up sending him some unspeciffied merchandise by literally never taking no for an answer. Hilarious stuff for those of us who've put in time in our nations sleazy telephone boilerrooms or for those who've been on the other end of the predictive dialer. What's especially great about this track is that GoG and LB rap their parts in such a low-key and conversational matter that at first you don't realize they're rapping at all. In fact, I've read a couple of online reviews that suggest they aren't rapping. These people are idiots, though. Joyo's on here, too.
7. Interlude - A very short sample of some entertainer (Isaac Hayes, maybe) complaining that life as a music star isn't as glamourous or sexy as most folks might imagine.
8. Stop Complaining (feat. Tommy Guerrero) - Lyrics Born complains, first about taxes, then about critics who blame pop culture for all the ills of the world. More dope scratching from D-Sharp and singing from Joyo Velarde.
9. Do That There (feat. Cut Chemist) - Chemist one of two producers and DJs in Jurassic 5, so appropriately, instead of the disco influence that dominates most of the rest of the record, this track has much more of an old skool hiphop vibe. On the second verse, LB goes nuts in his fantastical storytelling litany of people and places he visits. It's like the worlds longest, funkiest tongue twister. Joyo's still here, but featured less prominently.
10. Before and After - Back to the downer. Beginning acapella (except for some crickets in the background) LB starts by regretting a foolish love affair, then as spooky, heavily echoed synth atmospherics sound in he describes it's magical beginnings, lets the beat ride for a few measures and talks about the mounting trouble signs and finally chronicles the emotional states he went through that led him to break it off. No Joyo, interestingly.
11. Last Trumpet (feat. Lateef The Truthspeaker) - Latyrx returns! The token political song, this one builds from near minimalism at the beginning (just a cymbal and a couple of keyboard bass notes) to a raging orchestral climax, including polyphonic choirs (with Joyo, yet again), tympani, cuica, synthesized horn section, and progressively elevating vocal approaches from the rappers that go from intimate, conversational stage whisper to bellowing full-chested roars. The "O Fortuna!" of hiphop.
12. Pack Up - A straightahead Bronx boom-bap beat with a stuttering blues guitar riff (probably courtesy the pitch-shifted Jimi Hendrix song that provides the intro.) The simplicity of this track relative to the mostly ornate and multilayered sound of the rest of the album makes it stand out, as well as the way that LB takes a minute off from the deep thoughts and just rips it with fierce old-skool bragga shit. It could almost be a Big Daddy Kane track. For only the second musical track on the album, no Joyo.
13. Hott Bizness - This is my JAM! Deeply funky and with straightahead battle lyrics (cont. from "Pack Up") but this time outrageously complex and multilayered. From bar to bar LB not only stacks polysyllabic rhyme after polysyllabic rhyme, but he changes his vocal approach over and over to the point that it almost sounds like different MCs coming in every few seconds. An example of why I love the lyrics here.
"Soul yodelin' overloadin' the court
Audience explodin' blowin' up the auditorium
Ignorin' city ordinance, body parts showin'
But it's normal though, par for the course for Lyrics Born
Your father'd have a cardiac arrest in his cardigan vest
If he saw how his daughter gets when she's partyin' jest
Like New Orleans at Mardis Gras or Rio at Carnaval
Y'all don't believe me? Naw, it's all of the above.
Pour out a little more on the corner
For all the funk we've lost in the art form
I'm at war with y'all
Recording artists making horrible songs
Crack your porcelain jaw
Now come on and sing the chorus for us."
More Joyo on the hook. Seriously, why isn't her name on the album same as LBs?
14. Love Me So Bad (feat. Joyo Velarde) - Oh, NOW you give her a little credit. Well, it's about time, and it's a great song, a reggae-inflected love ballad about the confusion that comes from a new love affair with someone carrying all kinds of torches and baggage. I've read that LB and Joyo are a couple in real life. Hmmm...
15. One Session (feat. The Altered Egos) - The token lame posse cut. Well, I like the name "Altered Egos" anyway. This track and the skits are the only reason I use the fast forward button while listening to this album. Joyo sings hooks here, too, but I just can't get worked up about it. Actually, the beat's not bad, and LBs verses are okay, but his guests are very dull.
16. Nightro - A sonic collage much like the "Dream Sequence" intro, presumably meant to bookend the album and make it cohere. The snippets here are generally about folks trying to end their evening in a nice way - or about finishing a long delayed project. Not hard to figure out what's on his mind here.
17. Hello - I've always found it very peculiar that people place bonus tracks after the 'end' of an album on brand new releases. That conceptual oddity aside, though, this is a nice way to finish out the record. Joyo takes a more important role on here again, cheerfully chirping while LB gets his pep-talk on, obviously trying to end on a high note so the whole package doesn't function as an overall bringdown. Which I certainly appreciate, since I have enough crap running through my own life. It's great that he's not afraid to put his demons out there on wax, and I'm pleased to get some second-hand commisseration from him, but what I really need is to improve my mood. And overall, this album has been doing the job splendidly, not least because it ends in such a chipper fashion.
Anyway, everybody buy this record so LB will be encouraged to make more like it!
It's called Later That Day... and I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but I'm ready to say it's my favorite album of the year, although because I've been so broke I've only heard a dozen or so of this year's new albums. Even so, Later That Day... is a truly original hiphop record, and nearly flawless from beginning to end, and I just can't stop listening to it, so I'm ready to say it's the best. And now, a track by track breakdown of what I love so much
1. Dream Sequence (Intro) - A quick sonic collage of (mostly) spoken-word material from various vinyl sources. It's held together by the concept of a recurring alarm clock buzz and heavenly chorus, giving the impression of repeatedly hitting the snooze button as barely coherent flashes of the last night's REM activity run through your head.
2. Bad Dreams - The first of several minor-key downtempo numbers dwelling on themes of frustration and depression. There's a strong autobiographical feel to these songs, hardly a new thing in rap, but it's seldom that the listener is invited to empathize or sympathize with the MC. Lyrics Born, and a few others, have made a point of speaking from a personal perspective that won't neccesarily be shared by their audience and instead of filling their first-person musings with unbelievable boasts and braggadoccio treating the vocal booth as a confessional booth. Continuing the 'wakeup time' theme from the intro, the alarm clock noise returns at the end of this track. The main lyrical subject matter here is, as the title implies, LB's troubled sleep - his nightmares aren't fantastical horror-movie stuff but manifestations of feelings of helplessness and stagnation.
The opening verse explains it perfectly
"Woke up in the middle of the night
Cold sweat eyes stinging feet clinging to the bedside
Hard pressed just to get a little rest every night
Same shit can't remember last time that I slept right
This situations gotten out of control
With all the stress and confrontation I just might overload
My problems follow me to sleep at night, won't let me go
The more I hide the more they thrive deep down inside of my soul."
Despite the morbid subject matter, though, LB makes a rolling synth-funk bassline the center of the song's structure, alternately augmenting it with Joyo Velarde's gorgeous singing, his own sing-songy rap vocals and DJ D-Sharp's funky scratch acrobatics.
3. Rise & Shine - A continuation of the previous mood, and with as the third song in a row to be about getting up in the morning (or failing to do so) we're threatened with the possibility of a concept album. Joyo's vocals are more central here, singing both intro chorus and bridge. LB lowers his voice to a stage whisper and begins for the first time on the album begins his trademark double and triple-speed emceeing style. This serves (along with the relatively subdued musical setting) to draw the listener in on his verses - I actually find myself leaning forward to try and catch more of what he's saying, and I almost always listen to music on headphones. At about 4:15, though, he starts to move more to a sung than rapped approach and at the same time slows down his delivery enough and refers to classic vocalese scat to rachet up the tension still further. The song ends on an unresolved chord (I think), which makes what comes up next such a relief.
4. Callin' Out - Finally, Lyrics Born lightens up a bit! The tempo picks up, keys change from minor to major, and the menace of the plucked basses and muted horns sampled on earlier songs gives way to a little slapping and chicken scratching. Lyrically, it's just a fancy version of your basic old-school party jam. He doesn't actually say "Throw your hands in the air like you just don't care." but he might as well. Joyo Velarde appears again, this time sounding almost like Sarah Vaughn or Gloria Gaynor in that big, brassy diva way. Say, this is looking like a duet record more than a solo project, isn't it?
5. U Ass Bank - A skit featuring LB checking his account balance and finding out he's broke from the rudest computerized phone voice in history.
6. Cold Call (feat. Gift Of Gab) - His good mood ruined by the discovery that he has no fucking money, LB calls his old buddy and collaborator Gift of Gab from Blackalicious. They commiserate a little bit, but can't really get their conversation on because telemarketers keep breaking into their call. Finally one of them, "Gertrude Werner" outgabs Gift and ends up sending him some unspeciffied merchandise by literally never taking no for an answer. Hilarious stuff for those of us who've put in time in our nations sleazy telephone boilerrooms or for those who've been on the other end of the predictive dialer. What's especially great about this track is that GoG and LB rap their parts in such a low-key and conversational matter that at first you don't realize they're rapping at all. In fact, I've read a couple of online reviews that suggest they aren't rapping. These people are idiots, though. Joyo's on here, too.
7. Interlude - A very short sample of some entertainer (Isaac Hayes, maybe) complaining that life as a music star isn't as glamourous or sexy as most folks might imagine.
8. Stop Complaining (feat. Tommy Guerrero) - Lyrics Born complains, first about taxes, then about critics who blame pop culture for all the ills of the world. More dope scratching from D-Sharp and singing from Joyo Velarde.
9. Do That There (feat. Cut Chemist) - Chemist one of two producers and DJs in Jurassic 5, so appropriately, instead of the disco influence that dominates most of the rest of the record, this track has much more of an old skool hiphop vibe. On the second verse, LB goes nuts in his fantastical storytelling litany of people and places he visits. It's like the worlds longest, funkiest tongue twister. Joyo's still here, but featured less prominently.
10. Before and After - Back to the downer. Beginning acapella (except for some crickets in the background) LB starts by regretting a foolish love affair, then as spooky, heavily echoed synth atmospherics sound in he describes it's magical beginnings, lets the beat ride for a few measures and talks about the mounting trouble signs and finally chronicles the emotional states he went through that led him to break it off. No Joyo, interestingly.
11. Last Trumpet (feat. Lateef The Truthspeaker) - Latyrx returns! The token political song, this one builds from near minimalism at the beginning (just a cymbal and a couple of keyboard bass notes) to a raging orchestral climax, including polyphonic choirs (with Joyo, yet again), tympani, cuica, synthesized horn section, and progressively elevating vocal approaches from the rappers that go from intimate, conversational stage whisper to bellowing full-chested roars. The "O Fortuna!" of hiphop.
12. Pack Up - A straightahead Bronx boom-bap beat with a stuttering blues guitar riff (probably courtesy the pitch-shifted Jimi Hendrix song that provides the intro.) The simplicity of this track relative to the mostly ornate and multilayered sound of the rest of the album makes it stand out, as well as the way that LB takes a minute off from the deep thoughts and just rips it with fierce old-skool bragga shit. It could almost be a Big Daddy Kane track. For only the second musical track on the album, no Joyo.
13. Hott Bizness - This is my JAM! Deeply funky and with straightahead battle lyrics (cont. from "Pack Up") but this time outrageously complex and multilayered. From bar to bar LB not only stacks polysyllabic rhyme after polysyllabic rhyme, but he changes his vocal approach over and over to the point that it almost sounds like different MCs coming in every few seconds. An example of why I love the lyrics here.
"Soul yodelin' overloadin' the court
Audience explodin' blowin' up the auditorium
Ignorin' city ordinance, body parts showin'
But it's normal though, par for the course for Lyrics Born
Your father'd have a cardiac arrest in his cardigan vest
If he saw how his daughter gets when she's partyin' jest
Like New Orleans at Mardis Gras or Rio at Carnaval
Y'all don't believe me? Naw, it's all of the above.
Pour out a little more on the corner
For all the funk we've lost in the art form
I'm at war with y'all
Recording artists making horrible songs
Crack your porcelain jaw
Now come on and sing the chorus for us."
More Joyo on the hook. Seriously, why isn't her name on the album same as LBs?
14. Love Me So Bad (feat. Joyo Velarde) - Oh, NOW you give her a little credit. Well, it's about time, and it's a great song, a reggae-inflected love ballad about the confusion that comes from a new love affair with someone carrying all kinds of torches and baggage. I've read that LB and Joyo are a couple in real life. Hmmm...
15. One Session (feat. The Altered Egos) - The token lame posse cut. Well, I like the name "Altered Egos" anyway. This track and the skits are the only reason I use the fast forward button while listening to this album. Joyo sings hooks here, too, but I just can't get worked up about it. Actually, the beat's not bad, and LBs verses are okay, but his guests are very dull.
16. Nightro - A sonic collage much like the "Dream Sequence" intro, presumably meant to bookend the album and make it cohere. The snippets here are generally about folks trying to end their evening in a nice way - or about finishing a long delayed project. Not hard to figure out what's on his mind here.
17. Hello - I've always found it very peculiar that people place bonus tracks after the 'end' of an album on brand new releases. That conceptual oddity aside, though, this is a nice way to finish out the record. Joyo takes a more important role on here again, cheerfully chirping while LB gets his pep-talk on, obviously trying to end on a high note so the whole package doesn't function as an overall bringdown. Which I certainly appreciate, since I have enough crap running through my own life. It's great that he's not afraid to put his demons out there on wax, and I'm pleased to get some second-hand commisseration from him, but what I really need is to improve my mood. And overall, this album has been doing the job splendidly, not least because it ends in such a chipper fashion.
Anyway, everybody buy this record so LB will be encouraged to make more like it!
posted by Austin at 12:39 PM
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