Nothing but sunny vibes and many blessings to you, dear readers. The warm air is here and recreation is renewed, and that can pair nicely with classic sounds. Which means there are a few albums in here that feel a little more canonical than usual. My recent revisiting of Gang Starr’s Moment Of Truth, included below, was inspired by Nelson George’s Hip-Hop: No Country For Middle Aged MCs, a wonderfully succinct piece about aging in hip-hop that doesn’t actually reference the act in question, but is worth your time all the same.
you can click the covers to listen ~ or go your own way
Blue Iverson - Hotep (2017)
Thanks to the evasive, cheshire nature of producer/iconoclast Dean Blunt, any attempt at summarizing his work will necessarily fall flat. The first time I was hooked came with Babyfather’s BBF Hosted By DJ Escrow in 2016. It’s a mess of a (concept?) record with a weird title and a remarkably vapid cover; not something I’d recommend casually. Since then, I’ve been slowly exploring the rest of his scattershot catalogue. Hotep, his only release under the Blue Iverson moniker is, to everyone’s surprise, accessible throughout. Juicy even. The aura of Solange hovers over these organic, exploratory r&b loosies, which is really saying something considering how idiosyncratic Blunt’s music tends to be.
Nathalie Joachim - Fanm d'Ayiti (2019)
This debut from Haitian-American flautist / composer / vocalist grabbed me immediately. It’s a rare work that blends new classical composition, traditional folk melodies and a rigorous cultural framework while feeling breezy and bright. Joachim weaves field recordings of women praying, singing and sharing stories throughout the eleven tracks, all bolstered by faithful playing from New York’s Spektral Quartet.
Yellowman - Jack Sprat / Mister Yellowman / Operation Radication (1982)
Every sunny morning goes better with Yellowman. If you’re not familiar with the man, please take five minutes and watch this clip from BBC’s History Of Jamaican Music. In short, Yellowman is a massive figure of dancehall music and his work and life sit at the crossroads of complicated issues of social stigma, colorism, misogyny, capitalism and more. You’ll find these issues on display across these three LPs: sometimes from a critical lens, sometimes from a problematic angle, always with a healthy dose of Grace Jamaican Ketchup. Mister Yellowman being the perennial classic, and the other two being close counterparts.
Nara Leão - Opinião De Nara (1964)
I’m so glad I decided to include this in The Regular. Had I not, I may have lived out my years revelling in the music, ignorant to the lyrical content and cultural significance of this BADASS bossa album. While researching, I came across this excellent 2014 article from Brasil Wire that opens with an anecdote about how the music of Nara Leão continues to resonate within contemporary Brazilian protest culture, quoting the opening lines of this LP:
Podem me prender, podem me bater / Podem até deixar-me sem comer / Que eu não mudo de opinião
They could arrest me, they could beat me / They could even leave me starving / I wouldn’t change my opinion
Brenda Russell - Brenda Russell (1979)
This is an incredible album through and through. The kind of LP that should, in theory, appeal to the whole chosen fam and then some. I can’t find a direct link to the full thing, so just leading you to the Big Pun-sampled ‘A Little Bit Of Love’. Russell has produced for the megastars and been covered and sampled by plenty of hitmakers, yet this album (and her solo work broadly) remains pretty slept on. A quick wiki tells me she spent her teen years in Hamilton, Ontario and performed with Toronto-based group The Tiaras.
Yanti Bersaudara - Anggrek Merah (1971)
I came across this on Archaic Inventions, a blog / Youtube channel whose M.O. is archiving cassette music that doesn’t seem to exist elsewhere on the internet. It’s a fabulous album of mellow dustbin pop from a trio of Indonesian sisters. A handful of killer breaks, nice piano lines / guitar tone and those sweet, sweet blood harmonies.
Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight (1980)
I’ve been revisiting some music I was introduced to during my tenure working at a (rrrrrelatively toxic) record store in my mid-twenties. There’s lots of stuff from that time in my life that doesn’t hold up, or doesn’t really interest me as much anymore. Underwater Moonlight, on the other hand, still really shines. Robin Hitchcock’s songwriting is truly next level: quirky to the point of being unhinged in a kind of sardonic, literary way. And the music feels as if it’s been recorded as hot as possible, with tumbling drums and spidery guitar lines keeping apace and painting the bigger picture.
Gang Starr - Moment Of Truth (1998)
A lot of my friends were interested in hip-hop before I was. It took some warming up to for my teenage self, who was instinctual adverse to anything too popular. An early trojan horse was the inclusion of the titular track from this album on Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 for Playstation. I fell in love with its gentle sentimentality right away. It wouldn’t be till years later that I finally sat with the entire album, soaking in the indelible duo of Guru and Premier. The fuller context around the woman’s voice that opens the title track is really beautiful. It’s a twist on the slew-of-voicemails trope that segues from the preceding track, functioning as a kind of epigraph for ‘The Moment Of Truth’. Instead of it featuring the typical record execs being low-key racist / overtly capitalist or old friends calling for features or favors, it’s a chorus of women calling Guru offering emotional support and affirmation. The whole thing feels perfectly representative of Gang Starr’s compassionate take.
I’m super interested in feedback / dialogue / suggestions. If you have ideas about the newsletter, want to share music with me, have specific questions / requests, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. And do consider sharing this newsletter!
Yrs.,
andrewdanielpatterson [at] gmail [dot] com