cd reviews: New Amerykah & Carnival vol. II
OK, it must be hip-hip day inside my head I guess. No, that can’t be right, because I woke up with Neil Diamond’s Forever in Blue Jeans stuck in my head. That was odd. (That was from Friday when I purchased these albums. Today is Sunday. Just in case you care what day it is).
Note: Click on images to hear the songs.
for. I’m bummed the rest of the album wasn’t that groovy. Not that it’s trash – there’s some good stuff there, and I’ve posted one track (click on the image to hear The Cell). Also, this supposed to be part of a sequence of concept albums, I’ve even heard rumor that she’ll release at least one other album this year, so I’m looking forward to that. I’ll give this one a 2.5/5 for now. Maybe it will grow on me in time.
I had much lower expectations for Carnival Vol. II – maybe that’s why I was so surprised by it. I never got around to picking up his last 2 albums (I’ve got the first two) – although Ecleftic was fairly strong, it wasn’t strong enough to motivate me to go pick up #3 & #4. #5 here was an impulse buy because I saw it in the used bin (even though it was new…) for $9. Hey, once in a while I take CD risks!! If they suck, I just trade ‘em back.
Am I just the crazy white guy in the room, or is it annoying when artists “feature” a bazillion others artists on their albums? I guess this is the whole “artist-as-producer/producer-as-artist” paradigm, and maybe I’m just too old to be able to appreciate it. Usually it just strikes me as annoying. Now, this doesn’t mean I don’t like the songs, or that the music isn’t solid, I just find it weird when an artist is mostly just background on their own album. Perhaps a better comparison would be to a composer or orchestra conductor? I think thinking about it like that will help me to be less annoyed by it.
Anyway, so yeah, it’s a pretty decent CD. I’d say around 3.5/5. Click on the image above to hear Sweetest Girl (which has Wyclef in there somewhere ;p ).
Sooooooo, other than me buying both these albums on the same day, what do they have in common?
One answer: They both name check Farrakhan. He’s been all over the news lately, or his name has rather, because people keep wanting Obama to denounce him. I don’t think I would have even noticed if not for all the press lately.
I think the art of collaboration has given way to the marketability of collaborations. I’ve heard people say they don’t like Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan/Britney Spears but Jermaine Dupree/Timbaland/etc produced/raps on all the songs so… they bought the album. Really? That’s just not for me. Like if I buy a person’s album, I get really annoyed if they only solo perform two songs on it. But that’s all hypothetical since I don’t buy albums. I’m just saying. I feel you. But not like that. Cause that’d be like incest.
I distinctly remember, for some reason, seeing you at some punk show at the fairgrounds, circa-97 (or since you’d gone to UCSB anyways) and talking to you about how much I was into the new (then) Wyclef Carnival (1) record.
Me: “It’s sweet- it’s got Dominican reggae tracks on the end!” (or something like that.
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Sorry. forgot the close-peren.
Nice catch on that paren!
HMM. I wonder what show that was? Was it the class of ’97 graduation instead? That was at the fairgrounds wasn’t it?
Yeah I still dig that first album. I wish there were less stupid talking tracks on it though. I may have deleted all the talking ones from my mp3 player – assuming they were actually separate tracks. It’s even worse when people embed that stuff INSIDE another track at the end or whatever. ANNOYING.