|
|
 |
|
 |
|
While staccato hip-hop beats and bumping R&B bass lines conjure the groove of soul in swing, Billie Holiday timbral notes bounce along in tow. Stranger on Earth introduces a body of work by Lina, a Texas born singer and songwriter who brings jazz and southern R&B face to face. However, rather than calling back "rare grooves" like many dance orientated acts, Lina rings up the pop music of the 1930s: jazz.
Most cuts are distinctly modern but with late 1930s New Orleans Dixieland stylings sprinkled throughout. There are the ever-present muted trumpets cackling, appearing expectedly at regular intervals for brief bars of lyrical play and the simulated ambiance of billiard parlors, ballrooms and juke joints. Yet these all are adornments in what is merely middle of the road fusion. It becomes discordantly apparent that two disintegrative soundtracks are at play: one that is the result of present day influences, and the other, an exerted substantiation from mining minds drawing explicit elements of classic jazz. Though they play together, they also play atop, below and against each other. So solitary are the Jay-Z cracks from the big band sections, and Lina's fashioned voice from her street-bent rap sass that to vie for public acknowledgement of this dual association would be fruitless. The polar backing tracks and lyrical tone paint a visual of Lina and her producers, T-House" and Jeeve, affixing track A to track B with putty and Elmers. It doesn't take
long before you sense you're listening to two stations and despite how intent you are at tuning-in a clear wave stream; you're stuck in static amid music from disparate formats.
Appropriately, there are two viewpoints in action, and these vernaculars respective of their times are subtly and brashly incorporated. How well a woman who "rocks [her] own ice" and cautions playas "not to f--- with [her]" ("Playa No Mo' ") might hang with a Billie Holiday or Lena Horne is up for discussion at a later time. So although this gathering of old and new times proves more a novelty than reality, at least both generations would agree there's a tight groove on this Earth.
review by Wesley Chu
digg
|
del.icio.us
|
|
|
|
|
©
Figgle 2001-2007