The Optical Files #60: Ice-T - The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! (1989)

Ice-T doesn't get the credit he deserves as a writer. Yes, he's recognized as a gangsta rap pioneer & a West Coast legend, but people sleep on the conceptual richness of his early albums, particularly the stretch from Power to O.G. Original Gangster. This album falls in the middle but is, to my ears, the weakest of that run, thanks to ragged production (vocals are too forward & plosives are popping all over the place) & a glut of uninteresting subject matter. Still, when he hits, he hits hard, & there's no shortage of knockout punches on The Iceberg.

Ice-T's lyricism was never about punchlines, metaphors or wordplay, assonance or crazy multis or internal rhyme. His lyricism was rooted in the concepts, his writerly style of observation & eye for detail & irony. It's in the vivid details of his storytelling on the ominous street revenge tale "Peel their Caps Back," with the ending gut-punch of "all the papers gonna read is 'gang murder,'" reminding us how little mainstream media cares about his community & how necessary the alternative narratives of rap music are. Similarly in "The Hunted Child," Afrika Islam's stab at making a Bomb Squad-style noisy collage beat complete with Public Enemy sample, Ice explains the thought process of a teenager on the run after committing an impulsive murder, interspersed with omniscient spoken-word segments: "The science of capitalism which you teach to the youth on the streets today with the 'ends justifying the means' mentality ain't happenin'." On "Freedom of Speech" Ice tells an interesting anecdote about choosing not to perform in Georgia after being threatened with arrest if he used explicit language in his show. He takes on Tipper Gore & the PMRC with worries about witch hunts & book burning--like I said in reference to Paris, I miss the days when being anti-censorship was a solidly left-wing stance. I also love "This One's For Me," where Ice takes on the "bourgeois Blacks" who objected to his subject matter & tried to squeeze him out of the recording industry, then goes on to indict the CIA for supplying drugs to the ghettos. In his best moments, you could always count on Ice-T to kick well-articulated knowledge.

The flipside to that is that when Ice isn't trying to be conceptual & instead is just rapping to rap, his bars are so unimpressive that it usually falls flat. Sadly, The Iceberg is shorter on conceptual tracks than the albums surrounding it. Instead, we have a few too many snores like "Lethal Weapon" & "Hit the Deck" where he tries to keep up with East Coast spitters on uptempo, sample-thick beats. The title track is another misfire, which features embarrassingly immature women-objectifying lyrics & is conceptually dead in the water. Then there's "What Ya Wanna Do" featuring the Rhyme Syndicate, an excruciating 9 minutes of much increasingly less interesting emcees repeating themselves. Instead, the album is at its best when Ice is rhyming with purpose over Afrika Islam's sparse sample & drum machine beats like "You Played Yourself," one of the 1st rap songs to sample James Brown's "The Boss."

Musically, this album is also distinguished by the emerging importance of Ice-T's love of hard rock & heavy metal. There were a few heavy guitars on Power, but here we have entire songs like "The Girl Tried to Kill Me" with future Body Count members Ernie C & Beat Master V shredding on their respective instruments. Ice's flow on that song is heavily influenced by the rock-inflected stylings of Run-DMC--you can ever hear where the 2-emcee back & forth was supposed to happen. Thankfully, by the time Body Count fully emerged Ice's vocal delivery was more influenced by West Coast hardcore like Black Flag & The Dead Kennedys. Speaking of which, Jello Biafra himself shows up on 2 tracks, including the intro that samples Black Sabbath's self-titled track, nicely sewing together the growing punk & metal influences on Ice's music. Jello paints a spoken-word picture of a dystopian nightmare of government overreach, & if I'm grateful for 1 thing about this album it's that Ice & Jello got to link up & make some noise together.

Another thing I like about Ice-T albums from this era is that every song is 1 of a kind. Nothing blends together; every track is unique & inhabits its own little artistic world. They aren't records you put on to vibe to--they are meant to be listened to & absorbed. The Iceberg might not be as good as the albums on either side of it, but it's entirely its own beast, & manages to stand out even in the classics-crowded hiphop year of 1989.

The Optical Files #59: C-Rayz Walz - Ravipops (The Substance) (2003)

I've been wondering when this one would pop up & how I would handle it. For those of you who don't know, C-Rayz Walz is currently incarcerated awaiting trial for felony rape, kidnapping, stalking, & a whole bunch of other stuff I'd rather not get into. Dude hasn't had his day in court yet & news about the case has been extremely sparse so I don't want to act like I know anything, but that indictment on 32 counts of horrid crimes with so much specificity definitely made it hard to enjoy this album on its own terms. Especially since it's connected to a fond memory: in early fall 2003, a little Def Jux tour--Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, C-Rayz Walz--stopped at my college & played a free outdoor show to about 50 people. I bought Ravipops from Walz & said, "much love for the free show," & that's how I came to have this CD insert signed with the message "To Cullen - Thanks for the free love, C-Rayz Walz."

There's a tension between the different modes of Walz: the mystical spiritual piece is out front--kind of a mishmash of NGE, Hinduism, Rastafari & Kabbalah--but for the most part he is a streetsmart punchline rapper. The album opens with 3 straight up ego-trip tracks, & there's many more to follow. Of these, "Buck 80" is my favorite, but "Battle Me," with its charming childlike Jo Chris beat complete with skittering triggered bass, is another highlight among the bar-heavy songs. Then there's a minority of message-oriented tracks: the grown man shit of "Protect My Family," the mournful ghetto portrait "We Live," the ecological angst of "Seal Killa," the Native American battle cry "Dead Buffalos," & "86," the obligatory 2000s underground rap album "hiphop isn't what it used to be" track. The latter is the best beat on the album, a nostalgic sounding track with sparse piano & drums, driven by a processed vocal sample. Overall the beats tend to be noisy, thickly layered NY neo-boom-bap, so it's nice to have a few chiller respites like "86" & "Protect My Family."

Mostly, though, listening to this album made me think about punchline inflation. Walz's bars are full of witty wordplay by 2003 standards, but every few lines he says something that would be considered a struggle bar today, e.g. "I'm nice around the mic like the Wizard players." That got oohs & ahhs back in the early 2000s but would get you laughed out of the cypher today. Today you need to have a few extra layers of wordplay on top of a simple punchline like that (granted, that one is couched in a larger NBA scheme, but still). It makes me wonder if the most mindblowing bars of today will look simplistic in 20 years, & what punchlines will sound like then. Is there an upper limit to lyrical complexity?

Anyway, Bronx native C-Rayz Walz is a very particular but familiar kind of NY street rapper: 1 part mystic, 2 parts dirtbag, 5 parts mic wrecker. If Walz did those heinous things he's locked up for, there are plenty of other similar emcees you can get this kind of bars from. If he's innocent (& honestly it feels like a big if to me), I guess I'll get around to bumping this CD again eventually. It probably won't be another 15 years, but I can't promise anything.

The Optical Files #58: The Undertones - The Undertones (1979)

I've always had a love for pop-punk, but the stuff that was popular in my adolescence (Blink-182, Sum 41, etc.) always seemed a lot longer on the pop than the punk. I'm not sure how Northern Ireland's short-lived Undertones first appeared on my radar, but I found an antidote to the polished pop-punk of my day in their mix of muscular riffs, dirty guitar tone & stop-start punk energy with sharp pop sensibilities, insanely catchy melodies, & teenage guilelessness. The easiest comparison is probably England's more famous (& longer-lasting) Buzzcocks, but there is a whole lot of Ramones & New York Dolls in the band's DNA, & many of their songs feature the kind of boogie-woogie riffing I associate with glam rock bands like Sweet.

The lyrics are...well, about girls almost exclusively. They're not really worth mentioning except to say that the sentiments made more sense to me when I was 16, & the band aren't 1-trick ponies: "Jimmy Jimmy" about a troubled suicidal kid, "Male Model" & "Mars Bars" about exactly what their titles suggest, are all hiding in amongst the adolescent hormones. But the real story here is the music. Lead singer Feargal Sharkey uses an unforgettable quavering tenor, like an even quirkier version of Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley, & makes no attempt to hide his Northern Irish brogue. Though Sharkey is the focal point in all the songs, the heavy lifting is done by the guitarist team of brothers Damian & John O'Neill. The interplay of chugging rhythm riffs from John & everpresent, rollicking leads from Damian would be cool enough, but they also contribute harmonized backing vocals on almost every song, from oohs & ahhs to call & response. The brothers embody a microcosm of the band itself: their guitars bring the punk, their vocals bring the pop, & they do both with such infectious optimism I dare you not to sing along. 

The twin-guitar attack, lead & backing vocals, plus solid bass & drums are the musical blueprint for the whole album, but there are a handful of unexpected instruments like organ on "Here Comes the Summer" & "I Gotta Getta," plus some kind of keyboards on "(She's a) Runaround." Drummer Billy Doherty is no slouch, contributing thundering toms on the diabolically catchy "Get Over You," my favorite song on the record & probably the most glam-rock influenced. The album is full of subtle little songwriting touches like the key change in the middle of "I Know a Girl." It all adds up to something frothy, fun & deceptively intelligent.

I'm glad this one popped up when it did, because I've always associated pop-punk with springtime. I spent a lot of time with this album & others like it in high school, driving around with the windows down & no particular place to go. I don't know if this flavor of pop-punk is really that great or if it just makes me feel young again. All I know for sure is that The Undertones (& their archivists at Rykodisc) crammed 23 songs in just under 47 minutes that go down easier than a frosty lemonade on a summer day--& it gets better the louder you turn it up.

The Optical Files #57: Ice Cube - Raw Footage (2008)

I've always been an admirer of Ice Cube's pen. At first glance, though, an album like Raw Footage might seem unlikely to enthrall me. It's unshowy lyrically, Cube doesn't do much experimenting with flows or concepts, the beats are stock, programmed & unremarkable, & overall it feels like a Hollywood star with a 9-figure net worth mounting a vanity project to convince the world he's still hood.

I can't contradict any of those criticisms, but Ice Cube was always more of a spokesman for the streets than a knee-deep gangbanger, & his lens on current affairs & American absurdity has never seemed to get clouded no matter how much time he's spent in Hollywood. There's a refreshing frankness & simplicity to the best moments of latter-day Cube--I'm definitely one of those fans he's addressing with "Thank God when I bless the mic/you finally get to hear the shit that you like." The song that lyric comes from, "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It," is one of the centerpieces of the Raw Footage album, a pure expression of disgust with American hypocrisy re: violence & vulgarity, weaving in everything from the Iraq war to domestic handwringing over Don Imus's "nappy-headed hoe" scandal. The song is part of a mid-album stretch of politically aware numbers that includes the equally compelling "It Takes a Nation," where he laments the corporatization of rap ("We need to take it back, fuck Viacom [...] you motherfuckers programmed by the programmers") & celebrates being independent (Cube's Lench Mob label has released every one of his records since his 1990 solo debut) before letting us in on the key to his musical approach in the 21st century: "This shit don't sell, you know I'm still paid [...] I'm doin' it for the love." It's so refreshing to hear a famous rapper admit that he knows his music don't do big numbers--that movie money is keeping him comfortable, so he can afford to make records as a labor of love. It's what keeps the music from being watered down & compromised.

Given Cube's general disregard for popularity, it's a big awkward to hear him try to flow over trap beats or go bar for bar with Young Jeezy, so "I Got My Locs On" & "Jack in the Box" are somewhat low points on the album. Less than feeling entitled to make these sorts of songs, though, you get the impression that Cube has enough love for the culture that he wants to pay respects to current trends, however awkward the attempts end up being. On the other side of the coin, he sometimes falls into grumpy dad-rap pitfalls like his anti-music piracy rant at the start of "Tomorrow" & his outdated references to Jerry Springer & Ricki Lake.

I said at the top that the production on this album is lukewarm, but there are a few bangers nonetheless. Da Beatsmith laces "Cold Places" with dramatic orchestrals--horns, strings, bells--& a big rubbery electric bassline leading the charge. (I liked that beat so much I jacked it on my 2016 mixtape.) Da Beatsmith is also responsible for the album's other standout, "Thank God," which interpolates a bar from "Child Support" off Cube's previous album for its chorus, backed by big brass & horn stabs. The song is delivered with such conviction that you really believe it when Cube says "stop looking for the best rapper, goddamnit, here he is!" Even though the song suffers from more than the occasional struggle bar like "I'm the macaroni with the cheese, n***a please," the beat is infectious enough that he just gets away with it.

Cube's writerly integrity, his all-encompassing love for hiphop & his general refusal to trend-hop have kept his work remarkably fresh for 30+ years. Raw Footage will never be as bracing & vital as his '80s/'90s peak, but there's plenty worth returning to. Thank god the gangsta's back, indeed.

The Optical Files #56: Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (1971)

Not content with being Motown's most popular performer, Marvin Gaye wanted to stake his claim as a serious artist. Producing his own album for the first time, & with the newfound freedom to choose his repertoire, Gaye challenged the label's silence on the social upheaval that was churning in the US, & in particular its effects on Black people. What resulted was one of the most sincere social statements, & one of the most legendary albums, in any of the popular music genres. 

The first thing you notice about What's Going On is how smoothly the songs segue into each other. Each side of the album is through-composed as a seamless suite, with consistent instrumentation: percussion-heavy rhythm tracks, ethereal strings & winds, choral backing vocals & Gaye's signature multi-tracked leads. To bring it all full-circle & unite the 2 sides, the opening theme returns at the end of album closer "Inner City Blues." 

Side A is especially consistent; it's sometimes hard to know when one song ends & the next begins. While this approach can give an album cohesion, it also runs the risk of monotony. But What's Going On is not without musical diversity: side B is looser & funkier than side A, while within each suite there are subtle touches like the key change at the start of "Mercy Mercy Me," & the insistent, reverb-soaked woodblock that constantly reminds us of drowned forests & the ticking of the clock. "Mercy Mercy Me" is probably the best song on the album (apparently it was Gaye's favorite), & with its dramatic, almost cinematic ending, makes a fine closer for side A of an album where resolutions are few--but this time around it was a different song that captivated me.

The real revelation on this listen was "What's Happening Brother." Musically similar to "What's Going On," & tucked between that hit single & the mood shift of "Flyin' High," it almost seems like "What's Happening Brother" was intended to be overlooked--like the confused veteran at the song's center. In simple, unadorned language, Gaye as the returned war vet asks a series of questions that range from cautious optimism ("Are things really gettin' better, like the newspaper said") to longing for simpler times ("Are they still gettin' down where we used to go and dance") to searching for some kind of normalcy ("Will our ball club win the pennant") to fashion ("Tell me what's out and I want to know what's in"). The overall impression is of a man forced to put his life on pause for something that he really had nothing to do with, returning to a home that looks a lot different since he saw it last, but more because of internal changes than external ones. The narrator of "What's Happening Brother" is desperate for something to hold onto--& wondering if it's the world or himself that's spinning out of control.

Listening to the albums in this series with intention & patience has offered me many moments like this--the opportunity to reappraise something I'm familiar with, to hear it with slightly new ears. That's what great albums do. There are a lot of great albums on this list, & I'm not even a 3rd of the way through!

The Optical Files #55: The Treacherous Three - Turn it Up (Compilation) (2000)

The first 5 years of hiphop's history on wax were a time of seismic change in the music, & nowhere is it better illustrated than over the course of this compilation. The earliest recordings on this CD are from 1982, & the latest are from 1984 (they are helpfully arranged mostly in chronological order), & you can hear how incredibly fast things were changing over the course of that 2-year period. For one thing, the musical backdrops shifted from a live band playing interpolations of disco hits to sparse drum machine & synth textures. For another, & more interesting to me, the focus shifted from the DJ & partying to the individuals emcees bragging about their skills.

To my mind, there is no doubt that Kool Moe Dee was the best lyricist from the 1st generation of rappers, but you don't hear his prowess in the opening few songs. "Whip It," "Action," "Feel the Heartbeat," "The Body Rock," & even "Yes We Can Can" to some degree are in the original hiphop spirit of emcees being cheerleaders for the DJs, using the microphone to encourage people to dance. Of course, this works a lot better in a live setting than it does sitting down & listening to a record, but the energy in these tracks is infectious--you can almost feel the party cranking up around you as the 3 emcees trade lines back & forth. Like a lot of early rap groups, the focus is less on the emcees as individuals than on the unit doing its part to hype up DJ Easy Lee (who gets some cuts in despite Sugar Hill's Sylvia Robinson's usual insistence on having the record label's house band replay the samples instead of recording the DJ mix).

The group's biggest hit, "Yes We Can Can" is a party starter as well (an interpolation of the Pointer Sisters' funky 1973 single), but it's also a "message song." We get the usual lightweight "stay in school" type feelgood messaging, but it does get a little bolder, with Special K blaming "Reaganomics & atomics" for the problems of the proletariat. There's also a nice little moment where they decry drug dealers & hustlers before acknowledging a more nuanced reality: "We're not trying to put nobody down if you do/Because we know you got to live, this ain't directed to you."

As the compilation progresses, the songs on the whole get shorter--early hiphop was not about verse-chorus-verse, it was about keeping the party going, & 7-minute plus songs were the norm. (Only 1 song on this whole CD is under the 5-minute mark.) The MCs also start to differentiate themselves: "At the Party" from '83 (adapted from the Furious Five) is almost all rapped in unison, but by the time we get to "Gotta Rock" in '84, the emcees are taking their own verses to flex their own styles. This is where Moe Dee starts to emerge as the lyrical leader, with a voluminous vocabulary (in "Gotta Rock" he even addresses the biters for using "big words" in an attempt to sound like him) & complex metaphors. By '84 Moe Dee's solo career was on the horizon, so it's not surprising that the last 3 tracks feature him alone on the microphone--one of which is the scorching "Bad Mutha," which uses every trick in his lyrical arsenal & comes off even more scathing than his classic diss tracks on LL Cool J.

To me, the masterpiece on this album is "XMas Rap," the expanded version of "Santa's Rap" from Beat Street. It starts as an amusing conversation about Christmas when you're poor, & the resentment of kids who've been misled about the supposedly magical holiday--which is already a bolder & riskier premise for a social issue song than the inoffensive "Yes We Can Can." That's where the Beat Street version ends (after the "G.I. Joe look G.I. Gay" bit & Moe Dee's lispy swish impression, the less said about which the better). The version on this album continues though, getting even more pointed in its criticism of American inequality: "If the economy is getting better, getting better for who?" The song ends with a literal threat of communist revolution: "One day when you least expect it, we might even up the score." It's a great piece of writing & a testament to Moe Dee & company's artistic prowess that they could do so much with a novelty comedy Christmas song.

From lush full-band arrangements to clattering drum machines, from nursery rhymes to aggressive boasts, from having fun to fighting for justice, this compilation is a 12-track journey through the heady, tumultuous early '80s NYC hiphop scene, guided by some of of its premier pioneers.

The Optical Files #54: John Coltrane - Interstellar Space (1967/1974)

One of the problems with this kind of endeavor (i.e. the essay series you are reading) is if you keep writing about how things are, you can forget to write about how things feel. Because it was one of the last things Coltrane recorded (5 months before his death), it's tempting to see Interstellar Space as some sort of swansong, especially due to the far-out nature of the album--like his soul was shooting up into the cosmos while his body was still earthbound, like he was already outgrowing this human shell & was soon to burst free.

Stripping down his band to the absolute minimum, Coltrane recorded a series of duets with drummer Rashied Ali. Apparently Ali received no prepping from Trane except a snatch of each tune's melody. But due to the sparseness of the combo, it doesn't feel as topsy-turvy as Coltrane's free jazz efforts like the earlier Ascension--but what it lacks in harmonic diversity, it makes up for in sheer energy. Ali's drumming is jaw-dropping in its flexibility: he never plays in recognizable time, but he always seems to be in time anyway. With such a formidable foil to play off of, Coltrane's pyrotechnic solos make the duo format into something compellingly stark.

All the tracks have similar bones, but there are subtle differences, seemingly inspired by the mythic characters of the planets they're named after. "Mars" is full of frantic drumming, whereas Ali slows down the pace on "Venus," despite Trane continuing to go full-bore. "Jupiter" is chaotic again as Trane reaches again & again for the extremes of his instrument's pitch range. "Saturn" is probably the most approachable tune on the album, as the melody is catchy in the style of A Love Supreme, but it's essentially a 10-minute skronky solo in between 2 iterations of the head. Towards the end Trane fires out volleys of ascending & descending notes like a plasma cannon exhausting the last of its reserves before dropping back into the lazy, bluesy head in one of the album's most memorable moments. More sci-fi sound effects come out of Coltrane's horn towards the end of "Jupiter Variation" (a bonus track, along with "Leo," on the Impulse! CD reissue): here a raygun blasting away, there a great pulse of electricity from the raging storms inside the planet's atmosphere.

I've pointed out a few highlights, but every track is filled with stuff like this: the sound of musicians unsatisfied with the constraints of their instruments, of music in general, of the laws of physics themselves. The terrifying chaos, incomprehensible vastness & roaring stillness of the spaces between the stars are brought to life: Ali's constant blasting blends into a drone, while Trane's horn squeals, pleads & shudders in the language of advanced aliens exasperated by our inability to understand them.

As Francis Davis points out in the liner notes, what I outlined in the 1st paragraph is a romanticized view. Nobody knows what Coltrane might have done next had he not left us at age 40, & it's rather presumptuous for us to think otherwise. There's no reason to think that Interstellar Space--or Expression for that matter--is the final statement of a farseeing genius butterfly guru as he tears away from the surly bonds of earthly chrysalis & prepares to explore the outer reaches of the 5th dimension. But I'll be damned if it doesn't feel that way.

The Optical Files #53: The Clash - From Here to Eternity: Live (1999)

As anybody who knows me (or who has read my London Calling writeup) is aware, The Clash are one of my favorite bands ever, so you won't catch me saying a negative word about the contents of this disc. But I have to wonder exactly what target audience this album was designed for. The label put it out after perceiving a hole in the market for live Clash material, knowing that fans of the band would buy it if only because it was the only live album on the shelf. But one thinks it would have been easier to just release an archival show like Shea Stadium (which finally happened in 2008), or the widely-distributed Palladium bootleg (though the fidelity on that is probably not up to commercial standards). 

Instead, it seems like they gave themselves a lot of extra work by assembling various cuts from various shows over 4 and a half years (from April '78 to October '82), sequencing them in chronological order (by song, not by performance), & adding fake crowd noise to make it sound like a continuous concert. (Important note: I fucking hate fake crowd noise.) So those looking for something representative of a typical Clash set (of any era) are out of luck--obviously the band did not play their songs in order from oldest to newest! On the other hand, those looking for a selection of live cuts encompassing the band's career will be disappointed too, as there's (strangely) nothing from Give 'Em Enough Rope on this disc, and (thankfully) nothing from Cut the Crap either. So I guess the target audience is...people who wanted to hear the best available live recordings of these specific songs in this specific order? I've never been able to figure it out.

If a neither-fish-nor-fowl release like this calls into question the ethics of live compilations, I'm happy to report that the material itself is wholly excellent. Despite its strangeness, the sequencing does work, & considering the recordings are culled from different soundboards at different venues of different sizes (ranging from clubs to stadiums), the sound is remarkably consistent: a robust live mix with a little too much vocals, but not enough to be overpowering. But if you listen enough times, you'll start to hear little inconsistencies, especially as it pertains to drummers. Topper Headon, the band's iconic drummer, plays on half these cuts, while the band's original session drummer, & later full member, Terry Chimes bangs the skins on the other half. Topper is clearly tighter than Terry--better time, better fills, a more interesting presence behind the kit. Terry doesn't ruin the songs he plays on--in fact, Shea Stadium is one of the best shows these anthologists had to work with--but there is a noticeable difference between the 2 drummers.

On the other hand, the show that the largest number of songs are taken from--a September '82 gig with Chimes at the Orpheum in Boston, touring Combat Rock--is probably the weakest source material. Joe sounds tired & going through the motions on the older songs like "Clash City Rockers" & "London Calling" (whose lyrics he completely fucks up), but he comes alive on the new album songs like "Know Your Rights" & "Straight to Hell."

Like I said, I bought this CD because, at the time, it was the only commercially available live Clash recording. I'll reach for Live at Shea Stadium nowadays, or the aforementioned Palladium bootleg, before I'll throw this one on, but it can't be said enough: all live Clash is good Clash. 

Fan Fun Opinions #02 - Top 10 Best Feature Length Films of 2021

So, once again, for a bit of clarification on this series of "Top 10" lists and my general outlook on 'opinions', click the link for my Fan Fun Opinions 01 Rant.  

I don't feel that I have an obligation to explain my reasoning on the films chosen or not chosen, so there are no write-ups on the individual selections.  However, seven of the films are included in the 150 Films/150 Days Series, accompanied by screening notes.  I offer no more insight than that.  It speaks for itself, and likely isn't one of the more contentious lists that we have posted.  I have no doubt there will be plenty for folks to anguish over and dispute, but I don't think anyone will be throwing rocks. However, if it really rubs you wrong, we graciously invite you to make your own list.

So, with that classy clarification of this contribution, we continue our fun little series of random and poorly thought out "top 10" lists.  I'm sure you'll catch on that I approached this list with a bit more conscious care than some of the previous, and will joyfully stand by it.  Enjoy the fourth installment.

Without further ado, my absolutely true opinion about the best films of 2021. 

Top 10 Best Feature Length Films of 2021

Note:  This was an exceptional year of filmmaking.  Though largely missed by mainstream awards and box-office, it certainly did not go unnoticed by film festivals and the world of cinema at large. Utterly unintentional, only two films on our top 10 crossover with the nominees for Best Film at the Academy Awards - that's a shame for them.

10.  Flee:  Stream on Hulu

 9.  The Velvet Underground:  Stream on Apple TV+

 8.  The Power of the Dog:  Stream on Netflix

 7.  Judas and the Black Messiah:  Stream on HBO/Max

 6.  The Green Knight:  Stream on Hulu

 5.  Nightmare Alley:  Stream on HBO/Max

 4.  Pig:  Stream on Hulu

 3.  Red Rocket:  Stream on Prime (to rent)

 1 (tie).  Titane:  Stream on Hulu

 1 (tie).  C'mon C'mon:  Stream on Hulu/Showtime

Most-Honorable Consideration:  The Worst Person in the World, The Card Counter, Censor, Madres Paralelas, Licorice Pizza, Summer of Soul 

Special Regards - Social Issue Films and Hidden Indie Gems Pushing the Limits of Cinema:   

A Hero, Mass, Test Pattern, Promising Young Woman

 

Would Be/Could Be - Films that I have yet to see but suspect could make the list, based on recommendations and critical reception:  

Petite Maman (unavailable), Memoria (unavailable streaming or dvd/blu-ray - by creative choice), We're All Going to the World's Fair (official release April 22, 2022)

The Optical Files #52: Digable Planets - Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (1993)

This is surely the strangest rap album to ever spawn a Billboard Top 15 hit, but then again 1993 was a crazy time. Produced entirely by Butterfly & featuring no guest emcees, the album benefits from the group members' control of tone, free of outside influences. It is its own beast, though the antecedents are clear: DJ Premier &, most importantly, A Tribe Called Quest. The instrumentation is all jazz-styled (horns, upright bass, piano), & every track rides on top of robust samples from the likes of Dave Holland, Eddie Harris, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Curtis Mayfield, & more. There is some live instrumentation, but by design, it's hard to tell where the samples end & the live stuff begins. Because of this, some spots that sound identifiably un-swung, like the outro of "Time and Space," stick out in the mix &, ironically, end up providing some of the album's more memorable moments.

In addition to the musical consistency, all 3 emcees use the same flows on every song. (Again, ATCQ's Q-Tip is the originator of everybody's flows here.) You don't get the sense that they want individual songs to stand out, rather the whole album is meant to be experienced as one long piece. This sentiment is furthered by the opaque nature of the lyrics: full of slang, inside jokes, offbeat metaphors, obscure literary references, & words that feel chosen more for sound than meaning. The one exception is the cleverly titled "La Femme Fetal," in which Butterfly mounts a concise, cogent, woke as fuck, unadorned argument for abortion. It's uncharacteristically straightforward compared to the rest of the album, & is the most obvious expression of the group's politics, aside from their repeated suggestion that their listeners read Marx.

The group's aforementioned careful control over tone extends to the vocal delivery. All 3 emcees employ a style of offhanded cool, focusing more on stoned softness than on aggression or vocal flavor. The overall impression is of '90s Brooklyn Black coffeeshop hipsterdom, & while some might find that a little too precious, it's a world I would have liked to experience in the pre-internet days, so I'll take it mediated by a record.

None of this should be interpreted as me denying the existence of standout songs: the aforementioned "La Femme Fetal," along with "Last of the Spiddyocks," with a beautiful combination of trumpet sample & bass sample, & how they play off each other rhythmically is even more engaging when they layer the trumpets on top of each other; "Escapism," with a more conventional, less sample-led rap beat complete with skanky guitar & even a G-funk styled synth; & the Billboard hit "Rebirth of Slick," a song whose impact is the same whether you've heard it once or 700 times. But this album's draw is its consistency, not its peaks--as the kids today would say, Reachin' is a whole vibe.

The Optical Files #51: Scarface - The World is Yours (1993)

Scarface's 2nd solo album isn't so much a leap forward as it is a refinement of a formula. Like all Face albums from this era, we get violent threats ("Comin' Agg"), vivid portraits of psychological angst ("The Wall"), street storytelling ("He's Dead," "Mr. Scarface: Part III"), confessional autobiography ("Now I Feel Ya"), social commentary ("I'm Black"), & cinematic interludes. But what makes this album different is signaled in the first few seconds of the intro, which feature the sound of Scarface choking on a spliff before saying "Twist you up a big ass joint before you play this song." 

Now, I've heard enough gross gagging on ganja to last 2 lifetimes, & I don't particularly like starting off an album with it, but it does effectively clue us in to what's coming. More than any other Face album, this one is aimed at smokers. The lyricism we've come to expect is still there, but the deep bassy grooves, long tracks (only 2 of the 13 proper songs are under 4 minutes, & 5 of them are longer than 5 minutes), slower overall tempos & general syrupy feel all add up to an album that's aimed squarely at chemically altered listeners. The album takes its time--the punchy songs Face is known for aren't really a factor here, & it's a good 20 minutes longer than the albums that came before & after it.

Thankfully, for an album that places so much emphasis on musical atmosphere, the production here is some of the best Face ever had. Most beats are produced by the legendary N.O. Joe, with Smith & Bido handling 3 tracks & Face himself handling 2. The production is clean, organic & moody, & there's not a lackluster beat on the album. A handful of the songs are completely dependent on their funky grooves, like "Strictly For the Funk Lovers," which is 6 minutes of thick Rap-A-Lot slap bass (I smell Mike Dean) & a spoken-word performance by Scarface along with a wailing singer discussing something called a "doo-doo chaser." Then there's "I Need a Favor," which consists entirely of a conversation in which Face convinces his girlfriend to have sex with his business partner. There's something very gay about this kind of arrangement where 2 guys fuck each other by proxy, & I'm not sure if that's what Face intended, but regardless, as long as it's all consensual, blessings to all concerned. Rapless tracks like "I Need a Favor" & "Strictly..." would be annoying & mess up the flow of the album if the beats weren't so spectacular--flawlessly mixed with hi-hat & tambourine touches keeping them interesting even as they ride their fat waves. "Let Me Roll," produced by Scarface, also falls into this category--while it does feature rapping, it's fairly substance-free, just Face talking about smoking weed, & the main attraction is the beat with its tinkly piano, up-front bass & stoned atmosphere.

When Face does choose to rap seriously on this album, it's up to, or even surpassing, his usual standards. "The Wall" is one of the better portraits of madness he's written--framed as a visit to his therapist, a conceit Face has used several times. He describes a Sartre-esque, dreamlike scenario where an insurmountable wall haunts him both before & after death. The drops into silence after each verse are tremendously effective & give the song a dramatic musical presence. "I'm Black" is another beautifully written piece, probably Face's most convincing & thorough anti-cop screed. Another common Scarface topic, the anti-snitch manifesto, is explored in "Dying With Your Boots On." The album's only throwaway is "Funky Lil Aggin," which only exists as a feature for 2Low, the 13 year-old gangsta rapper whom I'm positive Scarface ghostwrote for. The track is all about the novelty of hearing a little kid rapping filthy, & holds no real replay value.

Rap-A-Lot production simply never got better than The World Is Yours, because it was the album where Face, Joe, Dean etc. allowed themselves to go crazy with the loping funky side of the musical endeavor. I might return to The Diary more often, but I'm grateful I got to experience this album back in the day, before I cleaned up my act & found myself outside its target audience.

The Optical Files #50: Queen Latifah - All Hail the Queen (1989)

I've noticed a sexist trend on social media these days where people will compare the era of Latifah, Lyte, Monie Love, etc. to today's crop of mainstream women rappers like Cardi, Meg & Latto, saying something about how back in the day, female rappers didn't need to make themselves sex objects to be respected, etc. Aside from being prudish, a double standard, & just plain incorrect, this view also betrays an un-nuanced understanding of what Latifah was all about.

It's true that on her debut album, All Hail the Queen, Latifah does not rap about sex. But it's not because she's a prude. (Although on "Princess of the Posse" she does profess to "show the skeezers the meaning of humility.") It's because (1) she was a closeted lesbian at the time & was probably worried about hurting her numbers if she rapped about her sexuality, and (2) with respect to all feminine archetypes, the one she's most interested in here is mother. The track "Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children" is the purest expression of this: Latifah plays the part of mother who birthed the hiphop scene. All of this is tied into the Afrocentric philosophy on display here (it was trendy to be Afrocentric in NYC hiphop at the time, but Latifah's comes off as sincere). In many traditional societies, the nurturing role is not necessarily played by the biological mother of the child; all women in the village contribute to that part together. Separating the role of mother from heterosexual reproduction, Latifah calls herself "Mama Zulu" & ends the song by saying "They weren't born from the body, they were born from the soul."

That's not to say that All Hail the Queen is entirely sexless. The rap/house music fusion experiment (another product of its time) "Come Into My House," though not explicit, certainly has an erotic charge--right down to its title--but notably does not specify gender. On "Wrath of My Madness," she bluntly rejects male romantic advances in favor of queenly power: "Brothers catch my eye with little hijinks, like eye winks/Dying to have a lover of my likeness/So release all your shyness, just call me your highness/and feel the wrath of my madness." A few bars later, she clarifies that "The brothers give only hugs." The hints were there all along, & shame on all of us that this is as frank as Latifah felt comfortable being about her sexuality.

The album is mostly produced by Latifah's DJ Mark the 45 King, & he brings a consistent, mostly uptempo, horn sample-driven sound. At the time this arrangement was normal, but there are a handful of guest producers: Prince Paul contributes a super funky, Sesame Street-sampling headtrip with a prominent vibraslap (!) on the De La collaboration "Mama Gave Birth to the Soul Children"; Louis Vega contributes a thick, noisy sample collage on "Latifah's Law," which the emcee's vocals have a hard time overcoming; KRS-One samples Gil Scott-Heron & lays down his signature overdriven drum machine on "Evil That Men Do." Enough respect to Kris the legend, but the best guest producer award goes to Daddy-O for the surprisingly modern-sounding, slow-tempo deep dubstyle reggae groove of "The Pros," which creates an ego-trip showcase for both Latifah & Daddy-O guest starring on the mic. It's one of 4 tracks on the album that showcase the heavy reggae influence that was common in NYC hiphop at the time, along with "Wrath of My Madness," "Princess of the Posse," & "Inside Out."

As an emcee, Latifah's influences are obvious. She uses a flow very reminiscent of KRS-One on both the collaboration "Evil that Men Do" & on the single "Wrath of My Madness." You can hear shades of Big Daddy Kane & Rakim in there as well. For this reason, I think Black Reign is a better album musically & vocally--Latifah had shed some of the imitative qualities evident here & come fully into her own. But All Hail the Queen is a huge debut full of understated wordplay & complex rhetoric, & should be respected to the fullest.

The Optical Files #49: 2Pac - Better Dayz (2002)

Those like me who grew up on 2Pac's music are torn about the validity of the posthumous albums. Everyone accepts Killuminati as canon because it was mostly finished during Pac's lifetime, but everything afterwards begs the question of why Pac chose not to release those songs, & if they were better left unreleased. On the other hand, 2Pac's music meant so much to so many people that, financial considerations aside, it seems only right to give the people what they want. Whatever the case, co-executive producers Afeni Shakur & Suge Knight must answer for the album's cheeky references to the theories that Pac wasn't dead. From the intro track that asks "where are these songs coming from?" & features a "T. Shakur" writing credit in the liner notes despite the impossibility of his having written anything in the track, to the words "expect me [...] I'm coming," after a few seconds of silence at the end of the last track. It's not as egregious as Eminem chopping up a dead man's vocals to shout out himself & Aftermath on the following album (we'll get to that later, whenever it pops up), but these efforts to fuel the conspiracy theories seem more like a Suge move than an Afeni one. 

It's pretty obvious that this album exists so that "Thugz Mansion" could have a home. It's the last great 2Pac single, & the acoustic guitar version by J. Phoenix always brings a tear to my eye, whether it's the cut on this album with 1 Nas verse or the one on God's Son with 2. I love the occasional drum-less rap song, & Pac rapping about what heaven might look like for a street dude is an implicit indictment of white supremacy's efforts to control perspective. It's 2Pac's poetics at their finest, & I especially love all the references to the history of Black music, proving how close those figures are to the core of identity for the community he's speaking for. "Seen a show with Marvin Gaye last night, it had me shook/Drinking peppermint Schnapps with Jackie Wilson & Sam Cooke/Then some lady named Billie Holiday sang [...] Only God can save us/When Miles Davis cutting loose with the band."

The rest of the record is a mishmash of remixes, delete bin fodder, Outlawz feature-heavy tunes, & songs straight-up jacked from other compilations. The most interesting thing to me from a 2022 perspective is how you can see the South starting to take over--a Trick Daddy feature, a T.I. feature, & Jazze Pha bringing his typically smooth, sparkling production to 3 high-profile tracks--more than anybody else except Pac's frequent collaborator Johnny "J" himself. Speaking of Johnny "J", he laces a few beats with Southern flavor himself, like "Fuck 'Em All" with its Geto Boys-style guitar stabs. Most of the production, though, falls into a 3rd-rate G-funk pocket, with not enough sample chops & way too much MIDI, syncopated synth noodling, & overdramatic orchestral flourishes (see BRISS's "When We Ride on Our Enemies" remix). The best beat of this type is "Ghetto Star," produced by Go-Twice, with its atmospheric background vocals, but except for Jazzefizzle, production highlights are hard to come by on either disc.

That isn't to say there aren't some good songs. "Never Be Peace" is one of the better, more detailed expressions of Pac's "T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E." philosophy, & "Mama's Just a Little Girl" is a nice sentiment, even though it lives in the shadow of "Brenda's Got a Baby." Also on Pac's softer side, "My Block" is a great contemplative piece, but we already heard it (with a better beat by Easy Mo Bee) on The Show soundtrack. Unfortunately, disc 2 is way too loaded with Outlawz features--this may make me a heretic among 2Pac aficionados, but I have never liked any of the Outlawz & I always sit through their verses impatiently waiting to hear Pac again. I also have to mention "There U Go," yet another slut-shaming song that specializes in that double standard of expecting your girl to be faithful while you reserve the right to fool around. I'd say it sounded very mid-'90s, except I hear brand new songs with that same point of view today.

Even on the rejected songs, even on subpar remixes of songs you've heard before, 2Pac is never boring to listen to. This was an interesting revisit because of how dated everything felt--Better Dayz is as identifiably 2002 as R U Still Down? was identifiably 1997. That's how you know for sure that Pac was dead--an album with his input would have been ahead of the curve, not just reproducing whatever sounds were trendy. If he were alive, you can bet he would have sounded like himself.

The Optical Files #48: The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)

I think by now, 30 years after the Nirvana explosion, most people acknowledge that "grunge" was never a music genre so much as a media term describing a style & youth subculture. The bands that make up the so-called Big 4 of Grunge (Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden) sound nothing alike outside the general heavy rock umbrella. If anything unites them, it's a diffuse attempt to filter '70s rock through a '90s lens, which is a natural result of the ages of the musicians. Smashing Pumpkins mostly escaped being tagged with this label because they were from Chicago, hence a bit removed from the Seattle scene. But the other reason is that, instead of the '70s, the Pumpkins reached back a bit further & took their musical cues from '60s rock--everything from psychedelia to the Velvet Underground's art rock to the Beatles' melodic pop mastery to Laurel Canyon folk melodies. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, their true commercial breakthrough & their only #1 album, was a sprawling double disc with ample room to cram all those influences & more.

I'm not 100% sure how I obtained this CD, but I have a strong feeling I stole it from one my sisters. So if either of you are reading this, you can't have it back, but since you purchased it at Sam Goody for probably the 1996 equivalent of like $35, I'll gladly reimburse you that amount. I think I was first drawn to this album more by the visual aesthetics than the music. Fancying myself an antiquarian, I loved the fantastical, old-timey artwork, & especially the music video for 2nd single "Tonight, Tonight" that interpolated Méliès's A Trip to the Moon.

The album seems to announce a less rock direction with the first 2 tracks: an eponymous intro with a lovely piano melody (later interpreted on disc 2 tracks "Thru the Eyes of Ruby" & "Farewell and Goodnight." Then straight into "Tonight Tonight," where the orchestral strings overwhelm the guitars. But then the album drops 2 of its heaviest numbers: the sludgy, extremely downtuned "Jellybelly" & the equally metal-adjacent "Zero." Familiar Pumpkins territory follows, with "Here is No Why" & "To Forgive" sounding closest to Siamese Dream songs: atmospheric folk-pop progressions in a crunchy grunge context. Specifically, "To Forgive" is this album's "Disarm," complete with the return of those ascending chorus strings. "To Forgive" also sounds noticeably Beatlesque, a quality the band returns to a few times on this album, particularly in the promotional single "Galapagos." Elsewhere, "Porcelina of the Vast Oceans" spends its epic 9 minutes not so much unfolding a complex composition as simply taking its time. I'm reminded of Jimi Hendrix's "1983."

Disc 2 takes the opposite approach, opening with 2 numbers on the sludgier side before softening up for the rest of the album. Like is often true of this sort of affair, there is more filler on disc 2, like the plodding, 2-riff "X.Y.U." that attempts some opaque Doors-esque poetry & takes 7 minutes to get nowhere. On the other hand, the songs on this disc tend to be more experimental: "Thirty-Three" introduces a drum machine, which returns on "1979" & again on the late-album 3-song stretch of "We Only Come Out at Night," "Beautiful" (which, with its programmed drumbeat, processed guitars & keyboards & syncopated rhythms sounds like nothing so much as a Beck song!), & stalker story "Lily (My One and Only)."

This is not exactly a concept album, but most of the songs concern themselves with letting go of childhood & all the emotions that come with it. Even though it was their biggest single ever, I happen to think "1979" is the best song the Pumpkins ever wrote. Lyrically & musically, it unpacks the push & pull of nostalgia for childhood, with an earnest rhythm guitar & tentative leads testing the waters of adulthood. Caught between the open arms of the guitars & the cold future of the drum machines & samples, "1979" holds you over the abyss until you work up the courage to let go.

Musically, Siamese Dream is a better album, & pound for pound Gish might have better songwriting, but Mellon Collie came around at an important time in my life (I was 11) & spoke to themes that were captivating to me then & are captivating to me now. I don't return to it as often as the abovementioned albums, but when I do, the feelings run deeper.

Popcorn Perspective: '“The Batman,” Reviewed: Eh, It’s Fine'

Striking photography throughout - by Greig Fraser.  

A review of The Batman, by Richard Brody of the New Yorker.  This is not a film critic that I regularly read, but tend to respect.  In this case, it damn near parallels my thoughts and notes exact, and I don't have the energy or desire to write a review of my own.

I screened The Batman recently at Alamo Drafthouse, Charlottesville.

"The Batman," Reviewed:  Eh, It's Fine | The New Yorker

by Richard Brody

"It’s cause for modest celebration that “The Batman” achieves, for much of its nearly three-hour running time, a baseline of artistry: it’s eminently sit-through-able. There’s a category of movie that used to be the Hollywood stock in trade, which a dear departed relative used to call “brain cleansers”—one kicks back, the time passes with some rooting interest, some excitement, some curiosity about what’s coming next. For its first two hours or so, “The Batman” largely fulfills the commitment to be engaging and clever; its deftly inventive director, Matt Reeves (who co-wrote the script with Peter Craig), conveys the impression of substance where it’s hardly to be found. The movie is good with an asterisk—an asterisk the size of the financial interests at stake in the franchise’s intellectual property. As free as Reeves may have been to make the film according to his lights, he displays an element of custodial, even fiduciary, responsibility. It may well win him favor with the studio, with the ticket-buying public, and with critics who calibrate their enthusiasm to box-office success, but it gets in the way of the kinds of transformative interpretations of the characters that would make the difference between a baseline movie and an authentically free and original one.

...The Batman describes his uneasy role as an avenger—indeed, he says, as vengeance itself—in a voice-over that holds out hope that the superhero will be endowed with at least an average level of subjectivity and mental activity. No such luck: that voice-over might as well be a part of the explanatory press notes for all the insight it offers into the protagonist’s thoughts."

Links:  

The New Yorker:  "The Batman," Reviewed:  Eh, It's Fine

The New Yorker:  "The Batman" is a waste of Robert Pattinson

The Optical Files #47: Kanye West - Late Registration (2005)

When I wrote about The College Dropout, I talked about trying to balance my opinions of the artist today, & my understanding of where it fits in his catalog, with my experience of the album when it first came out. I will do the same here, in large part because I really don't want to talk about 2022 Kanye. After loving the debut & appreciating the musical moves he'd made since then, I was excited for Late Registration. I enjoyed the album & played it a lot during the autumn after it came out, but after a while it started to feel a little less fresh, a little less special than The College Dropout. Although it had plenty of stone-cold classics on it, it occasionally felt like it was trying to recreate its predecessor. 

In the previous writeup I said that Kanye made songs, not beats, & that continues to hold true here. Multi-part compositions like "Crack Music" & "Gone" are multiple times more complex than your average sample-loop rap song. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, naturally.) But on this album, rather than compose new sections, occasionally Ye settles for adding a new melody in the back half of the song. He does this enough times ("Heard 'Em Say," "Gold Digger," "Hey Mama," etc.) that it starts to feel like a worn-out trick.

The other thing that seems to be emerging on this album is Kanye's ego. He wasn't exactly self-effacing on The College Dropout, but at least he defaulted to humility, & the cockier moments seemed in keeping with (or tribute to) hiphop's time-honored braggadocio. On this album, especially songs like "Addiction" & "Celebration," there's a tone of sneering contempt that starts to creep in toward the people (particularly women) he considers himself better than. (Once again, I will leave any conclusions about how this relates to today's Kanye up to the reader's interpretation.)

Of course, there are 3 absolutely indispensable songs on here. "Touch the Sky" is the only beat not produced by Ye, a sunny Just Blaze number sampling the great Curtis Mayfield, & the breakthrough feature for a young Lupe Fiasco. "Drive Slow" features frequent Kanye ghostwriter GLC & the always-affable Paul Wall, & rides one of the greatest beats of the 2000s, with Kanye flipping the same Hank Crawford sample that Johnny "J" used on 2Pac's "Shorty Wanna Be a Thug." When I first heard "Drive Slow," I was mad at Kanye for biting 2Pac, but listening further I had to admit that his flip was better, complete with the added instruments & a syrupy skrewed section at the end in honor of Paul Wall's Houston.

The 3rd, & best, of this album's golden trio is "Gone," featuring Cam'ron, whom I never liked more than here, & Consequence (another ghostwriter) delivering the best verse on the whole album. But the main attraction is the beat: starting as a simple Otis Redding chop, it evolves through added instruments (love those strings!) into an instrumental section midway through, a deft modulation/key change & emerges into a bolder variation in the back half. I love key changes in rap songs & there aren't enough of them--at least, not enough produced by people not named Kanye West.

So Late Registration is by no means a bad album, but it lacks the staying power of the records that came before & after it. For an artist who prides himself on continuously innovating, this is the only time in Kanye's career when things have started to feel a little stale musically.

The Optical Files #46: Prince - Musicology (2004)

Every paying patron of Prince's 2004 concert tour in support of this album got a copy of the self-released CD free at the door. It was part of Prince's continued war against the record industry--bypassing the middleman & literally putting the product in the hands of his consumers. I was lucky enough to attend that tour (at what was then known as the MCI Center in Washington, DC) & that CD remains one of my favorite music-related possessions.

Musicology was Prince's return to mainstream prominence & critics dubbed it a return to form. They were right to the extent that the album is more focused than anything he'd done in a decade (I'm thinking of 1993's canceled The Undertaker album), but Prince was an artist of such insatiable creativity that there are gems scattered all over his enormous discography. Musicology's focus is on groove, & the album can roughly be divided into 2 halves: 1 part deeply strutting funk workouts like the opening title track, "Life 'O' the Party" (a multi-part composition where he raps a little bit & takes shots at his perennial rival Michael Jackson) & "Dear Mr. Man"; 1 part guitar-driven rock numbers. There are a few tracks that fall outside these categories, like the 6/8 blues shuffle of "On the Couch," or the Marvin Gaye-flavored "Call My Name," which I recall getting plenty of radio play on hiphop & R&B stations despite not being released as a single. The song floats along on top of delicate piano with well thought-out lyrics peppered with sociopolitical remarks. Prince's social justice mindset is apparent all over the album, from "Cinnamon Girl" to "Dear Mr. Man," which reminds me a lot of Stevie Wonder's "You Haven't Done Nothin'."

The rock half of the album is generally more musically diverse than the funk one. There's "A Million Days," one of my favorites on the album, which starts as an '80s-styled power ballad before turning into a huge, discordant instrumental meltdown in the back half. Then there's the new wave sounds of "Cinnamon Girl," another explicitly sociopolitical song with a reliably fiery guitar solo. "The Marrying Kind" might be the closest Prince ever got to stoner sludge, with its heavily distorted rhythm guitars & psychedelic organ.

The album features seemingly endless fun twists & turns. "What Do U Want Me 2 Do?" is a laid-back combo of jazz-fusion guitar, skittering funk bass & analog drum machine. The interplay between the bass, guitar & electric piano keeps the song lively despite a sedate vocal. "If Eye Was the Man In Ur Life" turns into a crazy jazz jam at the end. Prince's genius as a songwriter was his ability to fit complex arrangements into deceptively simple pop songs. Catchy & accessible, but never basic. 

Prince's stunning lead guitar shows up on a few tracks in addition to "Cinnamon Girl," but if there's any nitpick I can put on this album, it's that I would've enjoyed just a bit more guitar fireworks. That wasn't where his head was when making this album, though, & the focused, concise series of hard-hitting songs we got is pretty damn near flawless. I'm glad I've managed to hold onto that CD for damn near 20 years.