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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com> |
| Subject | Re: David Ponak 2003 Top Ten |
| Date | Thu, 11 Dec 2003 14:06:08 -0500 |
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At 12:58 PM 12/11/2003 -0500, Kevin Gandel wrote:
>
>
>> 02. Outkast-Speakerboxx/The Love Below
>
>everywhere I turn I hear "outkast this" and "outkast that"
>never heard them. anyone give me a comparison to who they sound like? are
>they pop?
Yes, in the sense that Prince was a pop artist during the DIRTY
MIND-through-LOVESEXY run. THE LOVE BELOW (Andre Benjamin's disc) sounds
like a classic Prince album, except it's even more stylistically varied: in
the first five songs alone, it swings from an orchestral opening with
crooner vocals into a psychedelic guitar freakout into mutated bebop into a
solo acoustic guitar instrumental with spoken accompaniment into
Prince-style minimal funk into something that sounds like mid-'70s Marvin
Gaye collaborating with Basement Jaxx. Plus "Hey Ya" is without a doubt
the finest pure pop single released in 2003, a boon to anyone who's been
saying that they long to hear bouncy acoustic guitars and harmonies at the
top of the Billboard chart. SPEAKERBOXXX (Antwon Patton's disc) is a more
traditional hip-hop album of the type that horrifies and disgusts a fairly
large subset of Auditeers: less thuggish than the gangstas, less flat-out
weird than Missy Elliott, with a very strong '70s funk influence more of
the Earth Wind and Fire/early Commodores variety (the hit single "The Way
You Move" has a chorus that sounds like something Philip Bailey would have
sung) than the heavy Parliament/Funkdadelic vibe of OutKast's earlier albums.
It may well freak some out, but I predict that SPEAKERBOXXX/THE LOVE BELOW
is going to place very high on the Audities poll this year. Only album I
can think of that I've played more this year is Sparks' LIL BEETHOVEN.
S
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