A lovely place to begin, if you’ve been waiting for 17 months to restart the party … Hey, don’t fret We’re gonna make you sweat Don’t forget The funk’s within you, the funk’s within you — “Splash”, performed by Saoul I call Paint the World the must-listen sequel to SuCcumb, Saoul’s previous album. Where SuCcumb […]
Read More Album in the Crosshairs: Saoul — Paint the World | 2021 | Self-ReleasedA message of hope, amidst a pandemic and the struggle to make Black Lives Matter across the world Within the past hour, Prince’s official Twitter account posted a cover of Prince’s “The Cross” song, performed by musicians from his former bands “The Revolution”, New Power Generation (NPG), and 3RDEYEGIRL. Bandmates that span all four decades […]
Read More One more Prince post: former band members from The Revolution, New Power Generation and 3RDEYEGIRL released a version of ‘The Cross’ from Sign o’ the Times albumPrince w̶a̶s̶ is a Rocker. And Prince w̶a̶s̶ is Black music. No contradiction at all. Prince: Question — You like Rock & Roll? [Audience cheers] Prince: Me too. One difference though, I like Rock and Roll — Fun-kay. —Prince, live in Montreux, Switzerland; July 15, 2013 Can’t forget Prince’s birthday today! We all miss him. […]
Read More Happy Born Day, Prince!Funk as a music genre is far from dead. For the moment, it’s spending time in the worthy hands of multi-instrumentalist Saoul in the form of “Maxine”, the funkiest track I’ve heard so far this year. What makes Saoul’s Funk so unique for 2020 is that he moves beyond the basic, lower-shelf grooves and immerses […]
Read More Aural Dive: “Maxine” by SaoulSaoul wants you to taste the bread. And be sexy while doing it. Plus, he has a new release, Seldom Oddity, to help you along … The unsuppressed, sensual funkiness of the multi-instrumentalist’s EP mirrors writer James Baldwin’s admonition to view sensuality — despite the unequal and on-the-brink times we live in — as a […]
Read More Album in the Crosshairs: Saoul — Seldom Oddity EP | Special Edition | self-released | 2019About the title of this piece — we’ll deal with that in a moment. I own records — and still buy them — but I don’t celebrate Record Store Day. Record stores — particularly when taking into account what they’ve been through — are only Barney Fife’ng themselves by selling high-priced releases on the day […]
Read More Happy Wrecka Stow Day — this post is probably not what you thinkI dig songwriter-musician Saoul Bumbu’s latest album, The Juice, for a reason similar to why I have a problem with much of modern Pop music recordings: the songs — even the ones performed by highly competent musicians — sound like the artists are simply playing by the numbers. And you then wonder if the culprit […]
Read More Album in the Crosshairs: Saoul — The Juice (Independent Release)Recommended preparation for digging multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Saoul Bumbu’s music is to read how he describes it: “Good Songwriting is the real Pinnacle, no matter what Style or Genre. Write a Tune that still shines when there’s a Power [outage] and all you have is a 6-String and some Candles.” I’ll supplement his quote with […]
Read More Aural Dive: Saoul BumbuAbout a year after the release of Prince’s Dirty Mind album, Music industry publication Billboard attempted to answer the question “What is Black music” by creating a Black Singles chart. Reductionist tactics like Billboard’s are worthy of a lengthy post, but I’ll say only this for now: Black creatives and their output over the years […]
Read More 9 PRINCE ALBUMS I PLAY THE MOSTIt’s been about three days after learning that Prince became an ancestor, and the sadness I continue to feel is strange — as if a part of my innards was forcibly extracted, a clearly unhappy event, but my brain refuses to fully compute what just happened. I’m not the only person with out-of-sorts emotions. Prince […]
Read More PRINCE’S MUSIC WAS REPPING THE BLACK EXPERIENCE FOR 40 YEARS (AND MANY OF YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT)
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