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inside
that "neo-soul" box.
There is
music being made now that defies the current genres. Albums
that you listen and come away scratching your head like, "Was
that a hop album or a soul album or a rock album or funk album
or...? What was that?" Yeah, it could have been, essentially,
a hop album, but it was a soul album, too. It was probably
also a funk album with jazz elements, maybe a good deal of
screaming rock & roll guitars, as well. What is with these
artists these days? These artists that can't just stay in one
neat lane? Who knows? What we do know is that we like it.
Zipping in and out of lanes, swerving through traffic is most
definitely a perilous journey, but therein lies the rush --
for the driver and the listener riding shotgun. No, we didn't
know exactly where Mos Def was taking us on New Danger
or exactly where Dre was headed on Love Below and we
weren't 100 percent sure if Erykah was 100 percent in control
of the wheel on Worldwide Underground. But, after a
while we got comfortable enough to just sit back and enjoy.
These artists were and are embarking on a journey that is
forging some compelling new territory. It's a movement that
has produced a new genre of music. We call it Bridge.
It's a
difficult genre to define, since, in essence, it’s a music
characterized by the fact that it defies any true definition.
That type of rigidity (setting parameters) is counter to what
Bridge is about. For a Bridge cheat-sheet, refer to our
sidebar with some examples of Bridge albums and some Bridge
hallmarks to look for. Otherwise, you can let Thesis, the
creative mind that coined the term Bridge, explain: “Bridge in
the sense that it connects all of the previous genres in black
music (all of them) and this new music caters to every
generation from grandma down to the teens. That’s something
that most genres didn’t do -- so it bridges the age and sonic
gap (from blues to jazz to rap). Also Bridge, as in "take it
to the bridge", which is the most funky or creative part of a
song. When kats say "take it to the bridge", like James Brown
used to do, you know somebody is about to flip it. That
typifies Bridge, especially because its pioneers most likely
started their careers doing other music (hip hop, soul,
whatever), but then just got real creative, and funky and
flipped there styles into this new Bridge music.”
It might
remind you of the soul and funk music that characterized The
70s. Groups like Sly and the Family Stone, The Parliament and
Earth Wind & Fire built on what James Brown began, but were
throwing in some Jimi Hendrix and Motown, too. Pionners like
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield took decidedly
different approaches to their music as well. Mayfield's
Roots was far more gutter and dissonant and defiant than
much of what he did with the Impressions. Marvin was on a
whole 'nother mental and emotional plane on albums such as
What's Going On? and Here, My Dear than his duets
with Tammi Terrell. The songs were open ended, with layered
bass and exploratory lyrics. Stevie ramped up his game so high
in the 70s, that the innocent Motown-sound of Lil' Stevie
seemed to come from a totally different human being. These new
genres were just as much of a "concoction" as they were
"evolutions."
We’ve
arrived at a similar tipping point. Today is a new era,
people. For the first time since Kool DJ Herc flipped some
break beats and created hip-hop, we have a new genre of music,
where artists are offering albums that venture away from
whatever is their core genre, to explore and cook up these
beautiful mélanges rooted in all the black idioms: blues,
jazz, soul, rock, R&B, reggae and hop. It is the newest stage
of evolution in black music.
The ill
thing about Bridge is that it’s not an exact science when
determining it’s genesis. The same way funk artists can look
back to what James was doing in the late 50s and early 60s and
soul artists might finger Ray Charles and Aretha as
genesis-artists; you can probably go all the way back to some
of the incredibly underappreciated gems, courtesy of Gil
Scott-Heron, to find Bridge as a fetus. Gil is known in a lot
of circles as the progenitor of rap music. He did "spit"
poetry back then, that's for sure. But he sung, too. And he
sung with a crooner's touch, since he grew up on Motown, but
also featured the powerful earnestness of the great
socio-political soul artists of the 70s. There was also his
music, which featured improvised jazz-stylings by jazz artists
like Hubert Laws and Ron Carter. Gil was not a funk artist, he
was not a soul artist, he was not necessarily a jazz musician
or just a poet and it was too early for rap. He was a very
early version of one a Bridge artist, a dude who defied
definition.
If we fast
forward about 20 years, though, we come across hip-hop albums,
such as Aquemeni, Carnival and Black On Both
Sides to find the first true Bridge "elements" shining in
a real way. With “Spottieottiedopaliscious”, “Hold On, Be
Strong” and “Liberation”, Kast gave us such an eclectic sound
to find on a hop album. Clef offered a whole lot on his 1997
solo-debut, from reggae to love songs to straight up hop. And
“Umi Says” and “Climb” were obviously Mos’ first hard dives
into what would become a full fledge movement. “Rock & Roll”
is perhaps the most powerful rendition of Bridge, not only
because Mos gave it to us at the genre’s earliest stage, but
because the sound and the tone were so Bridge. It’s a
song that celebrates the creativity and eclectic nature of all
the black music genres and it gave the album, a hip-hop album,
a fuller feel. I mean, BOB was markedly different than
Black Star or what Kweli dropped the next year with Hi-Tek
(Train of Thought).
Then
Stankonia and Like Water For Chocolate dropped in
what would become a seminal year for the direction of music,
in general, and a year that had a grand impact on the
development of Bridge. Not to be overlooked were Fantastic,
Ecleftic, Voodoo and Mama’s Gun. These
weren't necessarily Bridge albums, but they all had
quantifiable impact in the way this Bridge embryo was
developing. D’Angelo with his Brillow pad soul and Erykah with
her new-soul (and we mean “new“), both of which manifested
discernable hop influence – like gritty boom-bap drum rhythms
or grimy bass line – they also featured live instrumentation
you’d find on jazz albums. Clef hit us with another
gumbo-album, Ecleftic, where he refused to stay in one
lane, almost to the point where it made an unsuspecting
listener a bit dizzy. The Soulquarians and Ummah also began
shaping a sound that was easily able to toggle between hop and
soul, because it was essentially both melded together with the
sensibilities of men (?uestlove, J Dilla and pianist James
Poyser) that could play jazz instruments.
By 2002,
with hip-hop and neo-soul plummeting, artists began branching
out in earnest. Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections
dropped that March, preceded by the galactic song and video
for "Closet Freak". Lo was on some other stuff and it was
clear that this was an album that (back then) defied any genre
and was new in the extent of its quirks and genre-dabbling.
There was something for everyone, sounds of everything. I’ll
admit that I slept on the joint at first. That often happens
when a fearless artist dives into the deep end, head first –
not everyone joins. The appreciation and amazement at the
lunacy of Cee-Lo was there, but the path he was helping to
forge was still unclear. Nine months later, Electric Circus
drops. Common is spittin’ throughout, since he couldn’t even
begin to attempt the dual roles Mos, 3000 and Lo serve on
their efforts; but, ?uestlove oversaw a production work
(teaming with the Soulquarians and Common) that sped by
Like Water. Steely Dan showed through, UK soul star Omar
showed through, Cee-Lo made his customary appearance and Comm
took his album to the cosmos, making stops everywhere. What
genre of music didn’t you hear on that joint?
Throughout
these years, you had to wonder what was brewing. There was a
new essence forming, formulas were changing and equations were
getting disregarded. So when you finished 3000’s cinematic
masterpiece, Love Below, and a little more than one
year later, Mos drops The New Danger – the tightest
sprawl in recent black music history – in October of 2004, you
had to start thinking about identifying a new, developed
movement. This wasn’t and isn’t just a few artists indulging
their smorgasbord appetites with gluttony – this is a
new-breed music with discernable hallmarks.
For some
years now, we’ve excoriated hip-hop for its staleness.
Creativity, we seem wont to say, is a thing of the past in
this music that changed America over the past 30 years (read
Thesis and Uncle Harry’s Musicology essays for two different
perspectives on whether or not hip-hop is dead for more
insight). R&B has been corny for some time now, only to be
saved by a new-age soul crew (D'Angelo, Maxwell, Tony Rich,
Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Musiq) that came on the scene in the
last half of the 90s and early in the new millennium. But then
a slew of imposters came through to hijack that movement and
this new-soul became hackneyed and cliché. Whether artists are
stumbling across Bridge as they retreat from the staleness of
the current genres or they're finding Bridge through proactive
exploration is tough to discern.
But it was
bound to happen at some point -- black music never stayed
stagnant for too long. Blues developed from gospel and jazz
was born from blues and gospel. Later, rock crawled out the
womb with conspicuous elements of R&B and blues and jazz; just
like funk put a new spin on R&B and rock; and just like the
hop was jazz and funk and R&B and soul.
The new day
is here. Bridge isn’t ruling the world and it may never
supplant the hop and rock as music hegemons. And it's so new
that we probably still haven't completely wrapped our arms
around this new movement. But, the day is here. Bear witness.
─Music
Dude
musicdude@thisisrealmusic.com |
