Album review: El-P’s ‘Cancer 4 Cure’
During the head trip of an album that is “Cancer 4 Remedy,” surveillance drones buzz Brooklyn, handwritten notes are left on fallen soldiers and messages of serenity are pierced with choppy beats that morph into gunfire. Is this a existing-occasions record or a snapshot of one’s paranoia? Ace producer and longtime champion of underground hip-hop El-P walks a fine line on “Cancer 4 Cure,” crafting aggression with militaristic precision.
The first solo album in 5 many years from El-P (genuine name: Jaime Meline), the twelve tracks right here are overflowing with pent-up confusion. The characters he inhabits are finest confined to our nightmares, a lot more scary than any horror film because they’re standard folks driven negative.
A tapped cymbal hovers like a vulture on “For My Upstairs Neighbor (Mums the Word),” exactly where keyboard on keyboard creates a black hole swirl as an unlikely killer stays stone-faced throughout a police interrogation. He raps, “I hate you for creating me make a guy bleed” on “Tougher Colder Killer,” in which an army vet is a prisoner of his personal thoughts.
The spinning synths of “Works Every Time” paint the landscape like lights from a prison watchtower, electronics bubbling like minor calls for aid. Yet even although he’s supplied a “fresh commence on a new globe,” El-P even now finds himself homesick. Maybe it is simply a case of Stockholm syndrome, but it is no tiny feat that the mixed-up, war-torn globe of haves and have-nots presented right here is as inviting as it is.
El-P
“Cancer 4 Cure”
Body fat Possum
4 stars (Out of 4)
Album review: Aretha Franklin’s ‘A Woman Falling Out of Love’
It’s a relief just to hear Aretha Franklin’s divine voice again, considering that several months ago, rumors swirled as she lay in a Detroit hospital, recovering from surgery (its nature still unconfirmed). On her 38th studio album, available only at WalMart, the queen of soul sounds voluminous with life and optimism — soaring, scatting, growling and belting through a gospel number, a blues song about adolescent desire and a movie theme about summer places.
Aretha (really, no last name needed) executive-produced “A Woman Falling Out of Love” and produced most of the tracks herself. Never one for restraint, she piles on the strings and keyboards, matching her multi-octave melismas with lavish instrumentation. “A Woman Falling Out of Love” is like a gourmet Sunday brunch buffet, overflowing with opulent deliciousness — indulgent, fattening, sugary, and just in time for Mother’s Day.
Franklin pours it all on the opening track “How Long I’ve Waited”: strings over synths over operatic overstatement. But she gets gritty by the next track’s ode to B.B. King, her Big Mama Thornton howl echoed by swinging horns. She scats like Ella on “U Can’t See Me” and praises the Lord with all the magnificence of Mahalia on “Faithful” (a duet with Karen Clark-Sheard). Aretha is truly, as Rolling Stone recently named her, the greatest singer of all time.
Her taste, well, as we all know from that inauguration hat, that’s another matter. (“A Woman Falling” includes her presidential rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”) Aretha has long added a second title to her name: the queen of smooth. Tracks like the über-schmaltzy cover of “The Way We Were,” with Ron Isley, will play well on soft jazz stations. Her chatty, inspirational, girl-talk liner notes — signed “Ree Ree” — cater to Oprah’s crowd. Forgive her her bourgeois affectations; I’ll welcome a “New Day” with Aretha any time.
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