Diet Album Review: Chris Cornell “Scream” February 12, 2009
Posted by DJ in Album Reviews.Tags: Chris Cornell, Timbaland
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I call this review a ‘diet’ because I can’t really go into depth with it. The reason being, I only know Chris Cornell for the one song “Like a Stone” which he did with Audioslave. It’s not fair to judge him the way his fans have. However Timbaland did his entire album, and the Timbaland catalog is something I’m alot more familiar with. So I’ll moreso be speaking from that perspective. Scroll down to the bottom for the quick review.
I got this album from a friend(shout out to…that friend lol).
Tim is kinda quiet these days, but here he is doing Chris Cornell’s entire album. The album has a nice flow to it, each song has a really intense outro that leads into the next song. 90% of the time the outro/intro is better than the actual song it leads into. It’s typical tim, as far as progressions, percussion and melodies that have been typical of tim in the last 3 years, starting with Justin Timberlake in 2006. If you’re a fan of….say…a recipe that calls for 2 parts Justin Timberlake(circa 2006) and 1 part fall out boy(circa 2008)…you’ll be a fan of this. Tim even threw a little bit of Nelly Furtado in there for ya on the track “watch out”. My favorite musical moment on this album is the “Ground Zero” outro that leads into the excellent production that is “Never Far Away”. That song is just beautiful, it sounds just like it’s title. I personally love when music sounds like it’s title. It sounds like your on a journey of some sort, and the outro that leads into it from “Ground Zero” is very hopeful and adventurous. I also really like the drums used in “Ground Zero” and the guitar mixing with the strings was pure ear candy. Other musical highlights are “Time”, and “Scream”.
Ground Zero
A musical let down on this album…is just the fact that the songs can very VERY easily fall into the “it all sounds like the same song” category. Some of the songs can also give you that “rehab”/”what goes around”/”Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” type feel. (artists of those songs in order are, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, and Madonna) I’m probably the only one getting tired of that type of melodic progression. I’m all for cohesive albums, which this is…but I like when I have a little bit more variety. I mean FutureSex/LoveSound was a cohesive album, but there was variety. Another thing is it has a slight shallowness to it musically, and I think that’s because it sounds like a lot of tim beats with “hard rockin” guitars thrown over it. So it’s basically like a rock version of FS/LS with less variety. Long Story short I give this a 7/10.
Never Far Away
Okie dokie, now for the lyrics and vocals. First off Chris’ voice has no flaws period lol. It just doesn’t. He puts his heart and soul into what he’s singing, he brings the soul to this project. If I were stranded somewhere on an island and made a campfire, I could totally picture him sitting on a rock with his guitar singing a song around the campfire, and from that alone, I wouldn’t be that concerned with getting off the island as long as he kept singing. Sadly….Timbaland overshadows it. Ladies and Gentlemen it’s the Timbaland show. I mean did Chris really go into some Autotune lol? As far as that goes, I can see why Chris fans are griping about it, but hey Chris was happy with it.
Lyrically……uummm what lyrics? J/K!! lol. Again the music can easily overshadow lyrics on this album, but take a good listen. “Take Me Alive” needs to be a renegade hero’s theme song. lol “Part of Me” is a fun song to yell at a friend who keeps pairing you up with a b*tch lol, with the chorus yelling “THAT B*TCH AIN’T A PART OF ME”. I feel it’s the guys answer to Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater”. Lastly “Time”, an urgent midtempo plea to not forget that “time is running out”. I tend to like songs like that (except Madonna’s “four minutes”), because they push me to get off my butt and quit wasting time. So yeah listen hard for the lyrics, you won’t be disappointed…you won’t be elated either..but you won’t be disappointed. I give Vocals/lyrics 5.5/10..and that’s really cuz tim stole the show..and it wasn’t really necessary for him to do that.
Time
Overall the album get’s a 3.5/5, a half point away from a 4/5. (See ratings page to see what this conclusion means)
I know your lookin at this review like “that was …diet?”…yeah it was…I just talk too much. lol 
Quick Review for those that don’t like/want to read.
Music/Production-7/10 Typical tim, has it’s good/great/excellent moments but it can easily all sound the same…fight the urge to believe that it does all sound the same.
Vocals/Lyrics-5.5/10 Tim stole the show folks.
Overall Album- 3.5 /5…glad I got it for free, but if it hadn’t been given it to me…I woulda gone back and forth twenty times on whether or not to buy it, and probably would have bought it. (that is, if I wasn’t hungry at the time, see ratings page)
Replay Value- 8/10
This album isn’t released yet…so uuhh yeah lol you got time to think about it.
Album Review: Ryan Leslie February 10, 2009
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Hello to all, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m back and ready to stick to the commitment of a blog. People keep asking me over and over about my blog, and funny thing is…I thought no one cared haha lol. Regardless this time around I’m gonna stick to this, despite what I think everyone else thinks about this blog lol.
Ok, first order of business. RYAN LESLIE just dropped his self titled album today. (for the quick review scroll down to the bottom). The producer/singer/songwriter has been on his grind for years now, and it’s finally coming to fruition. If you don’t remember him, think of Cassie’s “Me and You” or Cherri Dennis’ “I Love You”. Or like most people you’ll think of the dozens of youtube videos made by him glamorizing the process of making a beat. Trust me it’s very glamorized thank God for video editing.
Now, when I first got a whiff of Ryan Leslie’s music, I vomited and angrily closed the jar of disgusting BITER MUSIC lol. Me being a big fan of the Neptunes, yeah you can probably guess I wasn’t too pleased. But here’s the thing, I couldn’t stay away for too long-DARN YOU NOSTALGIA(for the old neptune sound). Don’t get me wrong Ryan Leslie makes good music, but it seemed…not seemed, it was certain he still had to find his own sound. Cassie’s first album sounds great…because most of it sounds like another more successful producers work(ie The Neptunes, Darkchild, and Scott Storch).
But here’s where it all turned around. “Diamond Girl” the first single to this album, excellent song, and established him as having HIS OWN SOUND. Man lol. You don’t understand, I use to hate(not real hatred) this guy for the blatant biting, but secretly I kinda wanted him to succeed and still do(he graduated from Harvard for goodness sake lol). So I was very happy about Diamond Girl, and then “Addiction” followed suit as well(shout out to Michael Jackson). Even though Addiction isn’t too much my cup of tea, I was still very happy because it was still his sound, influcenced yes…but it’s HIS SOUND. As I go through this album, I hear RYAN LESLIE….man that’s refreshing! Nevertheless, I still hear Ryan Leslie through a Neptune filter, and Darkchild filter, BUT the point is….I hear more Ryan than I hear the filters. Whereas before, I would actually trip up and say a Ryan Leslie beat was made by the Neptunes….I’m happy to say those days are no more. He’s growing into his own.
So this album music and production wise I give him a 6 out of 10. I woulda gave him higher had he not said “they try to put me in the box, it’s impossible”….I don’t know about you as a listener, but man, when I hear something like that, I’m waiting to hear something groundbreaking, something a tad bit original, and something….hhmmm….OUTSIDE THE BOX. go figure.
Vocally he’s on point for his music, his voice fits his sound. A wonderful marriage if you ask me. Only track I absolutely can’t stand vocally is “Gibberish” he drowns his own voice out with auto-tune, and I don’t know for the life of me WHY??? All he needed was a couple drops of it, but nah, he had to go swimming. His voice has a very pleasant soulful texture, and his harmonies are on point. He knows how to use his voice very well, and he knows his limitations. He has fun lyrics, nothing you really need to sit and ponder about, in fact after a dozen listens you probably still won’t even remember what he said in the verses, but he knows how to write a good catchy song. Vocally and lyrically I give him a 6 out of 10, and the sound/vocal arrangement of his voice accounts for 3.5 of those 6 points..just thought I should throw that in there.
Overall the album is a good album. There wasn’t one song that made me rush to turn it off out of disgust, not one came close. But let me qualify that…with John Legend’s latest album, there are 4 songs on that album that I didn’t really care for, and more than likely would never listen to. But I’d recommend Legend’s album before I recommend Ryan Leslie’s.
It’s a good debut, but I have a feeling that it won’t make a huge dent on the public. I personally will get bored after about 5 listens, because there’s nothing for me to hold onto. The music is good, makes my head nod, but that’s where it stops. Doesn’t help that the lyrics don’t pick up from there. However, he is one to watch out for in the future, the more he grows into his own, the better he gets. I’ll remain optimistic about him. Overall rating 3/5 (see rating page for how I come to that conclusion.)
Quick Review (for those who don’t like to/want to read.)
He’s got a good voice, knows how to use it well. I know he’s deeper than what he’s writing..he has to be. 6/10
The music is good, it’ll make your head nod. You may get bored rather quickly though, cuz it’s not enough to carry it over. Needs to put more of himself in his music. 6/10
Overall Album: 3/5
Replay Value: 5/10
Stand Out Tracks:
“Diamond Girl”, “Quicksand”, and “Just Right”
You can go to free.napster.com to listen to the whole album in full if you’d like.
Okay this is what I’m talkin about… August 26, 2008
Posted by DJ in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Keri Hilson- "slow dance"
Singer Keri Hilson has a highly anticipated album coming out October 7th, called In a Perfect World. Now her first single was….a sorry piece of crap. lol nah j/k it wasn’t that bad. It was a decent generic pop song. And considering the camp from which Keri is coming from, it was truly unacceptable and in the blog world it wasn’t recieved too nicely. She has producers, timbaland, powlo da don, and others behind her. To be coming from such ecclectic envelope pushing producers such as they, and put out a generic sugar pop record like “Energy” was disappointing to some. The song didn’t suck, it was just too safe for where she was coming from. Well…
with this song “slow dance” she gave me, and others hope. YES SHE CAN!! lol…Keri’s voice is amazing, no doubt there, and her song writing reputation proceeds her, but now she has the left of center track to match. We all knew that Keri could do better than Energy and here’s proof. Produced by Powlo da don, co-written by Justin Timberlake, here is “Slow Dance”. Can you hear hints of Justin’s “til the end of time” and Ciara’s “Promise” in it? I know I can..still love it either way. Big ups to Prince lol. Tell me what you think..
Song Spotlight: Diagonals August 26, 2008
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Stereolab- Dots and Loops
Stereolab formed in 1990 in london, england
….I just found out about them in 2003 or 2004 from Pharrell Williams. Despite that, it hasn’t been until recently have I got into them. For the past 4 years I’ve only known about one song : “flower called nowhere” from the 1997 album Dots and Loops.
Well as I said recently I started researching them more, and MAN…OMG. Talk about a shock to my system!! The music is fricken genius. So far I have just downloaded Dots and Loops and the only reason I haven’t downloaded there entire catalogue is cuz I gotta save money for the other 18 albums(yes 18) I’m anticipating in the upcoming months.
Anyways, Stereolab is AMAZING. They take cues from rnb, and hiphop but categorized as lounge pop music. I definitely agree with that category. Once called “one of the most fiercely independent and original groups of the Nineties”, they certainly don’t fall short of that statement at all. They recently(Aug 17th 2008) dropped an album called Chemical Chords, which I’m sure I’ll purchase and give a review.
But one song I wanted to zero in on is “Diagonals” also from the Dots and Loops album. It’s funny because on the day I head this song, that morning prior to hearing it later that night, I was thinking to myself “I should make a song in 5/4 time”. Then later on that night, I run into the epic genius of the song “Diagonals”, which is written in 5/4 time. (meaning you count/clap to 5 before the beat starts over)
Stereolab is one the most original and soothing music I’ve ever heard in my lifetime. Even when the beat hits slightly hard, it’s still soothing in that “thumping heartbeat” kinda way. You have no choice but to bob your head lol.
It’s been a while since music has been able to take me to a whole different place and time that I’m unfamiliar with. Take a listen and share your thoughts. This certainly will not be the only post I make about them. Enjoy!
Song Spotlight: Adventures In The Land Of Music August 26, 2008
Posted by DJ in Song Spotlight.1 comment so far
Dynasty- Adventures In The Land Of Music
Welcome to Mass Elevation, hope you enjoy yourself! I thought it only right to begin with a favorite song of mine(although you’ll learn that just about every song I post is a favorite). However this song has literally been deemed my official theme song. I literally walk around with this song playing from my iphone in my pocket, and it’s fun watching people look around for the source of this heavenly music. I tell them “it’s my aura” lol.
I want it played at graduation, at my wedding, at the birth of my first child, and at my funeral. So yeah this song is quite the big deal to me. I’m sure once you hear it, it’ll probably become your feel good song as well…it just has that quality to it.
But in case you were wondering, “D. Chaste what should be on my mind while listening to this song?”…I’m glad you asked. Imagine this…
You’re dressed up, looking fresh and clean. No matter what your style is, from high profile couture to streetwear, from Ralph Lauren’s Purple Label to Louis Vuitton to Crooks and Castles to Obey. Whatever it is…you look fresh to the point that it’s offensive. You’re about to make your grand entrance into a live party and the guest of honor is you.
You walk through the curtain standing at the top of the marble staircase. EVERYTHING STOPS. the music stops, the dancing stops, people are holding their champagne glasses also dressed in their very best(not as good as you of course). And this is the song that starts playing…
Adventures In The Land Of Music-Dynasty 1980
Everyone begins to applaud
The horns speak to how grand your arrival is.
The steady beat tells you the tempo at which to stroll in, (not too fast…cuz you’re so fresh, so sharp, so gorgeous…that people need to see you in HD)
Your handed your favorite beverage in a beautiful glass…relax, have fun…you’re in the land of music!
