Adventures in 2013 Music, Pt. 14:
Surprise surprise on MondreM.A.N's Cloudd Packk, 24 tracks of unrelenting, zeitgeist-y cloud rap--and the thing is damn good! The beats fall off toward the end, and thus stop bolstering the mostly ancillary raps (even the seemingly infallible Friendzone is disappointing on his "Have Faith"), but this bulky compilation has undeniable flow. And check the one-two punch of "Cold Year" and "Nothin Can Go Wrong". Maybe this sub-sub-genre can go somewhere, yeah?
Mark Templeton's Jealous Heart is totally up my alley, and indeed has some nice moments, but what I now suspect might be its ugliness is keeping me from giving it too much aesthetic credit. The one-minute interlude "Matinee" I cannot deny, though, nor one Templeton calls "Sinking Heart".
The best moments on Thundercat's Apocalypse--"Tron Song," anyone?--make me go "hell yeah," the rest merely "mmm." Steven Ellison's paternal influence is all over this, as is, thankfully, his sense of motion and flow. This is a slight affair, to be certain--but a pretty good way to spend 35 minutes nonetheless.
I don't usually go for the type of trad jazz Cécile McLorin Salvant pushes on WomanChild, so consider it a testament to her perfect vocals that this thing is enjoyable for me at all. "Baby Have Pity On Me," guitar and vocals only, is delicious. Climax "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" is killer. And she even breaks out the riotous, anti-sexist, anti-racist "You Bring Out the Savage in Me"--originally performed by Valaida Snow, a ferociously talented black lady aware of all three. Consider this the next step in a tradition worth celebrating, then.
Whatever on Mikal Cronin's MCII--the production is too spacey to fully deliver on the pop goods, which end up sounding pretty homogeneous by album's end, anyway. Opener "Weight," hella catchy, is quite the red herring, though.
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