John Legend
Get Lifted
Getting Out Our Dreams/Sony
As a producer, rapper, and talent
scout, Kanye West effected a kind of hip-hop hegemony in 2004,
gobbling up all the industry awards and A-list collaborators,
cranking out radio hits like the next Neptunes, and generally
imposing his will on a public that was all too ready to submit to
his friendly Motowncentric aesthetic. With the help of his
protégé John Legend, the first artist on his new
label, West seems poised to expand his empire into R&B
territory. A relative newcomer but no novice, Legend (né
Stephens) is already familiar to those of you who bother to read
liner notes: In addition to voicing some of the most memorable
hooks on West’s multiplatinum debut The College Dropout, the
twentysomething singer/pianist and former choir director has worked
with Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, the Black Eyed
Peas, and Alicia Keys, among many others.
On Get Lifted, his major label début, Legend strives to
live up to his immodest moniker with an ambitious hybrid of
neosoul, hip-hop, and gospel sounds that complement his
church-trained pipes and upbeat personality. Sounding a bit like a
raspier Stevie Wonder or a less tormented David Ruffin, Legend
resists the temptation to indulge in the flashy vocal acrobatics
and over-the-top emoting so prevalent among his contemporaries,
preferring instead to serve the songs. Anchored by his confident
and often inventive piano playing, the 14 tracks on Get Lifted have
an old-school vibe despite trendy production flourishes from West
(the album’s executive producer), will.i.am (Black Eyed
Peas), and longtime collaborators DeVon“Devo” Harris
and Dave Tozer. The lead single, “Used to Love U,” is
the smash hit that it deserves to be, a sly, horn-happy kiss-off to
a materialistic lover that contains the immortal couplet
“Maybe I should rob somebody/So we could live like Whitney
and Bobby.” “Alright” weds a percolating hip-hop
beat to intoxicatingly goofy tuba (!) counterpoint and female back-up vocals, and the more
straightforward balladry of “Ordinary People” succeeds with
nothing more than Legend’s simple, elegant piano accompaniment.
From the spirited gospel of “Stay With You” and “It
Don’t Have to Change” to the playful Afropop stylings of
“Refuge (When It’s Cold Outside),” Legend proves that
he’s got more on his mind than being the next Usher. He may not
be a legend quite yet, but he’s on his way.
Destroyer
Notorious Lightning and Other Works
(Merge)
On
his latest EP, Notorious Lightning and
Other Works, Daniel Bejar revisits
half of the songs from last year’s full-length Your Blues with the
help of fellow Vancouverites Frog Eyes. Bejar, the singer,
songwriter, and only permanent member of Destroyer, is never
content to stick with a predictable sound, and the six tracks on Notorious Lightning are reinventions, not rehashes. Whereas Your Blues presented the
songs as MIDI-fueled miniatures, frigid, pseudo-baroque experiments
that Bejar himself has described as “hollow-sounding,”
this EP gives them the ramshackle rock treatment, stretching out
the arrangements, scratching up the surfaces, and dramatically
upping the noise quotient. Frog Eyes, which served as opening act
and backing band on the last Destroyer tour, is ideally suited to
deconstruct Bejar’s oblique and mannered compositions. Like
some unholy combination of David Bowie and the scruffy adjunct
professor you had a crush on during your junior year of college,
Bejar has perfected a slacker-glam aesthetic that combines
absurdist lyrics, self-referential theatricality, and chaotic
instrumentation with sticky pop refrains. The five members of Frog
Eyes, who play a kind of shambling avant-punk, don’t so much
augment Bejar’s singular gifts as channel them, lending a
reckless, road-seasoned charm to the proceedings that sounds both
spontaneous and inevitable.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2005.
