Childish Gambino
Proving Himself
Childish Gambino: Culdesac (free download)
Community regular, 30 Rock writer, and stand-up phenom Donald Glover brings more skills to the rap game than any pretender in years, fellow actor Drake included. His rhymes startle and amuse, his flow bubbles and snaps, his beats always get him where he's going, and on the expert pop song "Got This Money" he hits the high notes on his own. One reason hip-hop has no use for him is that high notes are his thing‑-delivering his rent-a-hook, Lil Jon sounds gangsta on comparative timbre alone. Another is that he didn't buy his $10,000 jacket by dealing rock or fronting about it over beats he bought too. "Welcome to the culdesac this is where the street ends," he taunts, and out of the great goodness of his heart he spent years giving records away and then touring behind them. Right, he's too keen on proving something even if all the success and sexcess stories are true. That's why I like him best when I'm surest he's lying, which is on that pop song: "I wanna feel you for real." A MINUS
Childish Gambino: Camp (Glassnote)
His seventh hip-hop longform‑- including the 2011 EP and two mixtapes where he rhymes inconclusively over indie-rock loops‑-is his most official, on quality bizzer Daniel Glass's indie label. Unified by choral and orchestral movie music for "the only black kid at a Sufjan concert," it's less surefire than Culdesac. But it's more satisfying emotionally, because the autobiography reaches deep: "My dad works nights, puttin' on a stone face/He's savin' up so we can get our own place/In the projects, man, that sound fancy to me/They call me fat-nose my mom say, `You handsome to me'." Nevertheless, this black kid who got called "faggot" plenty‑-only "spell it right/I got way more than two G's"‑-still wants to make sure you know how much he gets laid. Fact is, in a textbook case of nerd-gets-famous syndrome, he almost certainly gets laid too much. But later for that. Master of the alphabet though he long has been, his big message is that work comes before women. A MINUS
Before the Rory Gallagher note disappears, I dug through my old ticket stubs to see if I could find the one time I saw him. And there it is, August 10, 1969. Gallagher and his band Taste opened. Delaney and Bonnie and Friends was in the middle. Blind Faith headlined. Layla was a year away.
Stick with all this **** kiddos, you never know where it will take you.
And then later on in that event Neil appears again--this time as Eddie Vedder's crazy uncle on "Long Road."
Cee-Lo deserves a very heartfelt rendition of his big hit directed at him personally.
Blair: I see that I missed the finish line by a few minutes. Nonetheless --
Eric Dolphy's "Something Sweet, Something Tender" is always in the running for me; slow, stately, bluesy, just enough out there, and then the great bass clarinet/bass duet to close with.
I think everyone should know that "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday exists. It certainly places jazz in its proper cultural context. "Driva'man" sung by Abbey Lincoln on Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite is in the same mold.
The title song to Dave Holland's Conference of The Birds was described by Bob this way -- "the title cut is so exquisite it makes my diaphragm tingle." He is right of course.
The "Sing, Sing, Sing" I prefer is the live one from the Carnegie Hall concert, with the famous Jess Stacy piano solo at the end. It adds 3 and a half minutes to the running time but I also think the live sound is fuller.
The Ellington selections could also include "Caravan" and "Mood Indigo". Many excellent Mingus versions of "Mood Indigo" as well.
And for brief Coltrane I also recommend "Central Park West".
"Take Five" by Brubeck might be too obvious but if the genre really is new to him, a point of familiarity might be helpful.
For newer selections, I like "Green Al" by Ben Allison, "Human Activity" by Brad Shepric, "Joni" by Mathais Eick, "Aftermath" from Vijay Iver and "Rudreshm" from the Steve Lehman Octet.
I'd add "Sing Sing Sing" to Xgau's excellent selections below
Third!1. Louis Armstrong, "Hotter Than That" (1927)
2. Duke Ellington, "Rockin' in Rhythm" (1931)
3. Fletcher Henderson (with Coleman Hawkins), "Queer Notions" (1933)
4. Billie Holiday (with Lester Young), "A Sailboat in the Moonlight" (1937)
5. Charlie Parker, "Moose the Mooche" (1946)
6. Thelonious Monk, "Epistrophy" (1948)
7. Ella Fitzgerald, "Night and Day" (1956)
8. Sonny Rollins, "I'm an Old Cowhand" (1957)
9. John Coltrane, "Naima" (1959)
10. Ornette Coleman, "Ramblin'" (1959)
11. Charles Mingus, "Original Faubus Fables" (1960)
12. Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd, "Desafinado" (1962)
13. Miles Davis, "Footprints" (1966)
14. Keith Jarrett, "Silence" (1977)
15. Dave Douglas, "The Gig" (1995)
16. David S. Ware, "The Freedom Suite: I." (2002)
Dig?
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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