Stinker Alert!
Looking at the last album first, Pharrell's album, in a word, is awful. Whether or not you'd like to consider him to be an innovator in the hip-hop world as a producer is one thing, but setting mediocre rhymes and worse vocals to videogame music is hardly anything groundbreaking, much less worthwhile. Even if you're a fan of Pharrell/NERD/Neptunes, do yourself a favor and make a trip to a listening booth before you put down any money on this album.
Jurassic 5 Feedback
As always, you can expect feedback to be mixed on this effort.
Thankfully, the increasingly unbearable wait of Jurassic 5's album came out much better than Pharrell's. However, it's hard to argue that Feedback was indeed worth the wait. The opener "Back 4 U" gives the album a great start before it stumbles out of the blocks with the bland "Radio" and "Brown Girl (Suga Plum)." From "Gotta Understand" until the end of the album though, J5 punches through with very well done old-school hip-hop that at the best moments certainly outdo their previous effort, and sometimes come close to matching the finer moments on Quality Control. The single "Work It Out" featuring Dave Matthews Band is a fun, laid-back summer jam, while "Baby Please" takes its inverted Al Green backdrop and matches it perfectly with well-timed rhymes. Another mentionable is "End Up Like This," which is really the tragic romantic storytelling rap that "Thin Line" should've been, and is a perfect endnote for the album. Overall, this is sometimes among J5's strongest work, but it suffers from the same thing that all previous albums have suffered from, inconsistency. Beyond that, there's a lot for fans new and old alike, and with all the touring that Jurassic 5 has been doing with bands such as DMB, maybe they're hoping to reach a new audience.
Overall Rating: 81
Tom Petty Highway Companion
It may not be the grand return to form everyone was hoping for, but it's not bad.
Tom Petty's latest perhaps should've been called "Sleepy Hollow" as Petty spends almost the entirety of the album on cruise control, methodically running through each americana-tinged track with varying degrees of success. At its best, Petty comes up with such great songs as "Saving Grace," "Flirting With Time," and "Big Weekend," which aren't great in terms of their creativity-- many of these songs feel like displaced B-sides from Petty's earlier works-- but within their simple frameworks they are impressive for both Petty's presence as well as his unrelenting knack for making even the most mundane song accessible. On the other hand, tracks like "Ankle Deep" and "Turn This Car Around," really make you want to turn your car around and return the album. They're not bad or offending in any way, especially within the context of an already laid-back album, these tracks suffer from a coma-inducing monotony that few other artists outside of Yanni can take pride in causing. With the seven remaining tracks, they are all resigned to Petty's own reclusive musings and can really only be designated as typical. There's nothing new or groundbreaking here, although, for anyone that has paid attention to Tom Petty's music for the last few years, that's to be expected. In addition, given Tom Petty's last release was the atrocious Last DJ, it's probably just as well that Petty decided not to stray too far from his most familiar path after all.
Overall Rating: 80
The Roots Pre-Game EP
I've been trying to refrain from making this statement for a few months now, but I can't hold it in any longer: The Roots' Game Theory will be, hands down, the best album of the year. Proof of this should come in the form of this Ep, appropriately named Pre-Game. The first track is the lead single "Don't Feel Right," which has been my favorite track for some time now since ?uestlove released a special mix version on the Okayplayer website. While definitely a bit of a slow burn compared to the singles the Roots have released lately-- it's more "Next Movement" than "Boom!"-- Black Thought and the crew are just as solid as ever. Where they really step it up is on the next track, "Here I Come." Malik B. gives a huge boost on this track, his intensity matching one the most dense tracks that the Roots have ever done and, frankly, makes the stuff off of Phrenology look tame. "In the Music" is yet another dark track, and while it isn't the heavy-hitter that the two previous tracks were, it's just as engaging. The last track is "Bread & Butter," yet another track out of left field (or, more appropriately, the Delta), which features a handclap-laden blues/gospel-tinged backdrop (complete with muffled wailing). From each of these four tracks, four complete differentiating sides of the Roots come through, each of them equally creative and somewhat groundbreaking. While many (including myself) would say that The Tipping Point was little more than an intriguing failure, it was already apparent that its purpose was to serve, in addition to allowing the group to move on to Def Jam, as a platform for their next great undertaking-- the upcoming release of Game Theory.
Overall Rating: 100
There will be more reviews/news coming tomorrow and after the air finally clears I'll be able to get back to the Lollapalooza preview just in time for the start of the festival.
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