(You’re the Man)”
by Brother Ali
Well, that was fast. Ali, the hard-hitting albino MC from
Minneapolis, released this MP3 on his label’s website 16 and a half
hours after CNN called it for Barack Obama, recording it the night
before. Over a lightly chopped-up Marvin Gaye sample, Ali exults, “We
weren’t supposed to put that man in that seat/We’re supposed to be
divided by scare tactics and greed… I’m getting goose bumps writing
this rhyme/Almost feels like we got it right this time.” That “almost”
is important: Like the new commander in chief, Ali knows better than to
rest on one victory. Still, he has a hard time containing himself:
“I’ve seen thugs reading newspapers!” he nearly yells, walking through
the whole thing like a condensed, emotionally charged version of the
Newsweek special edition. It’s not perfect, but especially for a
song that appeared literally overnight, it’s impressive anyway.
by Luomo ft. Jake Shears
(Huume)
I’m profoundly ambivalent about Luomo’s new Convivial: Parts
of it sound like Sasu Ripatti (the Finnish producer behind the project)
has regained his footing following 2006’s tepid Paper Tigers,
while at other moments it seems like he’s treading
water—sometimes within the same song. That’s how this
collaboration with the Scissor Sisters’ singer (and former Seattleite)
struck me, and when a friend told me he hated it, it began sounding
worse. But a funny thing happened: For two weeks after I’d put the
album away, I couldn’t get the damn Jake Shears song out of my head. (I
should have known; the same thing happened to me with the first Scissor
Sisters album.) Now it sounds both lean and expansive: The groove
hinges on a synth bass curlicuing around everything like Christmas
ribbon, each element wispy and glossy at once. I doubt Ripatti (or
Shears) was necessarily going for mid-’80s Prince, and I confess that
as a massive Prince fan I tend to hear him in a lot of things others
don’t. But it’s hard not to sense a purple hue here, one I imagine
hearing the song on a dance floor will only enhance. 