J. Cole
Born Sinner
Roc Nation/Columbia
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
June 18, 2013
"Sometimes I brag like Hov/ Sometimes I'm real like Pac," J. Cole raps on his second LP. Sometimes he's both – a verbal powerhouse and a self-emptying truth-sayer. The flagship signee to Jay-Z's record label spins dervish rhymes over dazzling self-produced tracks (see the Outkast-sampling "Land of the Snakes"). His riffs on racism, homophobia and misogyny have more lyrical cunning than insight. But when it comes to twisting himself into Kanye-size pretzels of career-oriented real talk, he's a champ; on "Villuminati," he raps, "Beyoncé told me that she want to cop the blue Bugatti/That shit is more than what I'm worth/I think she knew it probably." Have fun at the next company picnic, homey.
The Beatles
On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2
Apple/Capitol
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rati
November 12, 2013
This was social media in Great Britain in 1963, during the first flash flood of Beatlemania: George Harrison singing "Do You Want to Know a Secret" for Deanne and Jenny in Bedford; Paul McCartney belting "The Hippy Hippy Shake" for a student at the bassist's old grammar school in Liverpool; Ringo Starr stumbling over names on a request card from Yorkshire. That year, the Beatles ran riot over the BBC, even landing a weekly radio series of studio performances, dedications and wisecracks, Pop Go the Beatles – a vigorous innocence and outreach that propels this second culling of the group's Beeb work. The Beatles are enjoying the speed and lunacy of stardom here: tugging their roots forward in Little Richard's"Lucille" and a sparkling cover of Buddy Holly's "Words of Love" a year before they cut it for a record; going deep into their Cavern-era song bag for Chuck Berry's "I'm Talking About You" and Carl Perkins'"Glad All Over." The mounting hysteria of concerts seeps into "Misery," taped at a BBC theater in March 1963; the live audience can barely contain its screams in the middle. You also hear the distance growing: "It's amazing that you can hear us as we're in America now," Lennon cracks in a pretaped chat in early '64. There would be no more dedications to schoolgirls in Liverpool. The Beatles now belonged to the world.
Eminem
The Marshall Mathers LP 2
Aftermath/Interscope
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star ratin
November 1, 2013
The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is the kind of sequel that gets people shouting at the screen in disbelief before their seats are warmed up. The first song, "Bad Guy," is seven white-knuckled minutes of psycho-rap insanity in which Stan's little brother comes back to chop Slim Shady into Slim Jims, tossing him into the trunk and driving around Detroit – listening to The Marshall Mathers LP, of course. "How's this for publicity stunt? This should be fun/Last album now, 'cause after this you'll be officially done," Em raps, playing his own killer.
Eminem could use a publicity stunt, and The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is just what the therapist ordered. During the 13 years since The Marshall Mathers LP, he's never lost his acrobat-gremlin skills on the mic. But some subsequent albums felt hermetic, perverting rage into rock-star griping on 2004's Encore, horror-show shock tactics on 2009's Relapse and 12-step purging on 2010'sRecovery. The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is about reclaiming a certain freewheeling buoyancy, about pissing off the world from a more open, less cynical place; he even says sorry to his mom on "Headlights," where he's joined by Nate Ruess of fun.
Nostalgia is everywhere. Em surrounds himself in allusions to classic hip-hop, like the Beastie Boys samples producer Rick Rubin laces together on "Berzerk." It's telling that the only guest MC is Kendrick Lamar on "Love Game," probably because his slippery syllable-juggling owes a lot to Eminem.
Yet Em's former obsession – his own media image – has been replaced with a 41-year-old's cranky concerns. He's still a solipsistic cretin, but in a more general, everyday sort of way. He raps about how he can't figure out how to download Luda on his computer and waves the Nineties-geek flag with references to Jeffrey Dahmer and the Unabomber. He's playing his best character: the demon spawn of Trailer Hell, America, hitting middle age with his middle finger up his nose while he cleans off the Kool-Aid his kids spilled on the couch.
Much of the album hews to the stark beats and melodies he loves rapping over. But the tracks that lean on classic rock are loopy and hilarious. "Rhyme or Reason" brilliantly flips a sample of the Zombies' "Time of the Season"; when the song asks, "Who's your daddy," Em answers, "I don't have one/My mother reproduced like a Komodo dragon." "So Far . . ." shows some love for a Rust Belt homey by rhyming over Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good": "Jed Clampett, Fred Sanford, welfare mentality helps to/Keep me grounded, that's why I never take full advantage of wealth/I managed to dwell within these perimeters/Still cramming the shelves full of Hamburger Helper/I can't even help it, this is the hand I was dealt to."
MM LP 2 fits in well in the year of Yeezus and Magna Carta . . . Holy Grail, records by aging geniuses trying to figure out what the hell to do with their dad-ass selves. (It's like hip-hop is the new Wilco or something.) Since Em has always been a mess, he'll probably still be able to give us pause when he's rhyming about retirement ventures through dentures and cleaning out the colostomy bag he wears up inside his saggy drawers. MM LP 3, 2026. Let's do this.
September 13, 2013
Tabloid fixture, Las Vegas institution, movie producer, duet partner with everyone from Lady Gaga to Queens of the Stone Age – even in his sixties, Elton John still thrives in the spotlight. Yet musically, his priorities have shifted. When he released 2010's The Union – a triumphant collaboration with Leon Russell, which reclaimed the legacy of one of Sir Elton's greatest inspirations – he said that the project had left a permanent mark on his creative direction. No longer would he chase the fleeting vanities of pop taste, but he would commit to making music that was more honest and personal.
The first result of this new approach is The Diving Board, which brings Elton back together with Union producer T Bone Burnett and demonstrates that he wasn't blowing smoke. The album is more focused than anything he's done in years, and it returns Elton to the kind of spare, country-flavored narrative songs with which he made his name on early-1970s masterworks likeTumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water – before he plugged in his electric boots, transformed into Captain Fantastic and became the biggest rock star in the world.
For much of the album, Elton's piano is backed only by neosoul wonder Raphael Saadiq, who plays bass, and drummer Jay Bellerose, at times augmented by guitar fills from Doyle Bramhall II or by atmospheric horn or string arrangements. The simple feel leaves space for the recurrent themes of travel, memory, nostalgia – of lessons learned – to resonate, reaching wistful, emotional peaks with "Voyeur" and the first single, "Home Again." As usual, Bernie Taupin's lyrics are filled with images of vintage Americana and the Old West. Sometimes, as on the detailed history lesson of "Oscar Wilde Gets Out," the words are too dense to leave much room for melody, and occasionally a metaphor runs amok ("When the arrow's in the bull's-eye every time/It's hard assuming that the archer's blind"). But the opening "Oceans Away," a moving, deceptively complex tribute to the lyricist's father and fellow World War II vets, illustrates the power of Taupin's language.
Perhaps the LP's most impressive achievement is the way it returns Elton's piano to the forefront, where it ought to be. There has never been a rock pianist like him, equally fluent in Little Richard jackhammer rhythms, careful, Nashville-derived fills and English music-hall razzmatazz. It's apparent in three brief instrumental breaks, but even more so when he lets loose with the honkytonk gospel of "A Town Called Jubilee" and "Take This Dirty Water," where Russell's influence is felt the deepest.
The album ends with the title track, a slow and stunning meditation on that final moment of youth, when we are all still pure potential. "I was 16/And full of the world and its noise," Elton recalls in the slightly slurred and weary voice of the saloon singer, before embracing the call of "the planets alight/Those dizzy heights." With The Diving Board, Elton has regained his sense of musical possibility and taken a brave, graceful jump.
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