Rap Is Not Pop: The Foreign Exchange and the Soul Revival

Earlier this year, the Foreign Exchange earned a Grammy nomination for “Daykeeper,” a dreamy ballad filled with soft percussion and cooed phrasings of “She Loves Me.” Cited for Best Urban/Alternative Performance, “Daykeeper,” the lead single from 2008’s Leave It All Behind, confirmed that this email correspondence between Durham, North Carolina vocalist Phonte Coleman and Dutch producer Matthijs “Nicolay” Rook has blossomed into a fruitful creative partnership. While it ascends, Phonte’s Little Brother, one of the more influential indie-rap groups of the past decade, lay in tatters. Having never truly recovered from the departure of producer 9^th Wonder – although its third and final studio album, 2007’s Getback, was a valiant effort – remaining members Phonte and Big Pooh quietly wound down operations, then officially marked its end with this year’s collection of outtakes, Leftback.

The “rapper-ternt-sanga” phenomenon is well-chronicled, as is the belief that singing offers a wider range of musical possibilities than rapping. (Whether it’s true or not is fodder for another column.) However, just because Phonte isn’t the first rapper – and definitely not the last – to become a soul singer doesn’t mean that he hasn’t brought new ideas to the genre. Far from homogenous, he and other indie-rap artists like Aloe Blacc and Mayer Hawthorne have distinct identities. Each sounds different from the other, and their artistic quirks are transforming our perceptions of hip-hop music.

Ironically, the Foreign Exchange may be the most traditional of the lot. With Little Brother, Phonte was a supremely talented and opinionated rapper. Unafraid to burn bridges, he helped turn the group’s major label bow into 2005’s The Minstrel Show, a scathing indictment of the black entertainment industry. And when he and Nicolay collaborated on the Foreign Exchange’s 2004 debut, Connected, it sounded like a Little Brother side project, with Big Pooh and various members of LB’s Justus League crew chipping in verses. Both projects centered on entrenched ideas about good MC’ing, hip-hop beats, and soul music. The shift from backpack rap dynamics to the smooth and jazzy blues of Leave It All Behind didn’t change that equation. Appropriately, their just-released third album is called Authenticity. Phonte added vocal choruses and adlibs to the LB catalog (often in tandem with Darien Brockington), but Leave It All Behind and Authenticity signal his maturation as a singer. The former found him carrying a strong albeit flat tone, while he adds texture and sonic variety to his performance on the latter. Meanwhile, Nicolay’s production evokes early 80s quiet storm and jazz fusion, from the Linn drum machine beat on the title track to the piano key swoops on “Fight for Love.”

Mayer Hawthorne, the nom de plume for Los Angeles musician Andrew Mayer Cohen, isn’t a natural singer, either, but his slight vocals and creamy falsetto is part of his charm. The most incredible aspect of 2009’s A Strange Arrangement is its fidelity to Philly soul and doo-wop. Its penultimate track, the wondrous “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out,” seems lifted from the Delfonics’ songbook. In fact, Mayer not only hearkens to soul’s golden age, but faithfully replicates it. When “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” was first released as a heart-shaped vinyl single in 2008, some assumed that it was a previously-unreleased artifact. He bolsters these production stunts with excellent songwriting. The doleful title track, for example, spins around this lovely chorus: “Darling, me and you, we had a strange arrangement/ But you broke all the rules and now I’m playing the fool for love/ Darling yes it’s true, we had a grand engagement/ But I can’t stand by while you break my heart in two.”

Aloe Blacc’s recently released Good Things also closely hews to the retro-soul playbook, thanks to the arrangements of Leon Michaels and Jeff “Dynamite” Silverman (also known as Truth & Soul). Aloe Blacc can’t help but sound contemporary, though, so even as the throwback horns pip on “I Need a Dollar” and gossamer strings swirl on “Take Me Back,” he sings with a strong yet strident voice. He’s also an excellent songwriter. On “I Need a Dollar,” he effortlessly treads a line between pathetic comedy and tragedy as he impersonates a homeless man looking for cash to buy liquor. Its desperate refrain – “I don’t know if I’m walking on solid ground/ ‘Cause everything around me is crumbling down” – holds a mirror to the Great Recession.

The retro-soul phenomenon has been both praised and dismissed as a post-millennium fad, and it’s not hard to imagine that it will eventually sound as dated as the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” swing revival of the 1970s. Yet it holds obvious appeal for onetime B-boys like Mayer, who was originally a DJ and producer in Detroit; and Aloe Blacc, a former rapper with the L.A. indie group Emanon. Crate-digging, or the art of digging for old records with rarely heard gems, is essential to hip-hop culture. Concurrently, there has been a decline of classical hip-hop values in rap. Stars like Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, and Nicki Minaj undoubtedly study Jay-Z’s The Blueprint and Beyonce’s Dangerously in Love, not the Treacherous Three’s “New Rap Language” and Afrika Bambaataa’s Death Mix. As the culture’s mainstream component narrows into a thin technological gloss, with little differentiation between R&B slickness and ringtone rap bounce, some of its innovators head to soul music’s less compromised environs.

Critics and fans often ignored Aloe Blacc’s group Emanon. He didn’t began receiving much deserved acclaim until he switched to singing vocals, first on his solo debut, 2006’s Shine Through, and then on Good Things. The throwback of Good Things’ is clearly indebted to hip-hop. It’s the product of someone who listens to great soul records and maybe samples from them, but didn’t actually perform during that era. But when Aloe Blacc sings, he communicates in a way that everyone can understand – or at least more than the tens of thousands (and I’m being generous here) that bought Emanon’s 2005 album The Waiting Room.

Meanwhile, many people still don’t believe that hip-hop is real music. Or, as Phonte puts it so cogently on “Tigallo from Dolo” from Leftback: “Rappin’ Tay, four-and-a-half mic honoree/ Or singin’ Tay, first-time Grammy nominee?/ N*gga you do the math.”

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This essay was posted November 3 on the Rhapsody SoundBoard blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.

Photo by Tobias Rose for Kompleks Creative Inc.

I think this is the fourth video from A Strange Arrangement. This isn’t my favorite track on the album, and I think I liked the “Green Eyed Love” clip better. But check it out for yourself.

Directed by Henry DeMaio.

Hip hop DJ turned throwback soul loverman Mayer Hawthorne is headed back to the U.S. for another run of dates. The spring tour ends with an appearance at Coachella.

Here are the dates:

• 3/04: Webster Hall, New York, NY (1)
• 3/05: Ottobar, Baltimore, MD (1)
• 3/06: Pearl Street, Northampton, MA (1)
• 3/07: Paradise Lounge, Boston, MA (1)
• 3/09: First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, PA (1)
• 3/10: Rock and Roll Hotel, Washington, DC (1)
• 3/12: The Jewish Mother, Virginia Beach, VA (1)
• 3/13: The Loft, Atlanta, GA (1)
• 3/15: House of Blues, New Orleans, LA (1)
• 3/16: The Loft, Dallas, TX (1)
• 3/17: Warehouse Live, Houston, TX (1)
• 3/22: Proud Larry’s, Oxford, MS (1)
• 3/23: Exit/In, Nashville, TN (1)
• 3/24: Zanzibar, Louisville, KY (1)
• 3/26: St. Andrews, Detroit, MI (1)
• 3/27: Wrongbar, Toronto, ON (1)
• 3/28: Town Ballroom, Buffalo, NY (2)
• 3/29: Pullo Center, York, PA (2)
• 3/30: House of Blues, Cleveland, OH (2)
• 3/31: Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH (2)
• 4/02: Congress Theatre, Chicago, IL (2)
• 4/03: Turner Hall, Milwaukee, WS (2)
• 4/04: First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN (2)
• 4/05: Beaumont Theatre, Kansas City, MO (2)
• 4/07: Ogden Theatre, Denver, CO (2)
• 4/08: In the Venue, Salt Lake City, UT (2)
• 4/10: McDonald Theatre, Eugene, OR (2)
• 4/11: Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC (2)
• 4/12: Roseland Theatre, Portland, OR (2)
• 4/14: University of California-Davis, Davis, CA (2)
• 4/15: Warfield, San Francisco, CA (2)
• 4/18: Empire Polo Field, Indio, CA (3)

(1) w/Nikki Jean
(2) w/Passion Pit
(3) Coachella

Mayer Hawthorne gets hammered in a bar, and random hot chicks start messing with his head. We’ve all been there.

From the just-released album A Strange Arrangement.

I’m sure everyone’s aware that Mayer Hawthorne’s highly anticipated A Strange Arrangement drops on September 8. (It’s already on sale via the Stones Throw website.) The original release date, October 6, was changed ostensibly due to demand (and to the album leaking months in advance). Nevertheless, everyone will soon be able to enjoy the dulcet tones of this former DJ turned loverman.

To promote A Strange Arrangement, Mayer Hawthorne will embark on a national tour the Lonely Hearts Club Tour with his live band, the County, and fellow members from his Detroit-based A-Side Worldwide crew, Buff 1 and 14KT. Track listing and concert itinerary is below.

• 1. “Prelude”
• 2. “A Strange Arrangement”
• 3. “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out”
• 4. “Maybe So, Maybe No”
• 5. “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’”
• 6. “I Wish It Would Rain”
• 7. “Make Her Mine”
• 8. “One Track Mind”
• 9. “The Ills”
• 10. “Shiny & New”
• 11. “Let Me Know”
• 12. “Green Eyed Love”

And here are the tour dates:

• 9/05: Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA
• 9/10: The Roxy, West Hollywood, CA (1)
• 9/13: Downtown Brew, San Luis Obispo, CA (1)
• 9/14: Starline, Fresno, CA (1)
• 9/15: Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco, CA (1)
• 9/16: Catalyst-Atrium, Santa Cruz, CA (1)
• 9/18: Musicfest NW, Portland, OR (1)
• 9/19: WOW Hall, Eugene, OR (1)
• 9/21: Kilby Court, Salt Lake City, UT (1)
• 9/23: Larimer Lounge, Denver, CO (1)
• 9/24: The Waiting Room, Omaha, NE (1)
• 9/25: Darkroom, Chicago, IL (1)
• 9/26: Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI (1)
• 9/27: Drake Hotel, Toronto, ON (1)
• 9/29: Great Scott, Boston, MA (1)
• 9/30: Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA (1)
• 10/01: Knitting Factory, Brooklyn, NY (1)
• 10/02: Mercury Lounge, New York, NY (1)
• 10/04: DC9, Washington, DC (1)
• 10/05: Local 506, Chapel Hill, NC (1)
• 10/06: Criminal Records, Atlanta, GA (afternoon in-store)
• 10/06: Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta, GA (1)
• 10/07: The Social, Orlando, FL (1)
• 10/09: House of Blues, New Orleans, LA (1)
• 10/10: Red 7, Austin, TX (1)
• 10/13: The Rock, Tucson, AZ (1) (2)
• 10/14: The Clubhouse, Tempe, AZ (1) (2)
• 10/15: Canes, San Diego, CA (1) (2)
• 10/24: Showbox, Seattle, WA (2) (Ghostface pre-tour routing changed before it began)

(1) w/Buff 1, 14KT
(2) w/Ghostface Killah

New video from Mayer Hawthorne’s forthcoming A Strange Arrangement. Plug One is not dead!

Next year, Stones Throw promises to offer its most exciting slate of artists since 2006. Like that groundbreaking season, which brought classic recordings from Oh No, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Aloe Blacc and the late J Dilla, 2009 will find the L.A. label mixing forward-thinking hip-hop with ecletic, genre-bending sounds. So far, Stones Throw’s upcoming projects include albums from Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Savath y Savalas, Mayer Hawthorne & The County and Dam-Funk.

First up will be Omar Rodriguez Lopez’s Old Money. A few years ago, the lead guitarist for the Mars Volta might have issued this album on his now-defunct label, Gold Standard Laboratories (GSL). Instead, Old Money is coming out on Stones Throw. The label issued a digital version on November 10; the CD and vinyl version will reach stores on January 27.

Here’s a description from the press release:

The album fits comfortably between the guitarist’s monumental work with The Mars Volta, and his prior rock-based solo releases such as 2007′s The Apocalypse Inside Of An Orange. Loosely based on the concept of exploitative industrialists and, well, their old money, the album presents a 10-track collection of concise rock compositions, which range from progressive to psychedelic to downright funky. Many of these sounds could easily be at home on a Volta record proper had they meshed with Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s vocals; Rodriguez Lopez has hinted that this record was a potential follow up to the 2006 Volta release Amputechture until he changed his musical direction.

If Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s appearance on Stones Throw came as a surprise, Scott Herren’s upcoming project for the label makes perfect sense. Since turning Savath y Savalas from a moniker for self-produced wintry folktronica into a full-fledged band of musicians that mixes Spanish Catalan songs with electronics, Herren has struggled to find the right home for the project. He criticized Warp Records for inserting English lyrics into the CD booklet for Apropa’t, the group’s 2004 debut. A follow-up for Anti- Records, Golden Pollen, came out in 2007.

Herren made the announcement on his Prefuse 73 MySpace page. “Now ‘SAVATH y SAVALAS’ have a new home at: STONE’S THROW records,” he writes. “There will be more ‘official’ announcements via www.stonesthrow.com but I thought that I’d just state the fact that it’s the first time this particular project has ended up in the right hands, with the right intentions – I don’t think we could be more happy, positive and relieved!!!!!!”

Detroit-to-LA producer DJ Haircut has signed with Stones Throw for a new project under the guise Mayer Hawthorne & The County. Before then, Haircut was best known as a member of Athletic Mic League. He broke the news on his MySpace page in October.

For those that don’t already know, I’ve recently inked a deal with Stones Throw Records for a solo Doo-Wop / Soul project called Mayer Hawthorne and The County. What started out as sort of a joke for close friends and family, has suddenly and unexpectedly become something very real. I’m honored to be working with such a well respected label with such an amazing history of releases from heroes like J Dilla, Madlib, MF Doom, Guilty Simpson, Aloe Blacc and others. It is both exciting and daunting.

I’m roughly half-way through recording the first album and I hope to have it finished by the end of the year. I’m playing a lot of the instruments and singing all the vocals myself so it takes a while!

In November, Stones Throw issued a limited-edition (1000 copies) 7-inch single, “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” b/w “When I Said Goodbye.” The A-side quickly drew praise from U.S. and overseas tastemakers, including Mark Ronson and Gilles Peterson.

Last but not least, Los Angeles DJ/producer Dam-Funk should finally release his debut album, Toeachizown, sometime next year. Dam-Funk’s productions replicate the black music lexicon of the early to mid-80s; they’re synth-heavy and atmospheric, and owe a debt to producers such as Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (circa S.O.S. Band), Slave, Cybotron and James Mtume.

Fans have expected Toeachizown since Dam-Funk’s “Sidewayz” appeared on the first Chrome Children compilation in 2006. He has since produced a few 12-inches for the label; a contribution to Stones Throw’s ongoing Rhythm Trax series is due later this month. Here’s how he explains it:

The concept is based on the early 80′s Jive/Zomba label ‘Rhythm Trax’ releases, which were recorded with DJ’s, break dancers, poppers, synthesizer, & drum machine affectionatos in mind. The ‘originals’ are highly collectable nowadays in the wax digging community. These LP’s consisted of nothing but BPM groves. No titles. This time around, we’re flippin’ it and going with minimal titles. The D-F edition is based on colors, resulting in each song being named simply after…U got it…a color.