Album Reviews

Sergio Mendes’s frothy Brazilian pop reinterpreted for the hip-hop generation serves as the high concept for this 2006 release produced by The Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am who also performs solo and with a guest list that includes Erykah Badu, Stevie Wonder, Q-Tip, John Legend and Justin Timberlake, among others.

The music melds bossa nova, soul, samba, and other older styles with hip-hop. If you’re not enamored of the “yo yo yo”-ization of familiar and unfamiliar Mendes tunes you might not be a fan of the results but in truth the album, issued on double red vinyl by Audile Records, a division of Pure Audiophile, isn’t aimed at audiophiles. Rather, its issue on vinyl is for the pleasure of vinyl fans, many of whom are not necessarily audiophiles.

So while sound fans surely go for Tommy LiPuma/Al Schmidt productions that sound natural, dynamic and positively “old school” in the best sonic sense, they might not go for the compressed, chunky, sampled “modern” sound found here. There’s not much Stan Ricker could do to expand dynamically compressed sound files, regardless of their resolution, but he does make them sound as enticing as they possibly can. Even if this is not “good sound” as we normally use the term, the sound is good for what’s intended.

As for the music, genres usually take a while for the ear to sort out, so in retrospect, boomers can now hear how much of the music of the ‘60s was formulaic, even as it “rock-ified” various previous existing genres. The more time that passes, the more similar the music of an era tends to sound.

With hip-hop, the convention seemed obvious from the get-go. To many ears, the non-melodic stripped down sound and lyrical simplicity was a grand innovation and something truly new. To others, and they know who they are, this is a large pile of non-musical, coarse, barked bullshit with a beat. Which is what elders in the 60s who grew up on Duke Ellington and big band music said about various acts consisting of 4 clowns with guitars. And who’s to say they were wrong?

Ironically, listening to Mendes’ bubbly, sunny, sexy music constricted to hip-hop’s braggy conventions and now clichéd beats, rhymes and shouts sound both silly and pleasing. The raps are pretty lame compared to the state of the art and those who luxuriate in the South American sensuality of bossa nova and Brazilian music generally, will find the coarseness of this stuff stultifying.

I found myself actually enjoying this record because you get the feeling that for will.i.am, the rap clichés have become a big goof, especially when juxtaposed with the slinky bossa nova beats. Some tracks, like “Birimbau/Consoacao,” where Wonder adds a playful, liquid harmonica part, are more straightforward bossa nova, while Q-Tip’s performance on “The Frog” is positively hilarious (and intended to be so).

The biggest surprise for me was John Legend’s “Please Baby Don’t.” Legend has always struck me as a limp noodle of a singer but here he channels his best Stevie Wonder and belts the song out with more than credible authority.

There are no liner notes, no attempt to explain the concept and limited credits, which is a real shame. From the minimal clues provided, while Mendes’ name and picture are front and center, his only contribution was the title track, a production collaboration with the multi-talented Black Eyed Peas member Printz Board with indie.arie.

I’ll put it to you this way: if I was single and in my 30s right now and looking to seal the deal with a girl I was dating, I’d bring her back to my whatever they call it now place where you live, slip the red vinyl onto my turntable and let this double set’s swagger’n’samba scatter musical pheromones upon my couch.