Y'all I know how I get when it comes to good music (see the end of the last post).
So to jump-off this week, I've got some exciting news. I'm feeling this Chrisette Michele. I found her new album online this weekend, and have been bumping it like I was at the amusement park (sans 50 Cent) and just tall enough to cause some carnage during a bumper car session.
Chrisette Michele's I Am is an oxygen-machine full of fresh air in the congested, carbon-monoxide heavy mess that is black music today. If you love music the way I do, I definitely recommend dropping by your Best Buy or Target, or wherever you purchase your music, and picking up this gem.
Chrisette, a DefJam jewel who can be heard on Jay-Z's "Lost Ones" and a few tracks on Nas' Hip Hop is Dead, kicks the party off with "Like A Dream," a classy ditty about meeting the right person at the right time.
There's the current single "If I Have My Way," which is a ballad reminiscent of Alicia's best, but also hearkens you back to a time where Anita and Whitney owned our hearts.
Chrisette provides an abundance of great music and vocals, but there's nothing like "Let's Rock," a song that I think will easily be the favorite of most who hear the album. It takes simplicity being a fine line between elegance and plainness to a level of beauty unseen to most eyes. It has the feel of the perfect stepper's groove (so watch out, I'll request it).
Her voice's flow makes you want to dust off the Nancy Wilson, and kick back with that special someone. The lyrics are simplistic, never reaching for something that's not there. Her voice is harmonic-balancing Neo (not Ne-yo) to Keyshia Cole's (and this is not an insult) Agent Smith, light, but somehow full of substance and unmistakable soul. A soul that might help define that it sound so many of us have been searching for in a new vocalist for quite sometime.
I am loving it. I am enthralled. I haven't felt this good about an album since John Legend dropped Get Lifted, and before then it was Musiq Soulchild's debut (I'm not looking up the official title, he shoulda just spelled it right). Chrisette, this is the way love feels.
I started to title this post, "I Am Engaged," but thought better of it. That would have setoff some serious ignorance.
Also listening to:
- Tank's Sex, Love & Pain
- T-Pain's Epiphany
- Carl Thomas' So Much Better
- Hidden Beach Recordings' Unwrapped 1-4
- Fabulous' From Nothin' to Somethin'
- Joe's Ain't Nothin' Like Me
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