Word: vocalists
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Though Nearly God creates a significantly less layered sound on the new album than Tricky has in the past, the result is no less rich or rewarding. As well as being a fine vocalist, Tricky remains an innovative producer and an enthusiastic sampler, but not an overly promiscuous one. Funk riffs give "Bubbles," a vocal collaboration between Tricky and Hall, the kind of inimitable musical flavor that makes an album great. Samplings of DAS EFX on "Keep Your Mouth Shut" as well as Bird's rap "Children's Story" pay homage to a few of trip-hop's influences, though...
There are also acts with more and less experience worth watching out for this fall. In terms of freshmen, there's the ska band the Blue Beats, whose Dance with Me (October) will be released on tiny Moon Records, and vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, whose Dreamland (Oct. 1) is an enchanting mix of jazz, country and blues. As for returning upperclassmen, saxman Joshua Redman's Freedom in the Groove (Sept. 24) is wonderfully listenable, and the reformed New Edition's Home Again (Sept. 10) no doubt aims to recreate the R.-and-B. group's old chart appeal...
...create songs that are more than cathartic cartoons. On one song, I Gave You Power, Nas shows some of the senseless horror of crime by rapping about it from the perspective of a gun. If I Ruled the World (Imagine That), which he performs with guest vocalist Lauryn Hill of the Fugees, presents Nas' vision of paradise as a "better livin' type of place to raise our kids in." The lyrics in It Was Written could be sharper, but the music, energetic and engaging on many tracks, helps drive his message home. --C.J.F...
Even she admits it. "singers are a dime a dozen," says Toni Braxton. "And record companies have a dollar." So what makes vocalist Braxton, just 28 years old, so special? Why is her new album, Secrets, only her second, fighting it out for the top slot on the Billboard charts with such heavyweights as thrash-metal veterans Metallica...
...biggest disappointment in this crop of albums is Patti Smith's. In the '70s, with such albums as Horses, she merged insurgent, thoughtful poetry with heartfelt and jagged-edged rock 'n' roll. She's never been much of a vocalist--she has a croaky, flat voice--but the strength of her music came from what she was singing, not how she was singing it. Unfortunately, on her new album, Gone Again, words fail her. The album deals with issues of mortality (the word heaven pops up in three songs), but the endeavor is marred by one song, Summer Cannibals, which...