Its easy to say that Phonte Coleman has really found his own voice and sound since leaving Little Brother. Although Phontes voice goes a long way, a big part of his sound comes from the connection he has with Dutch producer Nicolay. I love all the things these two make together, and recently realized I had dug deep into Phontes earlier work, but had neglected checking further Nicolay.
City Lights 1.5 is a 20 track album of mostly instrumental hiphop tracks; a few have guest rappers rhyming or giving Nicolay a shoutout, but for the most part it is tight, chill beats and nice instrumentation. Here came out a year later, and is an 11 track collaboration he produced and wrote, but it features vocals throughout, focusing on the vocal melodies, rhyming and harmony over the longer instrumentals on City Lights. Both are very nice; heres track 4 on City Lights, Light it Up:
I have proclaimed much love for The Foreign Exchange, and afterwards Little Brother, and a big part of my appreciation of these two groups came down to the Phonte factor; Phonte fronts Foreign Exchange, and began his music career in Little Brother. He is a gifted vocalist/ rapper, renowned (in not only my own world) as a chorus genius, proficient foremost in creating vocal harmonies that go 6 parts deep with hooks to match. I mean, check out the chorus of the Foreign Exchanges track, Maybe She'll Dream of Me. Ain't no room for suckers in that studio; just the straight sickness right there.
So, 2011 finally saw to Phonte releasing his first solo effort as an artist, Charity Starts at Home. As usual, when given the mic to talk about what is on his mind, Phonte rises above any fronting and speaks about life as an artist making it through each day to rise and shine with the next. His rhymes are very personal, introspective and creative, and he knows when a tracks melancholy only requires subtly, and knows when to drop a serious chorus to enrich the positive emotions he talks about (as he does in Sending All My Love). It seems Phonte favored focusing on his rhyming on his debut solo release, letting some lovely female vocalists fill in on his hooks while he focused his own vocal parts on the verses. Great stuff; he worked with a number of producers for this release, including a much anticipated (for myself) reunion for a few tracks with 9th Wonder as his beat maestro; track 2, The Good Fight, properly kicks the album up a notch after starting so very strongly with Dance in the Reign (produced by Swiff D). Blam: The Good Fight:
I have mentioned Little Brother in previous posts, as well as featuring some Strong Arm Steady in a madlib mix post, and both showcase the excellent harmonies that singer Phonte would kick out on all kinds of jams; dude is a melodic, harmonic vocal master, and at some point in the early 2000s, Phonte connected with a dutch producer named Nicolay through the Okayplayer message boards, and soon the two pulled a Postal Service style exchange of instrumentals/ vocal takes (the name The Foreign Exchange stemming from this strange musical connection), and put together their first album Connected in 2004.
