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.
I was chilling in Waltham for celtics game 2, against the heat, at my friend nates, and through the game my friend Greg V and I got to talking some classic hip hop production, mostly stemming from my rediscovery of Bizarre Ride by the Pharcyde. My hip hop collection came by deep recommendation, and incurring hands on analysis, from my highschool pal DJ Shinyo, mister Matt H. Hes responsible for my love of Pharcyde, and my discovery of Madlib through Quasimoto on some blunted cruises, and so much of that classic production that makes good damn rhyming great.
Greg got to recommending the producer 9th Wonder, and a few choice albums through his long career. As Greg left for the night, i sighted checking out The Minstrel Show, and he said "yeah thats cool, but im really talking his earlier stuff". I checked the wikipedia again, and saw that the first album by Phontes group Little Brother also happened to be one of dudes first releases as a producer.
This song, the title track from The Listening, uses an arrangement style of building a song similarly to much of Madlibs work, starting a track with a short musical skit, then adding a tight band with MCs for a verse or two, breaking into a skit midsong, adding background music throughout the skit, and diving back in and out of verses and choruses. The album is awesome; thanks Greg.
I wanted to do another post of some of the various work Madlib has put out through his career. Theres just so much great shit to chose from; my itunes is chock full of projects of his, and its really tough to find 3-4 tracks that really showcase his skills.. his shit runs deep. Certain albums could be posted alone and do him good justice, but i want to spread it out a bit.
Im going to start with a track from the Strong Arm Steady album he produced in summer 2010. This one is especially relevant because not only does it feature great madlib production with some smooth MCs, but its got Phonte from The Foreign Exchange/ Little Brother on vocals for that awesome chorus. I just recently picked up The Foreign Exchanges recent album, Authenticity, and it is some really great stuff. I will probably be writing about it soon.
Next, a track from the killer collaboration album Jaylib, where madlib and j dilla got together to fuse their skills and drop something sick. In their track The Red, a few things really show through in the recording; how great madlib and dilla both were, throughout their work, at finding really nice vocal samples to line the choruses of their songs; how hilariously bombed out madlibs rhyming is; and also how much fun the two of them must have had together.
Up next, short and sweet, is madlib getting down and dirty with Guilty Simpson on their album OJ Simpson; dude has a great aggressive flow a lot of the time, and madlib backs him up right with such a great sounding assembly of instruments.
Finally, another track from his collaboration with MF Doom, Madvillainy, which i have decided is the showcase album for you all to start on if you havent heard much madlib previously. It is the best of hip hop, and Accordian is one of many tracks i could have chose from to post, but not only is it a great song but it was apparently also released as a single; at least, thats the only reason i could see them producing a nice video for it. Love that line "ive got more lyrics than the church got 'oh lords'"
