We were here

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MAXWELL IS BACK

WE'VE BEEN WAITING for 8 years, and boy, it's been worth it.

Pretty Wings is the first single from the album BLACKsummers'night, released on 7th July.

It's spellbindingly beautiful. "[A] lot of my absence was based on just going out to get life experience, becoming a man. In your twenties you are just a sketch of what you're trying to be," Maxwell said at an an album listening party in Beverly Hills last week.

ELSEWHERE - Will Maxwell's New Conservative Look Lose Him Some Fans?

PREVIOUSLY - F*** Your Art, I Wanna See Your Ass: The Curse Of Untitled

SUMMER OF MAXWELL

I'M A LITTLE late with this, but since I missed it, maybe you did to.

After literally years of rumours and missed release dates, Columbia Records has announced that Maxwell's long-awaited fourth studio album, BLACKsummers'night, will definitely be released on 7th July - this year.

It's been 8 years since his last album, Now, which featured Fortunate, For Lovers Only and This Woman's Work. Maxwell is one of the lost generation of genius neo-soul artists who burned bright and brief. D'Angelo released Voodoo in 2000, and Lauryn Hill took 10 years to follow up her debut. Fortunately, Maxwell doesn't appear to have been damaged by any demons he might be fighting, as his aforementioned peers have been. A recent tour boosted the notoriously private and retiring singer: "Just the encouragement, you can't imagine," Maxwell says, speaking at a launch event in New York last week. "I'm an insecure person at best... I feel like going on the road, I got so much inspiration. "I didn’t intentionally step away from all of it, but I just wanted to… live my life a little bit, and then be able to make music with that pure experience again." I really can't wait for this record to drop. July can't come soon enough.

PREVIOUSLY - F*** Your Art, I Wanna See Your Ass: The Curse Of Untitled 
PREVIOUSLY - Maxwell: Now?
ELSEWHERE - Maxwell Introduces New Album BLACKsummers'night

F*** your art, I wanna see your ass: The curse of Untitled

UNTITLED (HOW DOES It Feel) - an iconic video everyone’s seen.

It came to define D'Angelo and made him an instant superstar. The trouble is, that same video played a key role in the artist’s downward spiral.

I use the word artist deliberately, because that's exactly what D'Angelo is - and his contemporaries Maxwell, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill et al. An artist in the truest sense, concerned with the quality, not the quantity, of his music. D'Angelo is an Artist. Usher, on the other hand, who (badly) mimicked the Untitled video, is a Product.

Back in August, Spin published an in depth feature on the rise and fall of D'Angelo. I've long wondered why those promising artists who broke out when I was a teenager (and who, in the case of D'Angelo and his Brown Sugar album, gave birth to the neo-soul movement) in the late 1990s/early part of this decade, have been absent for most of this decade. Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson of The Roots - and a crucial player in the D'Angelo story - doesn't believe the disappearance of neo-soul's onetime leading lights can be attributed purely to personal issues: "It's no coincidence it's going to take ten years for the next D'Angelo record to come out, ten years for Lauryn. It took Erykah eight years, probably the same for Maxwell... A lot of factors have played into stalling the left-of center black movement." Factors like quality control, something the likes of R. Kelly and Usher don't worry too much about. Common talks about D'Angelo creating "incredible" music we'll never hear, whilst Kedar Massenburg, D'Angelo's one time manager, thinks these artists are paralyzed by the pressure to innovate.

Most interesting are Saul Williams comments on the "tug-of-war between art and commerce in black culture." An African-American writer and poet, he says: "When our generation falls victim to that Diddy mentality of 'Get money by any means necessary,' that puts a disproportionate amount of focus on people like D'Angelo and Lauryn. It's like, 'You're the only ones that get it. you guys have to cut through the bullshit.' So then we're like, 'you're not just a great artist, you're the messiah! Please come out with something!' It's enough to drive you batty."

D'Angelo isn't just a recording artist, he's legendary, iconic, genius, special... That's just little old me talking - imagine carrying the burden of the expectations of a cultural movement, of one’s peers. But that's just one side of the coin. The Spin article paints D'Angelo as an introvert who just wants to make music his way; a man who eschews the promotional whoring required of artists today.

The Untitled video was a turning point. Described as having once been a "chubby choir boy", D'Angelo was honed to perfection for his five minutes in front of the camera. "Initially, to him, it seemed completely bonkers," Dominique Trenier, D'Angelo's manager for nearly ten years, says of the artist's reaction to the video concept. "He didn't quite get what I was saying. He kept going, 'What do you mean, 'naked'?" Neither Trenier nor D'Angelo expected what came next. "'Untitled' wasn't supposed to be his mission statement for Voodoo... He and I were both disappointed because, to this day, in the general populace's memory, he's the naked dude."

Catcalls and screaming women disrupted the tour that followed Voodoo's release; the new breed of fans ushered in by Untitled wanted just one thing: D'Angelo to lose his clothes. Thompson says: "He'd get angry and start breaking shit. The audience thinking, 'Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!' made him angry." D'Angelo "...isn't a sexy dude," according to Trenier, but a "...real musician who wears glasses and plays video games."

"I didn't realise how vulnerable he was and how deep his issues ran," says Alan Leeds, the Voodoo tour manager. "He's cursed now with fretting over how much of his fan base is because of how he looked as opposed to the music. It took away his confidence, because he's not convinced why any given fan is supporting him."

I was living in New York when Voodoo was released. There were billboards advertising the album everywhere; his image was emblazoned across buses and plastered all over the subway. When it came, I found Voodoo a strange beast, unexpected, other-worldly. It was nothing like Brown Sugar. Ten years on, Voodoo is still on high rotation. It’s rapturous, sweet, heady, magical... the soul record of the the decade, perhaps.

Come back D’Angelo - the screaming fans have moved on to 50 Cent and his ever-exposed pectorals. Those of us who just want to listen to you are still waiting.

We’re here.

NOTE: Interview excerpts from the Spin article, ‘D'Angelo: What the Hell Happened?’ written by David Peisner, 08.05.08.

Round Is Better

How many of you joyless, digital generation downloaders actually own a CD? Or even an LP? Because let's face it, you probably place more importance in the prestige of your shiny (gremlin-prone) iPod than in the music that's on it, right? Click click click, download a few megabytes of sound and play it back as an inferior MP3. Oh, sure, you can hear a lot more music at once (without having to undertake the crippling, ardous task of actually changing a disc) but what you have, my friend, is quantity over quality. And no one else can see what you're listening to. Those tricks you bring home (or even, miracle of miracles, a date) can't fick through your collection to see what they're getting themselves into. Are you in a Lupe Fiasco, or a 50 Center? A Kylie bitch, or Angie Stoned? Do you grind to Usher, or D'Angelo?

Downloading music might have its advantages, but it's still tedious and unreliable. I hate it. It's the same as chatting to people online when you have no intention of meeting them - it's insincere. There's nothing like having a nice, shiny CD with a real cover and a real booklet, with real design. If I really love an album, I'll even hunt down the vinyl LP. And so, even though I don't own a record player, I have 12" LPs of D'Angelo's Voodoo, Maxwell's Embrya and Real Things by, ahem, 2 Unlimited. They look good - does the Windows icon representing Umbrella do anything for you?

It seems like I'm not the only one who feels this way either. Despite this, sales of CDs plummeted 10% last year (which is quite a lot, you know), and HMV has indicated that it aims to concentrate on the gaming market in the future.

I can actually remember buying my first CD (Annie Lennox's Medusa in 1995 - I was a late bloomer). Will the present generation of square-eyed geeks look back fondly on their first iTune? I don't think so somehow...

Maxwell: Now?

Neo soul, as a genre, hasn't achieved much mainstream success (for better or for worse), instead suffering at the bling-encrusted hands of mainstream hip-hop (which really is just vulgar blaxploitation).

There's two artists that have a certain gravitas when it comes to neo soul: Maxwell and D'Angelo. When I say contemporary, it's stretching the definition a little - Maxwell's last album, Now, was released in 2001, whilst D'Angelo last gave us a lil sumthin' sumthin' in 2000 (the truly exquisite Voodoo).

D'Angelo's troubles have been widely publicised (eagerly, given his fall from grace as the chiselled demi-god seen in the video for Untitled (How Does It Feel) to the bloated everyman peering at the camera in police mug shots) and there's been various rumours about the reasons behind Maxwell's lack of productivity.

Whatever the reason for the delay between Now and the long-mooted Black Summers' Nite, the wait should be worth it. Maxwell's magic is unparalleled, a fact readily apparent on the snippet released this weekend on his official myspace page. Go there now to hear it.

In a recent myspace bulletin Maxwell had this to say: "it's been the coolest summer but we got a hot busy little winter planned out for you. hint hint hint!!!"

Perhaps, finally, the time is Now...