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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
MVP
Mary J. Blige
2005
DON'T CHA
Tori Alamaze
Universal : 2005
[buy it]
In hip-hop, mold multiplies like a calculator. It's a genre of obsessions, a collection of artists, producers, record labels and fans that seize upon an idea or sound and, as Missy sang several years ago, "flip it and reverse it." Like dancehall's riddim culture, in which a single beat can be reused hundreds of times by hundreds of singers, hip-hop microscopes sound, prodding each bass quiver and snare crack until it emerges as something new — or something that will at least keep the legal fees manageable. The flipside, of course, is that same obsessiveness knows no loyalty — there will always be a hotter beat, a better verse — and so a hip-hop artist's lifespan is somewhere between that of a house fly and an NFL running back.
As R&B and hip-hop have become largely synonymous thanks to crossover choruses (hip-hop) and guest-spot middle-eights (R&B), the former has adopted the same brand disloyalty. Just look at late 2003 — the winter of the diva — when Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston (arguably the holy trinity of R&B's modern era) released albums that were relative flops. (The new Mariah album, The Emancipation of Mimi, has not suffered that same fate, of course. It's also fantastic.)
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Mary J. Blige's continuing status as "a soul hip-hop queen," as she proudly sings in "MVP," was earned and then some. The song is a remix of "Hate It or Love It" by the Game, he the latest rapper to hail from Compton, and whose Johnny Come Lately hip-hop pedigree has earned him guffaws from the G-nut galleries (50 Cent, who appears on this cut, very publicly kicked him out of his crew a month ago). But despite the Game's lack of sparkle, there's a charm in his hip-hop devotion: the vast majority of The Documentary, his 2005 album, features him namechecking records and rappers that he loves. His is a life breathed through wax, and he has little else to say.
Mary J. Blige has never been afraid to get autobiographical in her singles — hell, R&B demands it — but she hasn't presented her career as plainly as she does in "MVP," and I think the Game's own uber-fandom is the inspiration. The backing beat also begs for nostalgia: a swell of strings, xylophone, looping bass line and an addictive little hi-hat stutter that smells like gold in any era.
After recounting the emotional and autobiographical context of each album ("Then I came with Share My World/ But at that point I was just a foolish girl/ Trying to find my way/ Then I dropped the Mary album/ And people would say/ That, 'It's just not going to work'/ And my feelings they did hurt"), the song climaxes with Mary exclaiming, "I'm a real woman now," and then following that with a string of wordless vocal runs, her voice quivering she's so in the moment. It's the best song she's ever made, and easily my favorite single of the year.
I can't imagine Tori Alamaze ever getting the opportunity to self-eulogize like "MVP," but her first single, "Don't Cha" (2005), proves that she deserves it. Alamaze is a young Atlanta hairdresser who contributed some backing vocals to the last OutKast mess album. "Don't Cha" sounds like a This Heat ballad, its melody constructed around an organ drone and a tom drop-beat. It's about heartbreak and unrequited love — those pop standbys — as Alamaze futilely tries to convince a crush of her worthiness.
Her plea fails because she doesn't quite believe it. When she murmers, "You ain't blind/ Look at me, shit," in the spoken-word middle-eight, she knows she's too good for this groveling. Then again, hearts have never been known for their rationality, and so she can't let go of the yearning and humiliates herself with answering machine messages and overlong looks across a crowded club. Her naked desire makes the song, though, and regardless of whether she ever becomes satiated, hers is a career that, in a just world that probably ain't this one, will survive a thousand winters.
posted by Yancey
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