Slave To The Ism

Monday June 30th, 2008

Just the facts, ma’am. Last night: Erykah Badu at the Palais des Congrès. Awesome… though I’ve seen the analog girl at least seven times live (the last: Jones Beach 2005 w/Jill Scott and Queen Latifah) and it wasn’t my absolute favorite set. But, very New Amerykah heavy, very funky, very 90 minutes late. Went a lil’ something like this.

The six-man band jammed for ten minutes alone before her entrance, doing solos off of Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon.” Chesty backup singers Keisha Renée Williams and Eugenia Bess began chanting “hold on, my people” as Erykah emerged from stage left. With her striking poses at the microphone, the band cranked up “Amerykahn Promise” (derived from the old Roy Ayers Music Project tune, “The American Promise”) and funked out until segueing into “The Healer/Hiphop.” She’d brought out two tuning forks – they make vibrations, no? – and clinked them together at the appropriate moment in the song, but the mic didn’t pick up the space/time continuum rift that one might’ve expected to hear. A few songs later, she brought out an African drum under her arm to bang, bringing in the chant/song “My People.”

I could go song by song, but I’ll put the track listing below. Instead, the highlights. For a few tours now (and this one is officially The Vortex Tour), Erykah has been playing a beat machine onstage that’s sort of like a sophisticated Japanese-engineered version of banging on a lunchroom table to produce hiphop boom-bap beats, but it’s also capable of making space-age atmospheric effects. So at one point, she got the electrofunk beat to Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” going, which the band picked up, and performed “Apple Tree” over it. She similarly merged the music to Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” to the end of Worldwide Underground‘s “I Want You,” and A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum” in-between “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hiphop)” and “A.D. 2000” from Mama’s Gun. Badu turned her back to the audience at one point and gave drummer Raphael Iglehart what I’m sure was a deadly look for missing his cue.

Other little musical borrowings made the night interesting; the sold-out audience was also treated to James Brown’s “The Payback” at the end of the night, somewhere between “Tyrone” and “Bag Lady.” Same with the beat to “Top Billin’” bringing on “On & On.” And the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” appeared as a petite encore with Common’s “The Light,” and thousands of Parisians waved their cellies in the air from side to side with the house lights down. The only notable Baduizm of the night might’ve been her explanation of vortices, how Paris was located nearby a (presumably spiritual) vortex, and that areas near such vortices produce greater creativity. Knowing Badu, she kept it light considering the language barrier. She jumped into the audience (protected by her security) at one point, cavorting with fans real friendly-like. Then she broke out for the next tour stop in London, leaving us with some prerecorded crunk to dance ourselves out. Now, the track listing:
“Chameleon”
“Amerykahn Promise”
“The Healer/Hiphop”
“Me”
“My People”
“Twinkle”
“On & On”
“… & On”
“Apple Tree”
“I Want You”
“Otherside of the Game”
“Danger”
“A.D. 2000”
“Love of My Life (An Ode to Hiphop)”
“Tyrone”
“Bag Lady”

-Miles Marshall Lewis

So N*E*R*D’s back, flaunting all the appropriate characteristics for the ideal postmodern pop-rock band: an effortless mélange of hiphop, rock, and 80s synth music married to an ironic attitude. The description sounds a lot like Gnarls Barkley (a duo likewise hard to characterize), but N*E*R*D predated that group by four years with their first record, In Search Of… (overrated, but “Rock Star – Poser” and “Lapdance” rocked on). Off the new record Seeing Sounds, the retro-sounding “Windows,” with Motown-like handclaps and “do do do” harmonizing, is the only song that might bring Gnarls Barkley to mind. The rest is far too energetic and futuristic to be anything but pure N*E*R*D. It’s the perfect soundtrack for the jumpy girls with coke joneses playfully satirized on the first single, “Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom).”
Lead singer Pharrell Williams is celebrated mainly for his phenomenal talent as a producer; his distinct touch is famously all over most of Madonna’s latest, Hard Candy. This makes sense, because his lack of singing chops sometimes makes N*E*R*D harder to appreciate. Poor vocals weigh down certain songs — “Yeah You,” for example — like an anchor; because of his voice, it’s hard to know if he’s seriously seducing or just fuckin around. N*E*R*D’s lyrics are also trite and secondary to the music. “Everyone Nose” takes coke use as its subject (“cut you open and you’re all white,” Pharrell sings), but most of Seeing Sounds deals with hookups and partying.
Beats redeem the album though. The agitated triphop drumming on “Anti Matter” complements the song’s New Wave guitars nicely, creating a standout. “Kill Joy” uses the old-school Sugarhill Gang-like rhymes of N*E*R*D’s Shay effectively and, like most of Seeing Sounds, the bridge contrasts the original melody sharply. More than anything else, N*E*R*D continues to be a fly storage room for the more experimental sounds that producer Pharrell Williams can’t hawk elsewhere.
Miles Marshall Lewis