The Soul Sides Stray

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#7 - Soul Sides Stray: The Dilla Time Issue

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Last week, I had the privilege of being in conversation with Dan Charnas about his new book, detailing the life, career, and afterlife of James "J Dilla" Yancey: Dilla Time. The event was held on April 21, 2022, at Artform Studio in Highland Park (Los Angeles) and it was me, Dan and Peanut Butter Wolf, discussing Dilla's musical and personal journeys, complete with an annotated playlist. You can listen to the conversation part of the event here.

First off: Dilla Time is a fantastic book, easily one of the best musical biographies I can remember reading and certainly amongst the very best ever devoted to a hip-hop artist. As good as the stories therein are — and trust me, they're good even when they're also low-key depressing — it's Dan's multi-pronged approach to telling "the Dilla story" that I especially appreciated: this isn't just biological, it's also socio-historical as well as (accessibly) musicological. And that latter point — which is reflected in the book's very title — is where I, personally, gained some of the greatest insight into understanding just what it is about Dilla's music that was so affecting.

#7
May 1, 2022
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Soul Sides Stray #6: Remembering Betty Davis, 1945-2022

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Betty Davis passed away the other week at age 77 and as many of my readers likely know, I have spent many years in awe of her and her music and had the privilege to interview her for the liner notes that accompanied three of her Light in the Attic reissues (you can read the liners for the first of those reissues, Betty Davis, here). It'll be one of the great honors of my writing career to have had that opportunity and play a small role in her re-discovery.

NPR Music was gracious enough to let me write an appreciation essay for her: "Game was her middle name." Just a quick excerpt from that:

Betty Mabry Davis, who passed away early Wednesday morning in Pittsburgh at the age of 77, was an intensely enigmatic artist, having spent the first 30 years of her life on a remarkable ascent into the spotlight only to utterly vanish from public view for the next 30 years. Up until 2007, when the first legitimate reissues of her music began to roll out, the primary way you would have discovered her at all was by randomly finding one of her three studio albums in a record store bin. Once you did though, it was like being let in on a secret that you instantly wanted to share with others.

Her songs were filled with gritty yet sultry style of electrified funk — dirtier than James with more blues than Sly. Likewise, as a vocalist, she shared little in common with her gospel-trained contemporaries with their perfect pitch and vocal control; she took her cues from growling blues singers like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Moreover, she was doing all this as an unapologetically outspoken, sexually empowered performer who shocked the Black cultural establishment of her time. Both musically and professionally, she was an artist without much precedent nor peer and because of that, she's been the object of constant fascination and inspiration for decades. I always think of how Joi, the accomplished neo-soul singer/songwriter, once told me that when she was first introduced to Betty's music almost 30 years ago, it was a "revelation that I was not alone."

#6
February 24, 2022
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Joe Cruz and the Cruzettes' "Love Song"

Joe Cruz and the Cruzettes:

#5
September 5, 2021
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The Soul Sides Stray, Issue 4: DERRICK LARA'S "HELLO STRANGER"

Derrick Lara: (Masai, 1982?)

#4
August 28, 2021
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The Soul Sides Stray: Admin's "Step Into Light" (2021)

Admin: (white label, 2021)

#3
August 26, 2021
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The Soul Sides Stray, Issue 02: Skye's "Ain't No Need" (Anada, 1976)

Skye: (Anada, 1976)

#2
August 16, 2021
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The Soul Sides Stray, Issue 01: The Nairobi Sisters' "Promised Land"

First off, welcome to The Soul Sides Stray, a test run for creating a Soul-Sides.com newsletter. My old email subscription service (Feedburner) recently went dark so it made some sense to transfer my blog subscribers to this newsletter format. We’ll see if it works and as always, if you don’t want to be subscribed to it, just use the links on his page to bounce. If you do want to hang around, here’s some fresh content for you:

#1
August 15, 2021
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