Elaquent - Long Drives To Nowhere - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The compilation album is a rite of passage for elite hip-hop producers. We rightfully revere the classics Marley Marl's In Control Vol. 1, Pete Rock's Soul Survivor, Hi-Tek's Hi-Teknology, J Dilla's Welcome to Detroit, and The Neptunes' Clones. Or in more recent years, the gems reaped from the Mello Music Cinematic Universe Apollo Brown's The Reset, Oddisee 101, and L'Orange's The Ordinary Man. In that timeless lineage, you can add another one with Elaquent's, Forever is a Pretty Long Time. As with all brilliant producer compilation albums, the Guelph, Ontario-based Elaquent vividly constructs his own world. It's the hip-hop equivalent of that old question who would you want to invite to your dream dinner party if you had the chance? But instead, it's the lab, and the visitors include a murderer's row of underground MCs including Oddisee, Blu, Chester Watson, Cavalier, and Guilty Simpson. The curation is impeccable, but more than that, it creates it's own orphic sense of magic.

Blessing in Disguise, the new album from the Guelph-bred producer Elaquent, merges the digital with the physical in a way that makes each seem new, and each seem very alive. It's technically innovative music that reminds you, at every turn, that it's been crafted by a living, breathing, upright human. It's beat music informed by the past with an eye toward the future. And as it's title implies, Blessing in Disguise also grapples with one of life's central questions how do you recover from your lowest moments to not only move forward, but to become stronger? Blessing in Disguise was recorded largely during a trip to Jamaica-Elaquent's first true vacation since he was a child. At first, the process moved slowly; he was mired in a creative funk that had dogged him in his regular life up north. But before long, the slower, idyllic setting opened up and inspired him to make the freest, most innovative record of his career. From the slinking InchValhallaInch to the playful InchAirplane Mode,Inch the jazz textures in InchMoment of WeaknessInch to the inverted boom-bap of InchTrapdoor,Inch Blessing in Disguise is the culmination of years of trial and error, failure and improvisation. It's a testament to dedication and an indomitable will. And it cements Elaquent as one of his genre's most vital voices.

Bernice Johnson Reagon - Give Your Hands to Struggle [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/21/1997