Kamaal The Abstract<\/i> is intentionally uncategorized. \u201cI hate categories,\u201d Q-Tip told JazzTimes<\/i>. \u201cI hate calling shit jazz, hip-hop, rock or R&B. It\u2019s just music when it\u2019s at its best.\u201d His last statement reminds me of a friend\u2019s take on A Tribe Called Quest\u2019s The Low End Theory<\/i>. He specifically says it\u2019s the best album in music, not just a great rap album. <\/p>\n
But many music lovers want to classify what they hear. I attempted to categorize Kamaal The Abstract <\/i>more than a few times after purchasing it a couple of weeks ago. After listening to the album a great deal and reading interviews, I can say that my attempts were futile. The fact that \u201cBarely In Love\u201d reminds me of something a rock\/pop band might do is reason enough to dismiss what I thought I knew about Q-Tip (and it doesn\u2019t hurt that \u201cBarely In Love\u201d is a solid song by itself).<\/p>\n
Q-Tip\u2019s previous effort, The Renaissance<\/i>, was a rap album influenced by a slew of genres. But his latest release is an album of genres. That doesn\u2019t mean that the listener can fit many of these tracks into one genre. The guitars in \u201cFeelin\u2019\u201d switch between old-school R&B and power-chord rock, but the beat is all hip-hop. Q-Tip raps the only verse before stuttering \u201cWhat happened to that feel-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-feelin\u2019\u201d during the chorus (my transcription of this vocal isn\u2019t perfect, by the way). The vocals turn soul later on. Kevin Scholar\u2019s organ solo is jazz. The track is nuts, to say the least. <\/p>\n
The strange truth is that this disc was supposed to be released before 2008\u2019s The Renaissance<\/i> (in 2002, to be exact), but it sounds like Q-Tip could have recorded it immediately after The Renaissance<\/i>. Seven years later, the album sounds like a thing of the future. JazzTimes<\/i> writer John Murph was right about this record when he said \u201ccalling it a radical departure is an overstatement,\u201d but it\u2019s hard to deny how far ahead it is, both musically and philosophically, than anything Q-Tip has done, including all his instinctive travels with Phife Dawg in A Tribe Called Quest. <\/p>\n
As great as the album is, it\u2019s slightly flawed. \u201cA Million Times\u201d is not a bad song, but it is stagnant compared to tracks like \u201cDo You Dig U?\u201d and \u201cBlue Girl,\u201d and I just get bored with it after a couple of minutes. \u201cCaring\u201d is a nice piano song, but it feels tacked on and thin at only a minute and 40 seconds, and I usually like short tunes. And with few exceptions, you\u2019re not going to find lyrics that stand up to Q-Tip\u2019s past work. But the last criticism doesn\u2019t register as a negative. The album simply focuses on feel and groove over lyricism, and it works for the most part. Just don\u2019t buy this disc expecting as many rhymes. <\/p>\n
I really think Q-Tip has come out with a great musical statement, and thank Christ the record companies couldn\u2019t keep this one down forever because of its supposed lack of mainstream appeal. If anything, Q-Tip is one of the more accessible artists in the rap world. He\u2019s in a multidimensional world on Kamaal The Abstract<\/i>, though, so even rap listeners will have to adjust their minds. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":30118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8463],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41757","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-q-tip","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41757"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}