Cocaine 80s
DocMcCoy
"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
:latte:
Did I miss all the threads on this? Or shall I grab a box of late passes and just hand 'em out?
*whispers* It's better than the Frank Ocean album.
Did I miss all the threads on this? Or shall I grab a box of late passes and just hand 'em out?
*whispers* It's better than the Frank Ocean album.
Comments
speakin of late passe'...been jammin this for a minute now, peace to a cosmo mix for getting me up on this.
The Flower Of Life
:joeyfromblossom:
:face_melt:
Damn, I didn't even know he had a book. The stories he and Mickey Munday tell in Cocaine Cowboys are pretty amazing.
I don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg, or if that's even a valid way to look at the two acts, but I hear some Frank in this (especially on stuff like "Loved to Death" from the Ghost Lady EP). It's entirely possible that the two developed separately and simultaneously, but the Frankie Fanboy part of me wonders if Cocaine 80s saw the lane that Frank created and then merged into it.
Feel free to dispute this or correct me.
Also, am I right in assuming that's James Fauntleroy singing lead for Cocaine 80s? I'll admit that I was unfamiliar with him, but he's got quite the CV. Looking over his wiki, I see that he's written songs for Chris Brown, Rhianna, Brandy, Kelly Clarkson, Brittany Spears and...Chris Cornell?
And oh shit...add Frank Ocean to that list! They even recorded a song together. And according to that same link, Chris Brown pissed off Frank by comparing him to...James Fauntleroy.
Yeah, that was kind of a reductive thing for me to say. I think I was probably reacting to the way Frank's album was reviewed seemingly as much for the backstory as for the music. Meanwhile, black pop music that was at least as interesting, if not more so, was being ignored in the apparent rush amongst some commentators to assert their impeccable liberal credentials by endorsing a black r&b singer who might or might not be gay. Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone ever thought to ask Rahsaan Patterson what he thought of all this?
My guess is that this whole concept may have emerged out of No ID producing ex-Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft's most recent solo joint a couple of years back. Certainly, many of the same musicians are/were involved with both projects, only here it's James Fauntleroy doing the singing and writing instead of Mad Richard, with support from Makeba Riddick and now Jhene Aiko. It seems to me that the original pitch might have been indie-rock/r&b/rap fusion, which admittedly sounds horrifying on paper. Yet, instead of the usual Mr. Potatohead shit you often get with things of this nature, everything's actually in the right proportion for a change. The writing's imaginative and a bit unpredictable, instead of the tedious four-chord looping Coldplay knock-offs that many rap/r&b acts fall into when they want to invoke a stadium rock vibe. Even the standard lyrical tropes sound fresher simply for being placed in a different musical context. I've actually been wanting someone to do something like this for a few years now - at least since Lewis Taylor went off the grid.
As far as the timeline's concerned, I think the first Cocaine 80s joints dropped sometime in 2011, which would make them roughly contemporaneous to Nostalgia, Ultra. I dunno, I think both this and Frank are evidence that black artists are beginning to draw upon a broader palette than they might perhaps have done a decade ago. Back then, it was just dudes like Anthony Hamilton who appeared to be the ones swimming against the tide. Now you have cats coming from a similar angle, and who are pulling in strands from Radiohead, Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, Cocteau Twins, Elliott Smith and all kinds of mad shit that people don't normally expect to hear referenced in black pop music. And it works.
After a day of listening in the earbuds while I worked, I gotta say that I'm feeling everything except the latest offering (The Flower of Life). The other joints, though, are really doin' it for me. I'm anxious to spend some more time with all of it and see how it sits with me.
Again: thanks for putting me onto it.