"Anyone seen the Nina Simone tribute album lineup..." Wed Jul-01-15 06:34 AM by Af-1
Gregory Porter doing 'Sinnerman' has me really excited. Album's released in a week or two apparently...
1. My Mama Could Sing (Intro) - Lisa Simone 2. Feeling Good - Lauryn Hill 3. I've Got Life - Lauryn Hill 4. Ne Me Quitte Pas - Lauryn Hill 5. Baltimore - Jazmine Sullivan 6. Love Me Or Leave Me - Grace 7. My Baby Just Cares for Me - Usher 8. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Mary J. Blige 9. Sinnerman - Gregory Porter 10. We Are Young, Gifted and Black - Common & Lalah Hathaway 11. I Put a Spell On You - Alice Smith 12. I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl - Lisa Simone 13. Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair - Lauryn Hill 14. Wild Is the Wind - Lauryn Hill 15. African Mailman (Instrumental) - Lauryn Hill 16. I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free - Nina Simone
4. "skimmed the stream at NPR" In response to Reply # 0
Not impressed.
The Gregory Porter track is probably the coolest thing on there. Other than that it sounded pretty uninspired. Will revisit in full later, but the preview did little to get me excited.
They're working at a disadvantage though, as Meshell's "Pour..." album was ridiculously good --- felt less like an album of covers than honest, sincere interpretations. Hard not to compare the two, and Meshell wins (but let's be honest, she always wins).
Agree with a lot of the sentiment, I think, although the reviewer is a bit absurd on this point:
"There's issue to be taken with the choice of songs here. Numbers like "Ne Me Quitte Pas", "Sinnerman", "My Baby Just Cares for Me", and others, while being staples of Simone's live sets, are not her original numbers, reducing much of the album to covers of covers."
Nina Simone wrote relatively few originals over the course of her career compared to rather prolific recording output. She was, first and foremost, an interpreter. That doesn't take away from the fact that she was an amazing writer, but to think a proper tribute album should focus primarily on the cuts she wrote seems askew...
Still, I haven't listened all the way through, so I'm holding off on a firm evaluation til I can give it the album a proper listen.
8. "Robert Glasper fucked this up big time" In response to Reply # 0
Anything outside of Lauryn Hill and Alice Smith's covers (and Sullivan's to a lesser extent) are trash. He made all of these covers sound like reheated neo-soul and smooth jazz muzak. This is the kind of shit that reinforces Simone's legacy as a jazz singer, as opposed to brilliant, genre defying, musician.
By far the worst is Gregory Porter's Sinnerman. He should be ashamed of releasing such a flaccid version over that samba/boss nova crap. And the way he sings it is so over the top cabaret cheesy. Like I can still picture him grinning as he sang it a la the African Face bit from Get Him To The Greek. Grace's cover of Love Me or Leave Me, reminds me of Amy Winehouse's You Sent Me Flying. Usher's My Baby Just Care's for me, however, sounds like a Christmas carol. I mean most of these are barely worth even talking about further.
You think these covers would actually incorporate or at least build off the musical influences in Nina's music. This a woman who incorporated Bach cadenzas alongside blues, gospel, and showtunes without making it corny or hamfisted. She owned every cover she did by virtue of her musical virtuosity and the sincerity/directness of her vocal phrasing. In that spirit, I loved Eric Gales guitar solo/coda towards the end of Feeling Good. Lauryn Hill's take on the African Mailman instrumental is also great.
Even though Lauryn's covers are all kinda overproduced and the mixing of the vocals are questionable at times, at least you got the sense that she actually has a solid understanding of Simone's music. She could have also whittled down those three verses on I've Got Life into two, but she still had some great bars:
"Africa full of coltan/Coltrane was a cold man/Black genius in a cold land tryna be a whole man"
"There's a whole right of wrong to be righted/I get excited and kick this shit off like I'm on Manchester united"
"Psyche on poverty/self-esteem broken like pottery"
"See my Kalashnikov, lyrics with the safety off/Now dance around these niggas like Baryshnikov"
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
The Lesson
