- all this talk about D'Mumblo, Maxwell, and all that stuff has me revisiting the mid-to-late '90s again. Now this was the first era I really had my head up my ass as a music listener, because the terrorists were making strides in the hip-hop and R&B popularity wars. As far as R&B was concerned, I was more of a "Maxwell" kind of dude, for a number of reasons (chief among them being that URBAN HANG SUITE took a diarrhea-fied POO POO over most R&B records released in 1996). But he understandably was one of those artists that stood alone in the crowd.

That being said...

- I listened to D'Mumblo's VOODOO in full for the first time this past weekend. Checked out the outtakes and demos that I had somewhere stashed and forgot about, too.

Now I get the obsession. I sort of got it before, but now I *really* get why people are all "Prince.org-y" about D'Mumblo.

Not saying I'm part of it, but honestly, I'm kinda mad it took so long to hear it all... since it sounds just like the kind of music that made me so optimistic about the incoming 2000s, like Common's LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE in particular (no surprise, since it came out of the same shop of creative minds). There really was not a whole lot of music released in that era with that kind of groove. Sure, the sound of VOODOO hearkened back to an earlier time, but it wasn't like they were trying to recreate the shit bit-by-bit. It was very contemporary, but also very funky. I really like that D'Mumblo said "yeah, I don't do that traditional strong structure shit so well" and just went with what worked. And hit it big!

Damn.

I also now really get the disappointment that there was nothing for so many years.