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I have sky-high expectations for bilal oliver. always have since q-tip had me thinking that he somehow copped little jimmy scott’s a capella reels and placed breakbeats over ‘em. ever since I just missed him and a young roc-a-fella upstart beanie sigel in my own pre lily jam sessions by damn minutes! (friggin amtrack!!!!!) ever since that night a few days short of the millennium where he had the impossible task of covering "international lover" for a legion of jealous paiselyites (go to prince.org if you wanna know how deep their loyalty runs against anyone in prince’s path, including a certain okayartist whom this poor soul has been unfairly compared too.)
Oh yeah. And while I’m at it, kill that d clone shit too. Only surface listeners will utter such foolishness. Call em the status quo; call em the demographic that will buy the album. Personally I call them idiots. cause anyone who knows better that bilal’s ass don’t even belong on this rnb (rap and bullshit!) side of the fence. I mean, hearing him sing modern soul/whatever you call it is like a cat with a masters degree attending joe clark’s east side high circa 1986.

Too easy.

Which is a good thing, or bad depending on how you look at it. bilal is a jazz vocalise’ (ghetto French y’all) with a vocabulary and diction light years ahead the 106 and park pack. The thing that I admire the most about his talent is that he possesses the one true gift that I have to say none of his contemporaries has….fearlessness.

Fearlessness that allows him to show his ass in such a way that even if he looks like a fool (and yes us bilal loyalists can attest to a few moments when he walked the thin line of pure genius and absoulute self parody many a black lily or common show) he still comes off. A fearlessness that lets him give himself a "who’s balls are bigger, me or your man’s?" pat on the back in the album intro. A fearlessness that urges him to break free of verse chorus melodic chains that jimmy iovine so desperately wants him to stay within in this age of iresoulchildishness on the unnecessarily titled "slyde" (as in fam is stoned) and the obligatory placed dre---ur…um storch produced "fast lane" (you still gotta love his "it’s too late for him now/nothing much to live up to" drunk ass-on the money harmony vocals). Bilal’s "look ma no hands" approach to singing and songwriting can be a tad intense (leave it to him to denounce narcotics, commit domestic violence, ponder making it before his 30th, and wish you well all in 4 octaves and in 2 minutes on the ---ahem—cough cough—soulquarian produced (whoever that is!) "sometimes"…only to come back to his "got til it’s gone" –rip off "love it" so that his bills can be paid. (we’ve been here before).

So this is sorta what I’ve been expecting from him. Signs of genius here and there (phrasing is bar none. -hey I was hooked after hearing him turn the word "say" into a 10 syllable plus drunken rage of jazzology on "queen of sanity’s" first chorus. Signs of surprise (what you think is yet another blues romp at the beginning of "when will you call" becomes a vulnerable ode to post relationship breakup. "CALL ME-LA-DY-CALL ME!!! WHEN YOU GET ho—a chaaaaaaaaance? it should also be noted that both these songs appear in their original 5 year old demo glory…yes bilal is 22, do the godamn math! This is some twisted shit when a 17 year old has the nueve to turn his back to just merely gospel riffing over breakbeats and recall Bird solo’s in an instant (yes his true gift is reciting jazz solos. Over 800 committed to memory) signs of missteps (i’m sure dre---ur scott’s "fast lane" and "sally" were mere inclusions to net some of musiq’s radio/106 and park crowd. Bangers indeed…could be singles…. but slightly out of step here in album context.) signs of frustration (neither jay, james, nor I was in town to mix "queen of sanity" or "reminisce" here they sound rather tame compared to the demo versions I mixed) signs of balls ("second child" and "home" a ditty that recalls marley and cliff. Closer to jah than any fugees have came to. And that’s saying something)

So that the end of the day, did we all suspect that bilal was going to save the world with this record? Perhaps. Will he pull a jill to erykah’s dangelo? Whatever that means. This will without a doubt finally establish that the two are incredibly talented individuals. And as far as debuts are concerned, it stands out amongst first timers who later became lions in their career (music of my mind, off the wall, for you, brown sugar) a little shabby here and there (perils of multiproduced albums) but in the end it serves as a nice template for a career that I suspect will improve with each album release. I have high hopes.