![]() But when I was a kid, it just didn’t seem to matter. And of course we (that’s the proverbial “we,” not me in anyway) literally invented rap, later to be called hip hop, the world’s dominant musical and fashion force for at least a quarter-century now. ![]() We have a big zoo, if you’re into that kinda thing. The Yankees are the most successful sports franchise in world history. The Bronx doesn’t have a lot to hang its hat on, but the things we have are big. As a Bronx native, much to my chagrin, Brooklyn usually wins. But generally, it’s really not much of a contest. For example, hip hop was practically born from tussles between the Bronx and Queens. However, between the boroughs themselves there can be a bit of a rivalry, and Manhattan’s not really part of that, because Manhattan is just its own thing, leaving the other four that jostle and jockey for New York street cred. By and large, they’re very confident in their identity. Maybe that sounds like people from the outer boroughs have a chip on their shoulders. For the rest of us, it’s a job, it’s that place you have to take the subway to. Manhattan below 125th Street (in the old days below 110th) is a playground for the wealthy, a postcard for tourists to visit. The natives with roots and connections, and the immigrants who are life-and-death dedicated to making them, not the tourists who come for a weekend or a dozen years before trundling back to America. And as far as we’re concerned, we’re the real New Yorkers. Like me, you’re from one of the outer boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island. But if you’re actually from New York, then you’re very likely not from Manhattan. Manhattan always has been and always will be New York City’s geographic and economic center. “Change is pain.” -South African poet Mzwakhe Mbuli The table of contents with links to previous chapters is here. In that regard, it works – songs like ‘Ain’t It A Sin’ and the title track’s Black Sabbath cover simmer here with a threat of an on-stage eruption – but otherwise, ‘Changes’ is a holographic stand-in for the ravaged real McCoy.Stuck has been a weekly serial appearing at 3QD every Monday since November. Ultimately though, while it’s virtually impossible for music this life-affirming to ever appear stale, it’s also difficult for it to truly sing from within the confines of a disc, and that leaves ‘Changes’ feeling more like a lovingly crafted, elongated promo for Bradley’s tour than anything more freestanding. At times deeply patriotic, full of broad-brush sloganising (“America represents love for all humanity in the world,” says Bradley on a track called ‘God Bless America’, which seems an unusual stance for a man who also insists he has been wrongly jailed twice equally, he sings on another “America, I’m home, you’re so good to me”), elsewhere Bradley is strikingly personal, with the central trio of ‘Ain’t It A Sin’, ‘Crazy For Your Love’ and ‘You Think I Don’t Know’ all direct exercises in comeuppance for a specific, unnamed person who has clearly crossed the singer.įor all the album’s enjoyably doting observance of soul’s musical tropes, too, it also walks the line between homage and straight-up theft precariously: while Bradley’s frequent James Brownisms are perhaps understandable, the quotation of ‘Summer Breeze’ mid-way through ‘Nobody But You’ seems blatant to the point of provocation. Taken on its own terms, though, ‘Changes’ is tonally curious. Indeed, it’s a terrifically listenable, expertly performed set of songs full of groove, melody and likeable arrangements that, while not quite serving as a mirror for Bradley’s scorching live show, at least acts as a decent proxy, right down to Bradley introducing himself in the opening seconds of the first track, and parting with a soppy waltz-time lullaby for the last. ![]() That’s not to say ‘Changes’ is a bad album, though, by any stretch. Studio albums, shorn often of the grit, intensity and whites-of-the-eyes communication off which the best soul music thrives, can often become an exercise in chops over expressivity, which renders judging someone like Bradley based on his discography a bit like appraising Lionel Messi’s footballing skills by watching him play FIFA. It’s telling, for example, that the only canonical album by James Brown (whom Bradley impersonated professionally for 40 years before making his breakthrough in 2011, aged 63) is his live LP from the Harlem Apollo. So much of Charles Bradley’s appeal – and, indeed, of his sort of soul music – is reliant on backstory and live performance in a sort of shot/reverse-shot pivot that most studio albums in the genre can feel like little more than a bystander. ![]()
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