1001 Albums Summary

TRACK 1 (P-FUNK) : Strong opener, we're funking now. TRACK 2 (MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION) : Strong follow-up, we're doubling-down on funking TRACK 3 (UNFUNKY UFO) : Misleading title, if a UFO was involved in the making of this song, it is undoubtedly a funky one. TRACK 4 (SUPERGROOVALISTICPROSIFUNKSTICATION) : Still funking. TRACK 5 (HANDCUFFS) : Maybe my favourite so far! Wastes no time and cuts straight to the funking from the get-go. TRACK 6 (GIVE UP THE FUNK) : I will NOT be giving up the funk, especially if it's gonna keep being this funky. 'Whole lot of rhythm goin' round' that's for sure. TRACK 7 (NIGHT OF THE THUMPASORUS PEOPLES) : The Thumpasorus Peoples seem like a good bunch. We've funked till the end. Crazy... synth? solos. Sounds like a talk box maybe, or a vocoder? OVERALL : Impeccable funk from A to Z. Gives enough different sounds, textures and groovy variations to keep the album moving and dynamic throughout, while simultaneously confidently planting both feet deep in funky ground and refusing to budge.

Excellent jazzy hip-hop. I could listen to Q-Tip and the gang flow over pretty much anything, and the samples on this album are excellent throughout. I already knew some of the hits from the album (namely I Left My Wallet in El Segundo and Can I Kick It?), but the other tunes I discovered here make me regret not checking it out sooner (it's been on my check-out list for a while). Happy to have finally gotten around to it!

By all accounts, this blues ain't bad. But not many of the tunes stood out to me as anything particularly remarkable. In fact, I was listening to the album on Spotify, and one song caught my ear as sounding the most inspired, so I went to check what it was - lo an behold, the album had ended and Spotify was playing other blues songs. Which is to say the blues I liked best on the album... isn't even on the album. There's also a certain irony that, for an album that is guitar-forward, my favourite parts were the keys and organ. To each their own. (The song Spotify queued up for me afterwards was mean Old World by T-Bone Walker, fwiw.) I reckon it's difficult for a blues album from 1966 to stand the test of time, since new music has undoubtedly taken inspiration from it and built on it. So is it the album's fault if it sounds a little dated? No, probably not. But even at that, there is other blues music from the same era, and even older, that does resonate with me more. I'm surely missing some historical/cultural context. Maybe if I was discovering this album in 1966, I'd pick up on what's groundbreaking about it. But listening to it for the first time 60 years later, and being unable to remove myself from the context I'm discovering it in, I'm not blown away. All in all, the album was clearly made by talented musicians, I'll give it another couple listens at some point to see if it grows on me, but my first impression is that it's not my cup of tea.