Nuyorican Soul

This one is my upload pick, so obviously I like it a lot. I Am the Black Gold of the Sun/It's Alright, I Feel It are among my favorite things in music. I'll allow that it is a little uneven, with some dull patches, and that in its eclecticism it doesn't totally come together as a unified album. Still a ton of iconic music that has found its way into a whole lot of samples and remixes.

9/10. This was kinda sick, I wish people would have quit coming up to me at work and trying to talk to me while I was listening to this, because it was super enjoyable.

I say this with all the love in my heart: I can see clearly the impact this had on the Sega Sound Team circa the late 90s/ early 00s.

This sure is something 4 Omg the percussion 5 And the damned disco or whatever on sweet tears

A mix of Thievery Corporation and Gotan Project and Motown and Buena Vista Social Club

Masters At Work produce a nice not-so-little mix. The turn into disco is surprising but not shocking and certainly needed: If anything, the record is still a bit stiffer than the jazz creds suggest. Jazzy Jeff's there, a name I'd never considered literally before. The juxtaposition of mostly-rearward looks with what quickly became avant-garde hip-hop production is neat from today.

Loved it, thanks for sending it in. Congrats on finishing!

Cool stuff. 8/10

This was actually really boppin. What a great amalgamation of genres all fused together.

This was a fun collection of tunes

The word my older millennial-ass keeps coming back to is "vibes" and man, if anything has "vibes", it's this. The blending of genres on this thing is impressive, and the whole record slides through in one extremely cohesive burst that it's impressive. It does occasionally fade into background music, but again, the vibes are just too good. Favorite track: "Runaway"

This wasn't too bad, but 2 hours? That's a lot of jazzy cruise vibes or whatever. 3/5 and I'm being generous.

Nice sounds but nothing special

A fine dancey time. Definitely feels like decent driving music.

This made #25 on the UK charts? How did it not make the list?

Solid

Some latin, some jazz, and even some disco. It's a fun album, but not really worth a re-listen for me

A bit too jazzy for my tastes, but it's alright innit? 3 stars.

Seeing the names of the all-stars on this album was encouraging, but the songs with vocalists (mainly Jocelyn Brown) are too poppy for my tastes. The few instrumental numbers that lean towards jazz are a significant improvement. Overall, this easy listening latin jazz/pop went down easy, but it left me wanting a bit more substance.

Disco, Jazz and Soul.... sorry, not my cup of tea.

Although it sounded quite upbeat, I couldn't get into it and it made pretty restless.

Enjoyed the Afro-jazz fusion going on here for a while, but then the album kept going... and going... and going. Definitely a function of my personal tastes here, as the instrumentation is airtight and the arrangements at least somewhat varied throughout. However, there just wasn't enough variance to sustain the whole runtime for me and I was checking out there at the end.

Acid jazz from the 90s? Not in the mood, sorry. I have enjoyed the 'disco' vibes of 'Runaway' though. Great song

Not for me

What a nice album. Makes you want to move. And dance. And bounce. I am the black gold of the sun was delightful.

Wow! Another really great addition from one of those brilliant folks - this was jazzy at times, covered a variety of styles, and hit me in so many good places! I wanted to DANCE DANCE DANCE!

Delightful! Thank you!

This was a nice jam!

Nice!

This is really good. One of those collections that I'm sure I've been aware of in the past, but never really arrived into my conscious mind as something. There's quite a lot of quite a lot in here - and it is very clearly contemporary to the likes of Thievery Corporation and Nightmares on Wax. It reminds me a bit of Mr Scruff's selections in places, and the four-to-the-floor disco revival of late 90s Moloko in others. Naturally, anyone who had this playing in their bars in the late 90s was aiming for a cosmopolitan, too-cool-for-school Tribeca warehouse kind of feel. And I get that - I totally do. It's not something I'd want to sit down and actively listen to for over 2 hours really. It's absolutely, 100% the sort of thing that should be playing in the background while Martinis are mixed for you. You need to be chatting up people with way better fashion sense but way less money than you. You'd have looked into the production of this album, and you'll have interesting facts prepped about it - like did you know that Jazzy Jeff was involved? Yes, that dude that Uncle Phil kept throwing out in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. You absolutely won't have pulled, but at least you'd be charitably waved at by the immaculately dishevelled young thing you were trying it on with next time you went to that warehouse bar. You see - this is the difference between the 90s and the 00s. This music is funky, relaxed, effortlessly cool and makes you think that you can do everything. Even get a number from someone dressing for the cover of Vogue from charity shop finds and dumpster dives. The equivalent to this in the 00s was angry, aggressive, cynical and overconfident to the point of arrogance. You definitely would get that number in the 00s, but you'd also have woken up with them, covered in kebab and chlamydia. And that's the difference. In the 90s, it was OK to be optimistic, because there just wasn't anything left to worry you. In the 20s there are hints of optimism coming back through in music, but it is (rightfully) imbued with a sense of responsibility. This is absolutely a record of its time. After The End of History but before Dubya. It represents a world that genuinely didn't think it had anything to worry about, and I like that. Sure, I appreciate the maturity and the compassion of 20s music, and I'm glad that we're less naive about who we have around us. We can reflect on the sheer fucking hubris of the 90s with a degree of guilty shame. But holy god damn I miss how good it felt to be this amount of cool.

Yea this is killer. It's Alright, I Feel It is a great track. This was an absolute delight.

Just the kind of latin groove jazz that I like. A few oddball additions of disco pop and 90s club sounds and record scratching, but majority is a kind of 70s Latin jazz fusion. Very good.

This was super enjoyable and very listenable. The percussion was fantastic and the high energy throughout made this long album flow very well.

Disco funk jazz. Yeah! Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Runaway Date listened: 02/08/24

Nice Latin album music with a long list of guest appearances.

This might be one of the more eclectic songs I've heard even counting the main list. Went from sault-type soul to pure jazz a little disco like on runaway, which was also a banger of a song. Thought this one was pretty fun.

Salsa, Latin, soul, house, jazz. Me ha gustado bastante. Un 4.

like the ultimate chill out album loved it

Nice! Jazz/I.S.S soundtrack vibes

A really nice album. It lost a bit of momentum in the second half but amazing how good it sounds over 25 years after its release.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this one, but it's pretty great. This has a really rich sound that grooves, which makes sense given the deep bench of talent working together here. Some of the stylistic wanderings were a little off the wall, but in the end it all works. Fave Songs: It's Alright, I Feel It!; Runaway; You Can Do It (Baby); I Am the Black Gold of the Sun; Shoshana; Habriendo el Dominante

Dope stuff. Somewhat long but this kind of jam based album can get away with it if the music is good, which this is! Cool Nautilus cover too

Better than I thought it would be.

Really cool album! Awesome assortment of sounds and styles, I was shoveling the driveway to this one and it was just what I needed. Very nice pick, thanks for sharing!

Very cool soul/jazz album. Saved a few from here and really enjoyed the fusion.

I've been very picky about the house music that is on the list and this one does pass the test. Louie Vega is a fantastic house DJ and has been there for a long time and still produces great tracks. Saying that, this is a long album. For me, house music isn't for albums but for dancing and vibing to. You don't actively seek out albums but long DJ setlists. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 4/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Garage house music legends Masters At Work flip their usual sound into more latin-influenced acid jazz. This gives the duo an excuse to play around with different jazz styles, including straight swing, scat, salsa-jazz, and a solo piano song. Some work better than others, but the album shines brightest when they just do acid jazz. This is likely due to the overlap with their DJ backgrounds which allows them to employ refined production techniques. To the extent of it's influences, Nuyorican Soul feels like a distinctly New York album. It's like a block party where a number of diverse backgrounds come together to celebrate their colorful styles. Overall, perhaps a bit too spotty to be truly excellent, but when it's good it's great. That's gotta be worth something. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: No, a bit too niche to be representative of Masters At Work's influence.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Nautilus, Runaway

Ok

Fun for the most part

Næs lounge kind of thing.

This is different. Okay, I'm vibing. At points it sounds like the kind of music that would play in the one random alternative health/spirituality shop in the mall. At other points it sounds like the perfect music to feature at a poignant moment in an indie coming of age flick. Respect for this choice. I won't be adding it into my regular rotation, but I liked it.

This is a pretty fun and groovy compilation album from some solid producers. This is like some older less electronic version of Jungle. The assortment of instruments and production is great mainly due to different people and their influences. This could easily be played for hours in the background and it would be enjoyed the whole time. 7.0/10

Some highs & lows on this album for me! Good vibes, crunchy grooves, but too much jazzy jazz (the genre not Jeff)

Sweet tears just keep falling... from your... Ass! Enjoyed!

This album is all over the place, in a good way. Jazzy, groovy, soulful, with a little prog influence for good measure. Foot tapping good time music

Enjoyed this, chilled laid back dance album, not sure I’ll come back to it, but that might change over time.

Perfectly pleasant. Not a whole lot more than that, a bit too coffee table for me.

A slide back to disco while incorporating late 90s hip hop.

Somebody beat me to the Sega video game music comparison.

Not bad

Nice diversity, samples

Er... I want to be benevolent towards this project, but honestly, my heart's not in it. Talkin' Loud is a label that I respect for sure. They put that short-lived acid-jazz hype on the map, which was interesting, at least on paper. I still have good memories about Young Disciples' *Road To Freedom*, released in the early nineties, for instance... Yet if you flash forward to 1997, there was not much left to that hype by that point. And it even feels like the label was grasping at straws a little when they released that Nuyorican Soul album. Whoever added it to this list will disagree, of course. Yet objectively speaking, said album didn't exactly usher Talkin' Loud into the 21st Century. You just need to see their releases in the last fifteen or twenty years or so (mostly reissues, along with some very rare stuff nobody talks about now, whether "loud" or not) to realize all this. My main issue with *Nuyorican Soul* stems from its lack of cohesion. There are albums that go all over the place that I can love, but this is not one of them. Probably because the first two songs (singles to boot) -- basically displaying the same sorts of arrangements and harmonies over two different rhythm patterns -- sound like exceedingly boring dance club drivel to my ears. Fortunately, you soon go to more authentic-sounding latin and jazz tunes sprinkled with far more subtle layers of electronics and Meters-like funk instrumental regalia. Plus, there's Tito Puente himself on timbales and vibraphones! Needless to say, those tracks are the real meat within the LP. But you keep on wondering why that stuff right before those nice cuts sounded so... cheesy. Like a bad camembert aftertaste in your mouth when you try (and fail) to enjoy a tropical fruits juice afterwards... The last leg of this long album aims at a synthesis of sorts to gather all the loose threads, yet it also mostly fails in my book. The house music / neo disco-adjacent cuts are near-obnoxious. A rare hip-hop-influenced track fares far better than that at some point, even it doesn't exactly offer thrills either (oh, *Fresh Prince Of Bel Air*'s Jazzy Jeff is in the houuuuuuse, folks, ha ha!). And when the latin-jazz flourishes manage to take the upper hand again, they only end up sounding like illustrative muzak instead of truly soulful stuff. Probably because they're surrounded by too much material that neither rhymes nor reasons. It's that same smelly french cheese taste, lingering as you drink mango juice again... Don't get me wrong, I can still enjoy the stellar musicianship gracing many parts of this record, especially on the piano -- not to mention the high quality guests (George Benson, Roy Ayers, Jocelyn Brown...), who provided its professional-sounding vocal parts (including some fun scat at some point). Yet when it comes to the tones and moods displayed by the "Masters At Work" in *Nuyorican Soul* , most of them come off as way too artificial for me -- they're functional and perfunctory, even in that better middle section in the tracklist. Sometimes admirable musicianship isn't enough. You also need a vision. And what I see here is just a sanitized jazz or latin club populated by wealthy, good-looking interlopers who are ultimately uninteresting bores. Not the real deal. Ironic when the cast participating in the album have such credentials. But you can't shake off that impression once you step into the place. You being "I", of course. It's not the end of the world, I guess. The city is large after all, and there are probably other dives there that can offer more in terms of excitement. Even other cocktail bars, who knows? So it's time to go and pick up my coat in the check room now. The night is still young, and other far more significant locales might await us, just right around the corner... 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 2 Albums from the users list I *might* include in mine later on: 5 Albums from the users list I won't include in mine: 4 (including this one)

Cafe jazz. My wife will like it.

By far the worst album in the user list so far. It's a mix of broken jazz (which is already broken by its nature) with bad Latin rhythms...