Nuyorican Soul

Cafe jazz. My wife will like it.

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)

Nice diversity, samples

Far too jazzy and far too long

Dull.

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...