Runtime: 1:15:38

27 Tracks

Genre: House, Electronic

"After the rise of “The Belleville Three”—Detroit techno originators Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins (soon joined by Carl Craig)—and after that decidedly Eurocentric African-American musical export took root in London and Berlin, Kenny Dixon Jr. represented the second wave of homegrown Detroit electronic music masters. He released his first single in 1994 and helmed a renaissance of that scene alongside peers like Rick Wilhite, Marcellus Pittman and Theo Parrish (the four intermittently collaborate as 3 Chairs). Since the 90s, no two producers have better exported that “Detroit” sound than Theo Parrish and Moodymann. In citing that bankrupted American city though, one means a very specific sound, one that writer Michaelangelo Matos recently described in an NPR story as “a byword for high-minded purism, a bulwark against ‘commercial’ dance music,” the music itself informed by “jazz chords, R&B melancholy, snatches of old soul and plenty of cosmic-mindedness.”

All four genres abound in Moodymann’s work, and his self-titled newest album also throws in plenty of gospel, blues, house music, roller-rink funk, all of it capped by a long slow nod in the direction of forbearers Parliament-Funkadelic. There’s a purism to Moody’s music, but it’s made of muddy waters (literally, on “Sunday Hotel”), dusty vinyl grooves and—if the Popeye's inner sleeve is to believed—greasy fingers. Playful in juxtaposition to Theo’s seriousness, the Dizzy Gillespie to Theo's Miles Davis, Dixon might be best glimpsed through the prism of another Detroiter: J Dilla. Both men deconstructed and flipped old funk and soul to new ends, Dilla’s focus towards hip-hop, Moodymann's towards basement-deep house music.

Take an album highlight like “Desire", which features Moodymann with uncredited Blue Note crooner José James. James does his deepest Gil Scott-Heron impersonation, Moody deploys piano chords as judiciously as Bill Evans did, all of it set against a beat that edges towards house only to dissipate just before settling into a steady pace. Old 33 1/3 soul gets spun at 45 on the ecstatic “Lyk U Use 2", the skittering snare pattern of fellow Detroiter Andrés then slowed all the way down to 45 BPM. It’s not only old soul vocals though: there’s an acid squirt over the Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan on “IGuessuneverbeenlonely” and most peculiar of all, has Lana Del Rey ask about death on “Born 2 Die". 

But the most prominent voice on the album is Dixon’s own. In a close-mic’d croak, Moodymann’s vocal delivery vacillates between late-night disc jockey and booty call from Sly Stone. He laments that “eight and a half is not enuff anymore,” that girls may not like 45s. One of the funniest call-and-responses of the year occurs on the too-brief “No”; KDJ heavy-breathes from a payphone to one of those bikini-clad nymphets draped across him on the front cover, asks if she likes fried chicken without hot sauce. Also: “Y’all mad I’m a local Detroiter?”

While almost every second of Moodymann’s oeuvre hearkens back to his hometown, Moodymann is perhaps his most explicit ode yet. Snippets of movie dialogue, murder statistics and tales of 70s heroin kingpins like Henry Marzette emerge between the spacious, slack grooves. For all the insouciance that’s informed Moodymann’s work over the past two decades, Moodymann feels downright serious at times. It comes to the fore on the sprawling twelve-minute version of Funkadelic’s “Cosmic Slop", which is part cover, part edit, part deconstruction, part remix. Yet for a reason not altogether clear amid its haze is that these parts just don’t quite add up. Blame the news report samples or perhaps Dixon’s own croon, but midway through, I fantasized what a sidelong KDJ edit circa 1998 might’ve sounded like instead." Andy Beta