This album is really personal for me. I was in Chicago in the fall of ‘08 and really down on myself. To say I was in a funk would be an understatement. It was almost winter and the prospect of the winter cold and dark approaching while I was already really depressed made things even worse.

In addition to that, I was in a very weird transitional stage in my musical journey. On one hand, my music consumption over the prior year - especially with regards to hip-hop and associated or spin-off genres - had opened up literally a world of new sounds and artists and sounds to discover. On the other hand, I was lost as to where to go and felt myself on the cusp of immersing myself in new musical forms but in such unfamiliar territory. My day-to-day feelings and the music in my head and from my speakers was so volatile.

Normally, when I’m not in a good state over time, one or two albums become particularly important in getting through that, to the point that I almost exclusively listen to them. Example: Blood On The Tracks is almost unlistenable for me… yet it ranks as maybe my “favorite” album ever. The emotions and memories evoked that are tied to when it finally clicked during a particular period of being kicked to the curb by a loved one are almost too intense for me to open it back up.

This funk was not only deep, but the musical stability - the thing that normally accompanies and helps me through - was gone. There was nothing I could fit in to that aided my feelings yet I knew there was something new and discoverable that could help. The prospect of finding that new to help guide me was utterly overwhelming. I flew through albums, back catalogs, and discographies of artists, mostly stuff unheard by me.

I made frequent trips to Dr. Wax in Hyde Park that fall. I remember going through the same hip-hop/soul vinyl and CD sections every time I went. Sometimes I would be there for 2 hours. Sometimes I was high. On a regular basis. I was looking for something, anything, and looking to be schooled as well on forms brand new to me. I would stand by as customers went in and out, conversations from one knowledgeable patron to the next with the guys behind the counter. Taking it all in but so utterly lost in what I was doing.

I’m not sure which track it was, but one time I was in there, an album came on and it was literally like a real-time exposition on what was going on with me psychologically and emotionally. Questions I had and artists I was looking into and styles I was coming upon. And there seemed to be answers or observations or thoughts that I needed to connect coming out of the speakers as I was thinking about them. I don’t know what to call that… maybe I was in tune or on some radiant level with the store, and the people inside it… maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was planned.

I went to the counter and asked “what is this playing,” barely being able to get out that sentence because of how much “Little Bird” was speaking to me, right then and there. “It’s the new Jazzanova,” he said, and I requested a copy.

I played this as my only album for quite some time after. At home. In my car. On constant repeat. Jazzanova is a Berlin-based collective, but the guest spots crystalized the various sound directions my interest was heading. Phonte (of Little Brother) opens the album with his singing persona and comes back several tracks later with his classic rapping. I can’t say enough about Paul Randolph’s several contributions to the album, like he’s pushing you, the listener, past your level of interactive comfortability but somehow comforting. The legendary Leon Ware and Dwele channel Marvin Gaye on “Rockin’ You Eternally.” Taken as a whole, rarely does is an album with so many features, multi-national at that, form such a cohesive unit as this one.

It’s really hard for me to write about, with regard to the lyrics, exactly how they make sense to me. But I feel it. I did in the fall of 2008 and I do now. Somehow it’s served as a sort of guiding compass for my artistic exploration, a boundary pushing work that also serves as comfort food and an ally through ups-and-downs.

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