Bilal‘s triumphant 2010 return LP, “Airtight’s Revenge“, remains in constant rotation on my Android’s storage card and for good reason as it literally is one of the most complete album’s we’ve received from a solo artist in the last lustrum.
So good in fact, that there’s been no limit to the amount of his musical contemporaries looking to hone their chops and up their stock by trying to reinvent and improve upon any number of songs from the almost un-improvable long player. As with any remake, remix or re-imagining, some attempts show good form and context but only a scant few of those are leaps and bounds better than others. Take this recent SoundCloud offering from supremely talented BLS fave, Georgia Anne Muldrow for example.
Renowned as an influential artist/producer in her own rite, she decided to tackle the Conley “Tone” Whitfield produced track which earned Mr. Oliver the second Grammy Nomination of his career, “Little One” and give it an extra healthy dose of FONK.
Already a powerful song in it’s own spectrum, if not just for Bilal’s soaring, emotion invoking tenor but even more so due to the sentiment and back-story revolving the track’ s homage to Oliver’s eldest child, Muldrow’s interweaving of extra synth stabbin’, hi-hat crashin’, thunder drummin’ and guitar strummin’ brings this one back to life and is especially timely in light of the recent apologies certain rappers have made to those with Autism behind insensitive lyrics for rhyme’s sake.
Available right this second as a freebie over HERE but once word gets out about this one, I doubt those SoundCloud credits will last the rest of the day.
