Church service to club floor, music moves me, literally and figuratively. I feel the beat and it moves my body, mind and spirit in ways that words, much as I love them, do not. And today, as I listen to music today, I am wildly, madly, deeply, fully in love again.
Today’s music trumpets with a vibrance, bravado, style and energy in a way that mirrors our collective unconscious. I got a feeling that this is music that can only be produced in times of doubt and downturn, where the soul must shout its will to survive despite a bank account’s assertions. Creativity that develops during oppression, to signify there is always reason to dance.
From battered to superspice girl of the world, Rihanna returns good girl gone bad to better with the most anthemic song – barring anything with New York in the hook - and as the most beautiful girl in the world. Her flaming red is as hot and wild as the pink of the enigmatic amalgam known as Nicki Minaj. Both express with intelligence, uniqueness, carnality and Caribbean point of view.
Tailors swiftly sew new suits for today pop fashions, while new Rock royalty the Kings toil until sundown to reveal a whole new happening that’s got us all Gaga.
I can’t help but whip my head back and forth when I think about the ferocity of Willow Smith. I know grownups working still to attain such swagga (present company abstains from either defending or acknowledging guilt).
Now is the time to blur borders, get ‘high’ and go to "Rehab" with Lacrae, Suzy Rock and Sho Baraka. And, please, leave Justin Bieber alone. First you love him, then you want to jump him at skate parks. Let The Bieb be!
Whoever’s on your playlist, celebrate this new season of sound. Emperors everywhere are rocking a fo’ real fusion of stitched ideas and mashup style, all in the name of today’s brand new quilt of coolness.
