Quick Hits, Vol. 11 (J. Cole, Mary J. Blige, Charlie XCX, D'Angelo)

J. Cole - 2014 Forest Hills Drive.  "January 28th" rolls a pretty dang good set of lyrics about empowering yourself over the top of a light-touch beat and feathery sample that reminds me of an old Wyclef song.  I like the wordplay and story-telling going on here - presupposing these lyrics are true, a confessional and earnest album.  "Wet Dreamz" is a great story, even if the beat is super basic boom bap.  "03 Adolescence" is a great story as well - Cole talking to a drug dealer he looks up to and realizing that he actually has a pretty good life in comparison.  The last track is highly annoying, because he tries to pull a Kanye and shout out to everyone in the world in a 15 minute long track.  Blah blah.  But if you delete that track, this album is pretty good.

Mary J. Blige - The London Sessions.  Well, hell yeah.  I can't say I have ever listened to a Mary J. Blige album in my life, but this is good stuff.  Crazy powerful voice.  Beats shifting between pretty generic piano looping to solid Disclosure electronic.  Only "Follow" is listed on Spotify as being done with Disclosure, but "Right Now" has a cool glitchy ping-pong beat during the versus and then a great squishy synth beat during the chorus.  Sounds like Disclosure:

Soul and dance and a cool, current twist.  And it makes me want to get all girl-power on that ass with a serious head bob.  Fun album.

Charlie XCX - Sucker.  Boom Clap is a damn jam.  Although, when my four year old can make a reasonable approximation of your lyrics, then you aren't exactly beating back the world with you lyrical innovation.  That being said, great song.  The rest of this album is forgettable pop with a weird punk-lite bent.  British Avril Lavigne.  Remember her?  "He was a sk8ter boy, she said see you later boy."  Ugh.  Replaced with the effortlessly boring "Gold coins everywhere, dollars up in the air, it's a billionaire's love affair."

D'Angelo - Black Messiah.  I was not waiting with breath held to see if D'Angelo could ever break back into the music making business.  For those of you who don't know, D'Angelo put out Brown Sugar in 1995, Voodoo (to massive critical acclaim, including a spot of Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all time) in 2000, and then nothing ever since.  I have heard of this dude, but not even sure I ever listened to his old music that everyone loved so much.  Regardless, this is a funky and fun jam. A ton of Prince influence on here, but he also has his own thing going on much of the album.  The band behind him is awesome - the bass player just walks up and down the funk throughout.  It is damn near impossible not to bite my lower lip and get some old-man-Huxtable grooving going on while listening to this album.  No real video here, but check the groove under this song, Prayer:

Back to the Future Parts 1 and 2 are also funky as hell.  I'm not going to automatically anoint this as the best album of the decade or anything, but this is cool stuff.  Definitely going to be hanging around.