Black Music | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | July 14, 1998 | |||
Genre | R&B | |||
Label | V2 | |||
Chocolate Genius chronology | ||||
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Black Music is the first album by Chocolate Genius. It was released on V2 Records on July 14, 1998.
Track 5, "My Mom", is about a return visit to his childhood home and the mother he was losing to senility ("My mom, my sweet mom/She don't remember my name.").
Just prior to recording Black Music, Chocolate Genius had finished reading The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. [1] In an email interview with Cleveland Scene , Chocolate Genius explained the meaning of the album's title: "As long as my skin is this color, race will be an unavoidable and hindering label for people that are stuck in that archaic mindset. Of course, I take a special pride in the achievements of people that look like me, but I am foremost a citizen of the planet. Calling the first record Black Music was my way of challenging the people who have to file, sell, and categorize music by genre." [2]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [3] |
Pitchfork | 9.0/10 [4] |
Portland Press-Herald | B+ [5] |
Rolling Stone | [6] |
Spin | 8/10 [7] |
Spin called it "a relentlessly somber, wryly confessional avant-folk-funk rebuttal to popular notions of what constituted African-American pop." [8] Many other critics have also highlighted the album's morose and starkly autobiographical sound. [6]
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