First Listens and "Money ($/*...)"

Listening for the first time to the new album of a beloved artist is such a fraught experience. It's a greedy, grabby, grasp-y kind of listening -- one is trying to inhale the music, it seems, and instantly familiarize oneself with it. There is a good deal of fear. Will this be ridiculous? Will this sound like the _____ I know and love? Probably the greatest first listen of my life was The Strokes' second album, Room on Fire. When a group's first album is as perfect and iconic as Is This It, there is much at stake in album #2, and Room on Fire delivered in a big way.

I had some good driving time over the weekend to finish up with that inhaling-phase of MIAMTEC and move on to more familiar and comfortable listening. The song that seems to have jelled most quickly for me is "Money ($/*...) ft. Fabolous." It's an easy and breezy listen; the vocals aren't demanding, and Mims has room to play around vocally, finding a phrase or a bit of melody and then exploring it. Fabolous, to whom I last paid attention in 2001 when he released "Can't Deny It," is a good foil for the warmth of Mims's vocals here, laying down some rhymes in an effective but thoroughly unobtrusive way.

The song's horn hook comes from a 1970 recording by Dan Satch & His Atomic 8 Band of Aba entitled "Alabeke." The cut is representative of a genre called West African Highlife which originated in Ghana and eventually made its way to Nigeria, where Satch is from (Aba is a Nigerian town).This is all new knowledge to me, so check here for more info on Highlife and here for details on Dan Satch in particular. Take a listen to the original and jazz up your morning -- you will not be disappointed.


Then check out the Mims track -- love how by the end she's just singing the horn part.