"At Last like Etta James"

I'm finally finished with exams, so I will have more time to devote to sharing my thoughts and things I find interesting on here. With that said, I've been trying to catch up on a bunch of music that I haven't had a chance to get into.

So, first things first, I knew someone taught MJ the moonwalk, but I didn't know who. I stumbled on the group Shalamar the other day whose member, Jeffrey Daniel, taught him how to do it. I also didn't know that Shalamar was the group whose song is "This is for the lover in you."--which I like. Here is a clip of Jeffrey Daneil performing, including the moonwalk, in London as well as another clip of the group singing "This is for the lover in you."





Secondly, I've heard about Jay Electronic but very minimally and elusively. Apparently he has an 'unconventional' approach to releasing his music, in that it is very arbitrary. --According to Wikipedia. It may be 'unconventional' to the music business' standards, but he should be able to release what and when he desires, it's his music. Enough of the politics. All in all I really like his style--kind of like Jay-Z in the sense that you need to listen carefully to catch the metaphors, which to me cut a bit deeper then Jay-Z's. I definitely have had to stop and rewind some of the tracks I've heard. A lot of the stuff I've heard, content-wise, has elements of Nas in it as well; especially his "abstract rhyming style" as Jay calls it. Where I think he stands out from the two, however, is in several ways. His production--much more thematic and his use of recordings from movies is really cool. His voice--definitely a couple tones deeper than Jay and Nas'. His delivery--not as 'poetic' as Nas' and hits harder than both Jay-Z's and Nas. From what I hear, it sounds like he will have enough content to really create a lot of good music. In my attempts to keep and ear to what and who's up and coming but also relevant, I would say that J. Cole and Jay Electronica definitely may have the appeal to younger, newer hip-hop heads, but still have remnants of earlier hip-hop (Pac, Nas, Wu-Tang, etc..) which appeals to hip-hop fans like me who seem to still be attached to that generation of hip-hop. Here is one of Jay Electronica's tracks I like.