on 2012-03-12 hstisgod Said:

nail on the head Carlita!!!
Rating: 9/10

Review:

on 2012-03-12 Carlita Said:

As defined in the Collins English dictionary, neo-soul is a "style of popular music combining traditional soul music with elements from other genres". "Hard Groove", the first album produced by Roy Hargrove and his experimental troupe, the RH Factor, fits this category well crafting an amalgamation of blues, jazz, hip-hop and R&B, providing the ideal potential soundtrack for the next Spike Lee joint. Setting any expectations aside that music must only fit in one pre-conceived box to be considered good much to the dismay of jazz purists, Roy clearly gave hints of his intentions to embrace fusion, wading in several genre-merging pools for quite some time. Coalescing Meshell Ndeogeocello and several key members of the Soulquarian and Soultronic crews- Erykah Badu, Common, Shelby Johnson, D'Angelo and Anthony Hamilton, together for this effort, these musicians were already well known for vacillating between hard and soft grooving and transporting the listener swiftly through the 70's, 90's and 00's on their own respective records.

Almost every track holds up as a single on its own and conjures the image of leisurely listening, driving in a drop-top with the wind in your hair. A bit scattered and whimsical, your ears never stay in one genre very long, which I appreciated. On tracks like "I'll Stay" and "How I Know", both favorites on the album, the RH Factor, along with D'Angelo and Shelby Johnson, deliver bluesy soul, reminiscent of any of Al Green or Bill Withers' albums in the 70's. Taking it back to the 90's with "Poetry" featuring Q-Tip and Erykah Badu, the latter much resembling the African head-wrapped woman on the middle finger on the album cover's hand, A Tribe Called Quest's song ,"We Got the Jazz" on "Low End Theory" comes to mind. Tracks like "Kwah/Home", "Out of Town" and "Juicy" bring the listener back to 00's down-home soul and experimental jazz. "Hard Groove" transcends beyond genre stereotype because as Q-Tip says "the musical expression is important for progression".

Rating: 8/10