I might cop that new Al B….(0)
Unlike most teenage African-American males in the early 90’s, I didnt have any hate in my heart for Albert Brown, III…known to the world as Al B. Sure
I dug his actual music….I felt dude had a unique and actually funky sound and he wrote good songs…
on the production tip, Al and Kyle West was killin shit…let’s not get into the jams he produced…
I guarantee you liked at LEAST one of they joints, whether you admit or not…
1992: I was in HS and I was with, let’s call her Chironda…I didn’t want to be seen with an album by a grown man called Sexy Versus but I bumped the shit out of this record…
I wasnt into Chironda to the point where I was cryin over her, but she was fucking up royally, and this joint kinda detailed the frustration…it was less “why is she doing this?….it was more “Jesus Christ, dumbass…”
I think Al B helped me make up my mind to give her the heave-ho…Chironda wrote me dumb-ass grammaticaly incorrect poetry and letters with monstrous spelling errors to mend fences but I wasnt tryna hear it…Looking back, I feel a lil bad cuz I heard through the grapevine that she thought she was really in love and me telling her to kick rocks put her through a thang…I could have been more sensitive abt it, but there are times in life when patience is thin and you dont feel like being understanding…
Winter 91/92: It was a known fact that Jodeci’s Forever My Lady album only had one good side…the first side with the slow jams…well, what is NOT well known is that that side was produced by ya boy, Albert J. Brown Sure. DeVante produced the uptempo New Jack Swing garbage side 2 by himself…However, Al B came back to lace the last joint on the album, which I’ve posted below…
Boy, do I remember this shit…I’d just gotten the heave-ho from Carlene, the chick one grade up that made me forsake all others…
May winged monkeys wipe they booties with her shiny, luxurious mane of silky black hair…
When I met Carlene, she was the sweetest, most adorable, sunshine and kittens thang ever….she turned out to be a ice cold asshole…
One day, everythang was lovely…next thing I knew, I’d been fired…she used to stroll by me and give the smallest, yet most smug look/nod combo…
kinda like, “sup, n***a?…”
I’d try to give her my best “fuck you, whore” look in return…but somehow I think that just tickled her even more…she prolly laughed her ass off as soon as she was out of eyesight….
So I would go to my piece of shit job after school, then come home, go up to my room, turn off all the lights and listen to selections from this album…
Xs We Share(read as: Times We Share for those not hip to Modern Negro Song Titling Linguistics) really made my chest burn…
The scenes that flashed thru my mind of our long good-byes when I dropped her off at home or her calling me to tell me that her mother was gone and it was all clear for me to fall thru made me reach for the phone to try and recreate the late school night phone magic that we’d once shared…
No answer.
After I got myself together and started moving on, this bastard had the nerve to propose a late night creep…
Now normally, that sort of thang wouldnt have sounded so bad to teenage Scorp…but considering the cold-blooded dismissal I’d received–this time I was offended…I declined…
her reply:
“Suit yourself…”
I dunno if I can really thank Al B for this joint…LOL
Summer of ‘88 this jam below was out…I wasnt really old enough to think straight yet, but I was in the midst of one of those “girl, beat it–I’m about to get my swag on (c) DeAndre Way…wait, please come back” thangs…so I rocked this on my canary fucking yellow Magnavox boombox….Al spoke the troof to this young Black youth…
Sometimes, Al be preaching on his jams….vocal limitations aside (let’s be real, he’s not a great singer)…Al was one of the last R&B cats to speak for real bruhs when it came to matters of the heart….even though Al was most likely to be the cat your lady was thinking abt while y’all were foggin up the windows of ya mom’s Taurus in the late 80’s/early 90’s, he didnt play it that way for the most part…
In Al’s songs, he doesn’t end up on top all the time…he wrote alot about being dumped, cheated on, neglected, etc…it was around this time that I started noticing a trend among “desirable” singers…most of them who wrote their own stuff wrote abt being dissed and alone…a few years later, I made the connection that “the beautiful people” struggle with love just as much as anybody else–sometimes even more…
look at Al’s friend Halle Berry, who is an international movie star and considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world–it took her until age 40 to find somebody to treat her right(or so we assume) and give her a child….and when she was having relationships difficulties, most folks assumed that SHE was the crazy one…
Marvin Gaye was one of the most gifted artists of our times and also desired by millions of women…a friend recalled that during Marvin’s last days, she found him in his room crying…she asked him what was wrong and Marvin replied:
“Nobody loves me.”
Prince is a two time divorcee’ and single at age 51…
sample lyric:
“all of my purple life/I’ve been looking for a dame/that would wanna be my wife/that was my intention main…”
Madonna is a two time divorcee and a single mother…
let’s not get into the many civilians I know who would be considered attractive and have ahd trouble sustaining long term-relationships…
But I digress…
So when I heard The Monobrowed One had a new joint abt to drop, my ears perked up…I checked the snippets…
Yo.
Not bad.
I might have to cop that….and Ive heard other cats sayin the same…
Clown me if you wanna, but dig…a cat dont get blessed by Quincy Jones, win the Sony Innovators Award, and serve as MJ’s understudy on one of the deadliest slow jams of all time if he wack, ya dig…..
Now his sons on the other hand…let’s just say I hope they find another career path…
The new Al B joint is called Honey, I’m Home and it drops today, June 23rd.
Buenos noches,
Scorp
