REVIEW: PUSHA T - IT'S ALMOST DRY

4/5

Crack Music.

Clips of Pusha T's career highlights of underground, urban legend bury you in snow like a Young Jeezy trap in Winter. Whether it's 'Grindin'' with The Neptunes and Clipse brotherhood for all the hip-hop N.E.R.D.'s. Or giving Kanye a G.O.O.D. Friday, week-after-week like it was Easter, before getting down with Mr. West Music's 'Cruel Summer', 'Clique'...clique...clique. But following his brother Malice finding the Lord like Pastor Ma$e, after the long awaited 'Hell Hath No Fury'. Your pusher like Curtis Mayfield has been going solo dolo for almost a decade now, following 2013's 'My Name Is My Name'. King Push's last album 'Daytona' was four years ago. But now in the first quarter of the year he gives us one of 2022's best already with his fourth record and last LP for Def Jam, 'It's Almost Dry'. All as the ink is still wet on the pages of the is rhyme book legends next contract. Yeah...we know that's not what it means, but here's another hip-hop classic worthy of all the mics from the man who made more off cocaine than Joey Crack. Check the sample. Even the Snowman from the ATL couldn't shovel this much white that could break Scarface's desk for all you wannabe Tony Montana's, looking like Hannah, not Miley. But cutting this crack music down the middle are super producer's Pharrell Williams from back in the day AND Kanye West from his one-man career recharged resurgence. Because this jam that is most certainly def also finds itself on the G.O.O.D. Music imprint. And what results isn't a mismatch of styles that go to war over substance, but a product of the twin careers of the solo and group icon who remains "a legend in two games like Pee Wee Kirkland."

It ain't hard to tell from the amazing artwork of an album the same that Basquiat or Jay-Z (he's here too) would be proud of. Even if we thought that infamous Instagram pic of Lana Del Rey would have been the perfect serve. Just wait for the remix down the bannisters like chemtrails over the country club. 'Dry' that leaves the competition Sahara opens with the brilliant 'Brambleton' that is a Neptune's produced prolific classic as Pusha T pushes raps to a tee like, "had a million answers, didn't have a clue/why Michael kissed Fredo in 'Godfather II'." Yeah, we knew it wasn't just us. We still think about that one too. Just like Jack White starting his first of two new albums this year with the raucous buzzsaw of both 'Taking Me Back' and the title track 'Fear Of The Dawn' to begin this month, T doesn't let up like a buzzkill. '(Letting) The Smokers Shine The Coupes' and calling himself the "cocaine Dr. Seuss" with more under the hat as Horton hears this who. But it's 'Dreamin' Of The Past' featuring Donda's own Kanye West sick sampling Donny Hathaway covering Lennon live that will leave everyone who didn't make this record a jealous guy. "Didn't have to reinvent the wheel, just a better design/Critics: "He's out of his mind"; haters: "He's out of his prime" (I began to lose control)/Yet, always where the money's at like lottery signs/Still I climb, rockstar, Third Eye Blind," Pusha raps on the standout for all those 80's babies who grew up with 90's bands like this. Asking you to "pass the champagne to the champion", whilst Kanye's braggadocious raps talk about abilities to buy the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air mansion in the wake of the Will Smith slap. But spoiler alert, he doesn't like the kitchen. No sale! 

Sinks, faucets and flambé raps get thrown as this Grammy family rapper spits at you like Will trying to put out that house fire, or the one in his career right now (but forgive a man for his mistakes. Even one so out of order. 10 years?! You kidding me?! You give Weinstein that much, Academy?). 'Neck and Wrist' shining with Pharrell and Jay-Z is obviously the big single that doesn't lie, but how about the B.I.G. lyric on this banger like the fourth of November? "They like,"if BIG was alive, Hov wouldn't be in this position/if BIG had survived, y'all would have got The Commission", Shawn says in yet another lyric to add to his legacy of legendary lines like Jay Electronica's last album. We need new Hov like '4:44' as The Carter mourns and bigs up his brother. All whilst lamenting The Commission and what would have been one of the greatest supergroups of all-time (like his murderous one with Ja Rule and the late, great DMX), let alone the best name for one ever. 'Just So You Remember' like 'Diet Coke' and all the tracks that fizz and bang as soon as they are pulled like the ring. Kiss the finger that wears one as there is a crown to watch on this throne too. You can surely tell the difference between a king and prince. Or what's real and what's Pepsi. Don't misunderstand like Dr. Pepper. But for all the big numbers here, it might be the 'Rock N Roll' with the kids that see ghosts in Kanye and Kid Cudi that really keeps this with music cracking. Or maybe it just really helped me with my last set in the gym. Power bar music like Jeezy, with a great hand on 'Call My Bluff'. Re-upping and getting it for cheap with Chanel expensive raps with Lil Uzi Vert and Don Toliver ('Scrape It Off') and Nigo ('Hear Me Clearly'). But after 'Open Air' airs out the remaining competition like a latched window the final curtain for Def Jam is a classic in the making for all the collaborations here from 'Ye to Jay and Skateboard P in-between. Great British rapper and singer Labrinth bakes up a beautiful chorus like only he can, but on the classic closer 'I Pray For You', Pusha T puts his hands together with his brother Malice one more time. Passing the mic to the pastor. And as Malicious asks, "what did I miss", the chills that go down your spine remind you of the new millennium movie like excitement of rap. The bars that come next in this multiverse, we simply don't want to spoil like a Spider-Man movie. Just heat it up yourselves. They found their way home. In a last contractually obliged album that samples 50 Cent's 'Window Shopper', Rick Ross' 'Free Mason' and Fat Joe's 'Get It Poppin'' amongst some Verzuz verses nothing hits harder on this pure white. If this really is it for Def Jam, how about we push a Clipse reunion for Star Trak? Live long and prosper. It's still not dry. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Brambleton', 'Dreamin' Of The Past (Feat. Kanye West)', 'Rock N Roll (Feat. Kanye West & Kid Cudi)'. 

REVIEW: JACK WHITE - FEAR OF THE DAWN

4/5

Year Of The Detroit Tiger.

Baseball season is upon us and walking to the mound in this Year of the Tiger, Jack White is about to deliver the National Anthem on opening day for the stripes of Detroit's very own MLB franchise. But the piston of vinyl pressed Third Man Records off the assembly line of The White Stripes, Raconteurs and Dead Weather supergroups has another curveball to throw our way. He's about to double-up this year. Pitching and hitting like the best since the Bambino, Babe Ruth, Japan's big Shohei Ohtani, with two albums over the calendar, but not on the same Guns N' Roses day like a Nelly 'Sweatsuit'. First comes 'Fear Of The Dawn', knocking it out of the park on the first day of the season of taking us to the ball game. All before the slowed down, easy like Commodore Sunday morning 'Entering Heaven Alive' will round for home on the 22nd of July. Two days after my birthday...just saying! Music really is sacred for the Cochella speech statesman, swinging for the fence. One who back home spent time retooling not only his sound, but his interior design during lockdown. Forging himself a career in home furnishing during the planets pandemic. IKEA, look out! Not to mention, experimenting with a new look. No longer looking like Michael Jackson in raven curls, or the demon from 'Sinister'. Thank God. After seeing said Ethan Hawke movie I actually didn't want to go to a Jack White gig my friend invited me to, that s### was so scary. "Why not". "Erm...f### him! That's why. I'm just not going. Mind your business." But it's all love like the blue rinse that now gives White a fresh pallet. Albeit still looking a bit like Johnny Depp. But now with the dawn upon us, heaven can wait. You don't have to fear a Jack White planet, especially when the man who played on Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' and made James Bond songs with Alica Keys ('Another Way To Die' from Quantum Of Solace) is going on tribe's called quests with legends that turn in your ear. 'Hi-De-Ho'. 

Spin magazine in an influential interview with the icon spun a story about a White Striped studio session that heard a pop legend a few doors over. Jack was so intrigued he came out of his box and headed towards the door. His knuckles just a finger tip away from rapping on the door when he thought, 'nah'. "Mariah Carey will never go for it." Now for your what could have beens as all we want for Christmas is this collaboration, White is not afraid to ask Q-Tip. Especially after providing instrumental backing to the inspired Tribe return album 'We Got It From Here...Thank You For Your Service'. And on 'Hi-De-Ho', Tip's ad-lib and hip-hop quotables are on point like all the time. Especially with a Cab Calloway introduction. I'm glad Jack dug his jive with The Abstract rapping, "You're the wave, you'rе the rave, the unanimous conclusion/Hurtin' real bad like Stevie Wonder with contusions/It's a guitar chuck comin' from Chuck Berry/Hi-de-high tones, Minnie Rip, Mariah Carey/Olajuwon post moves, LeBron or Embiid/Everybody got it in 'em, find yours and succeed." On fire even referencing Mariah. Singing along with Jack's "find your joy/feel your vibrations/On the highest plain". It's a great tip on an amazing album, whose title track asks us, "When the moon is above you/Does it tell you "I love you" by screaming?/Like when the sun starts to fall/And it's crushing the walls and the ceiling", on a top gun for this Maverick like Cruise finally taking flight this Summer May day.  But 'Taking Me Back' to open proceedings on a rip roaring 'Blunderbuss', 'Lazaretto' and 'Over and Over and Over' and its classic Stripes era video in White blue off 'Boarding House Reach' really brings us right to it, this morning. "When I'm down on the floor/You'll see that no one will notice me/It's breaking my back/Breaking my back/When you drop the mail off to me/And make us both coffee/Are you taking it black?/Are you taking me back?" We are...and we ain't talking about the damn fine coffee. 

Clocking in at 40 minutes exactly, no seconds out for his first of his twin peaks. Fear 'The White Raven' and its omens for your ball and biscuit no more, sugar. "A neutral peace comes from painted pieces/A brutal feast on the tainted beasts and/A white machine gun, a white machine gun/Baby blue grenade, a shade of kelly green machine gun," Jack's 'White Raven' calls. Did he just reference Machine Gun Kelly on this flying rocker? He is raven! So much so. 'Eosophobia' and its raw and ready reprise will scare and stir you like echoes. But before 'Dawn's' 'Dusk', 'Into The Twilight' will really take you into the woods like the creepy, cartoonish, amazing artwork of this album. To the "ba-da-ba's" of The Manhattan Transfer as William S. Borroughs warns us, "when you cut into the present, the future leaks out." Pray you pay heed before another dawn comes from the night darkest. On 'What's The Trick' Jack plays with "two gentlemen of elegant appearance' like Bradley Cooper in Guillermo del Toro's 'Nightmare Alley' noir. Button to button, the White Stripe, Raconteur under dead weather tells us about the two sides like fear, dawn and entry to heaven with 'That Was Then (This Is Now)'. Giving us a lyric to go that may be the line of our times, "when you're looking for love you've got no time to be patient." But before 'Heaven' gets hotter than Stevie this July, the wonder is previewed on the slow down double closer of 'Morning, Noon and Night' and the smoother than silk closer 'Shedding My Velvet' that crushes it whilst I wait for a Third Man record store here in Tokyo, one day and long for the London one after Nashville. Moving away from passive aggressive love that haunts ("Don't have time for martyrs, I don't have time for ghosts/No time for manipulations, what I want the most/Is more time for me and time for you/Is there any way I can sway you to stay for a minute or two?/Yeah/That's what I wanna do"). Hallowed in the name of making more sacred music with this moon night that we would even welcome him at the gates with a trilogy of albums these twelve months. Even when he sheds his blue velvet and his barbershop like suit jacket, we don't want him to shed any sound here to the cutting room floor of his prolific production like a rolling stone on his own songbook for the Motor City part of America. Taking us underground like Warhol pop art, never slipping on the banana, "can't you see/this is the real (he)?" After all, "it's better to illuminate, than merely to shine" and the blue dye is doing this like Japanese neon. All as the pearly lights lift us like a rapture before tomorrow morn. Fear not. Now you've made it through the dawn alive, you're about to enter heaven. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Taking Me Back', 'Hi-De-Ho (Feat. Q-Tip)', 'Shedding My Velvet'. 

REVIEW: RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - UNLIMITED LOVE

4/5

BLACKSUMMERnight. 

Under the bridge of Hollywood boulevard, across the Walk Of Fame, a star is laid for the Red Hot Chili Peppers...and we aren't talking about a movie one. It's going to be a 'Black Summer' tonight like a Maxwell trilogy album over the decade, because after all these years the Chili's are back. Now the guys that took Stevie Wonder covers to 'Higher Ground' in the hills of Californication (dream of it) are still flexing at (almost) 60 in a music video that puts the finger to the throat of the competition like a headless horseman. Screw sailing on a censorship. They're still red hot. These songs in the Kiedis of life are exactly what we need right now after the passing of contemporary college days rock forefathers, the Foo Fighters' beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins. One so good on the skins you don't even need the Nirvana of Dave Grohl, less it was your 'Cold Day In The Sun'. And yet all the world is talking about in Hollywood is a slap in the face that truly hit everyone around the world between a Rock (a great friend of this band) and the hard place the former Fresh Prince Of Bel Air now finds himself in. We need this right now like a 'Parallel Universe' in these Doctor Strange days. Re-enter John Frusciante through the doors. Back for the first time since 2006's 'Stadium Arcadium' double for another. Reminding us of that incredible tune were we took the pain from the 'Scar Tissue' of freebasing and turned it into the slow grind of two back-to-back, new millennium classic LP's, 'Californication' and 'By The Way'. A sublime solo artist in his own right (from 'Shadows Collide With People', to 'The Enclosure' and so many, many more albums just as (underground) classic as the ones with his fellow bandsmen). But it's so good to have him back 'Around The World' touring. With all due respect to the gracious and great Josh Klinghoffer who said 'I'm With You' like the Jane's Addiction of Dave Navarro for 'One Hot Minute'. Seamlessly becoming a part of the blend in dear John's stead. Josh's highlight including harmonising with Keidis across the 'Dark Necessities' of 'The Getaway' as a gang of girls skateboarded through the iconic Los Angeles storm drains like a Terminator too, to the tune of a classic video from 'Booksmart' Olivia Wilde. But now with Frusciante back in this shindig, these hot ones can't stop. 

No limit like Master P, 'Love Unlimited' is the brand new grand return on the double. Summer is on the horizon...and it could be a black one as Kiedis raps, introducing the lead single and their first in six years, "A lazy rain am I/The skies refuse to cry/Cremation takes its piece of your supply/The night is dressed like noon/A sailor spoke too soon/And China's on the dark side of the moon." Adding "my Greta weighs a tonne"  for Thunberg to the poetic lyrics of his own American songbook like no other. With more tangents in the margins that are all tied together across the yellow legal pad lines. All as the shirtless act, hands off cocks, on socks, shred and style in seasoned muscular monuments across videos of these Los Angeles times like that (then) before its time video game video or the flat circles of the highways McConaughey's 'True Detective' hammered home like a crushed beer tin. Tattooed like the broad shoulders of Anthony's native spirit. 'These Are The Ways', "when you come from America/The sights, the sounds, the smells", he sings on the second single released at the same time as the album and movie motel like music video on the run from the law the day they hit the streets of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After 'Summer' opens things like a 'Dani California' comes the 'Here Ever After' in all its atmospheric feel like the bands Cali' riding aesthetic. Taking us under the bridge again with the poetic beauty to counter the brutality of addiction, "Wet my beak and I give it up to that drugstore nose/So unique and I live it up 'til that liquor store close/In the laundry, queen ballistic/Mangy face with the messed up lipstick/My thing is blacked out loco/Smoke and tears, now take my photo", 'Acid For The Children' memoir writer Flea's bass moving overtime like his namesake on an unwashed dog. Having their day again, trumpet these Chili Peppers that are hot again, no chill, red. It's the kind of 'Aquatic Mouth Dance' to rinse around from one of the greatest American acts like Santa Monica Pier at the end of Route 66 for this drive. "Give me the love and I'll tell you when I want to come/Give me the love and I'll tell you when I want to run", this sets standout sings in a beautiful ballad that shows this raw riff ready act that blends genres like a purple Prince know when to slow it down like the snow of 'Hey, Oh'. 

But Imagine Peace like a 'War Is Over' black and white like billboard (if you want) across the world from New York's Times Square to London's Piccadilly Circus, standing with the Ukraine as our 'Poster Child' like a Liverpool Lennon, Keidis sings "you've got the best of my Yoko" on a tacked up track that is similar to his signature style like 'Anchorman' Will Ferrell is to sticksman Chad Smith laying the perfect beat on the skin. Try and take a breath like reading one of these lines in full as you sing along for a man whose moustache is rivalling a Magnum. Feeling lucky like an Eastwood on this Westside, punk! No fools this April 1st release day like King James joking he's done for the season. These Laker superfans who once wrote a 'Salute To Kareem' and a dedication to 'Magic Johnson' are in 'Winning Time' once again, even if their purple and gold brethren are not (we still have hope, no joke). It's still, Showtime like the Apollo somewhere in Hollywoodland as 'The Great Apes' make moviemaking music on this planet. Damn the dirty talk! 'It's Only Natural', like how love and people "will show you how to break it down". Oh and that Frusciante guitar for the red stars like a Rolling Stone logo lick. 'She's A Lover' and this band of brothers who are anything but fighters, perfect the slow jazz rock with a hip-hop flow. 'Whatchu Thinkin'' ("I got these things in mind, you know/South Dakota, show the buffalo/In the Black Hills you could find it all.")? They were done? Nah! Seconds out. These beautiful 'Bastards Of Light' are ready to set the city of angels on fire like the neon of the futuristic skyline. All the way to the 'White Braids and Pillow Chair' of the morning after and a "tangled tiger" that want to "rip it all to shreds." It's the kind of 'One Way Traffic' that's has given these Peppers a taste and sound like no other. And it's the empathetic dedication to 'Veronica' in first-person that really goes deeper as Anthony sings, "My name is Veronica/I come from the South Side of Chicago/Remember my raincoat/We love you the same way, and/My life is a rope swing/Always headin' back to from where I came/Got no need to blame you." It's the kind of devotion that leaves not a dry eye in the house like the late, great Meatloaf once rocked. And 'Let 'Em Cry' does the same, before 'The Heavy Wing' flies with lyrics like, "Death to rise/Subtraction of advice/The criminal ties of my rival/And I'll roll these dice/Cold supply/Scraping to get by/Blatantly flooding the low rise/And I'll throw this knife." But through all this introspective influence, they is a necessity in this time, the classic closer of 'Tangelo' will make sure we're not tangled up in blue like Dylan. Because there's no, no limits. Now that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are back with Frusciante and legendary, prolific producer Rick Rubin behind the boards they really have no ceiling like a Fun Lovin' Criminals 'Love Unlimited' (you know the time Huey Morgan said, "Barry White, saved my life") backwards. After the rollercoaster they've been on from the Beavis and Butthead MTV generation to this Tik Tok one now in father time like 'Bron, it's still all love. TIM DAVID HARVEY. 

Playlist Picks: 'Black Summer', 'Not The One', 'These Are The Ways'.