Saturday, March 23, 2013

Album Review: How I Viewed the 20/20 Experience

I try to avoid writing album reviews for many reasons. In fact in the near three years of this blog's existence I have actually posted only one other album review about the Jay Z/ Kanye collabo "Watch The Throne" back in 2011. With all of the buzz,hype, and billboard breaking records surrounding this long awaited album I figure I'd listen to the 20/20 experience from a non biased standpoint in order to provide a true musical critique.

So where exactly to start? I suppose at the beginning would be just a good a place as any other. Before I sit down to review an album I follow a specific basic, yet time consuming regime. I actually listen to the album in its entirety three times. With song length averaging close to six and a half minutes long the ten track album provided me with a 4.5 hour JT marathon listening session. Timberlake seemed to face the same situation that many R&B artists face when creating new material for an upcoming album: what do I talk about? The dangerous question artists must answer in releasing follow up albums is whether they use the same formula and topics that brought them great success on their previous albums, or do they veer left and face the chance of a crumbling career. Somehow JT managed to give us a little bit of both worlds while avoiding simply repackaging what we've already expected from him or the radio.

"The 20/20 Experience" carries us through our normal share of sexually charged drug referenced innuendos, love ballads, and party/club anthems. So what makes this album different from any other R&B albums? The same thing that makes anything different from anything. It's not what you say, or what you talk about but how you say it, how you package itm and how you roll it out. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland have indeed renewed their signature sounds with drums and horns over those tight beats that we loved on "Future Sex/Love Sounds".   Tracks like "Don't Hold The Wall" and "Let The Groove Get In" bring us right back to the "My Love" vibe we could not get out of our heads back in 2006.  JT did manage to still show musical depth and growth on tracks like "That Girl" and "Dress On" while he effortlessly croons over their melodic jazz and blues under tones.

However with all the great theatricality and show stopping he has put and will continue to put into the videos, performances, and I'm sure in the upcoming "Legends" tour with Jay Z there is one thing missing from the "20/20 Experience". The vulnerability and passion that came along and through the music with Justin's ballads on "Justified" and "Future Sex/Love Sounds". While we may see the old Justin come through in live performances the recorded ballads on the album do not bring forth the emotion that Justin is trying to elicit from songs such as "Space Ship Coupe" or "Strawberry Bubblegum". While we generally received less ballads than we are accustomed to on this album the only two that come close to his previous successes are the recently released single "Mirror" and "9 Blue Ocean Floor".  I do not suggest going into this album looking for anything parallel to "Cry Me A River", "Never Again" or "What Goes Around…". I guess it would only make sense as Justin is in a much different place in his life therefore his topics and expressions of them would have to differ as well. We would just hate to see Justin lose the battle against his musically emotional and vulnerable competitors such as Robin Thicke, Miguel, and Frank Ocean that bring forth just about every emotion passionately on 99 percent of their songs ballad or not.  

Overall Justin Timberlake did what he set out to do and provided the listeners with a musical experience unlike anything we are currently bombarded with on the radio. I wasn't blown away or impressed but the music did spark, capture, and manage to maintain my intrigue. This is an album I will recommend to others and play during morning commutes.  Is it a classic album? I wouldn't say so, but it is a pleasant listen and a breath of fresh air from the nonsense we've been receiving lately from entertainers.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Determining value and worth

Most of the time people will tell and show you exactly who they are… it is you that chooses not to listen.

I fight battles to maintain only what I believe is worthy of the fight. We value what it is that we deem to be important. It is as simple as that. No matter how busy, hectic, or upside down our lives may seem we set aside time, no matter how small, for people and things that are valuable in our lives. As I progress further and further away from my adolescent years it has become a difficult transition into the changes that adulthood brings not only in myself but in the people that surround me as well. It is understandable that it will become more difficult to play the same roles that you once played in the past because new responsibilities have taken precedent. However once someone or something is considered a priority you manage to incorporate them in some facet of the 365 days you make your own.  

I by no means am the perfect friend, sister, daughter, writer, or teacher, but these five aspects of my life are the core of who I am. There are times when I forget that one can not properly function with out the others being holistically taken care of as well. While I struggle and must often remind my self to make sure each aspect receives equal attention I am also honest with myself and those around me. There are going to be some weeks where my teaching skills will excel and days when I doubt I am effectively teaching anything at all. There will be times when I am an amazing friend and other times where my friends will barely hear from me. I say this not to make my life seem more than what it really is or to create excuses, I say this more so to state a point. I show the people I value in my life exactly who I am at face value, therefore there is little to no confusion whether I am truly a presence or absence in their lives.  There is always a breaking point to everything and I make sure to never take advantage of the people around me. Going that extra mile to send a random good morning text to a friend, or sitting down for twenty minutes to have a discussion with your siblings are the little efforts that should be made to maintain not only stability but mutual relevance in valued ones lives.        

In the relationships you have taken the time to build you accept the behaviors that you think you deserve. And with this acceptance comes a false premise or pedestal that you place people on and expect them never to fail you. You become trapped in a continuous cycle in which you partake in alternating variances of the same scenarios. That is where the dangers of expectations come into existence. Life is always going to throw a random curve ball into the plans you think you've made. There are going to be people that will consistently disappoint you and there will be people that don't. What you must begin to learn, as I know it is no where near simple, is how to determine your value in other's lives as well as the value people take in yours. I am slowly learning to adjust and adapt to the certain forms of silence that have descended and formed shadows amongst myself and my counterparts. This is the most difficult part of the learning process. This is where you begin to understand and differentiate what different forms of silence mean. Some people grow apart, some people walk apart and these forms of silence are often the most deafening and irreversible. And sometimes silence is just that silent. Nothing more nothing less, and when that final silence is broken everything falls back into place like it was never there in the first place. When you've come to realize which form of silence you have encountered that is when you will be able to determine your importance in someone else's life.

It is understandable especially during the responsibility filled times we are all currently facing that certain people, things, and activities will not be given as much precedent as before, or as others. After all everything and every moment can not be weighed equally. Do not misconstrue busyness as a form of progress or success because when you've finally reached the finish line it is the celebration at the end with those you value that will truly make you feel victorious. You don't want a crowd of people at your finish line that don't truly care to basque in your success and you most certainly don't want to be at the end alone.  

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Should you ever be satisfied?

"At some point you have to choose between life and fiction. The two are very close, but they never actually touch"

Like many of my great writing ideas it most often begins with a discussion amongst a group of people with differing personalities, levels of intellect, morality, or more simply put the few I call friends.  The topic of satisfaction came to play within one of my recent daily bouts. Is it okay to never be satisfied? Is there an appropriate time to just sit back and say okay I've done what I've set out to do I am satisfied. Or should we constantly be in a battle to obtain more, reach for more, strive for greatness beyond what the world says is within our reach? I didn't know exactly how to answer these questions and wasn't even really sure how to initially approach the topic.

As a high school teacher and a person who lives strictly by a series of quotes and lyrics, I was very torn by the black and white capacity of the topic. It seemed to me at the time that there were only two options that would lead to only two outcomes in regards to satisfaction. You're either a person who is never satisfied with life and are always in search of the next success, or you're someone who is easily satisfied and has settled comfortably into their current life status. With the stigmas placed on both of those options I didn't personally know which way I wanted to be categorized. If I chose the first then it meant that I wasn't happy or fulfilled with the life successes I had already obtained in my short 24 years of life. The latter option meant that I was a settler and became comfortable in my own mediocrity. With my only two options being unhappiness or mediocrity I forced myself to push the thought process behind this a bit further.  

I think what it comes down to for me personally is a matter of acceptance and understanding. I fully understand that in society's equation of my life I am merely a list of graduated accomplishments tied down by debt, with underachieving moments factored in, wrapped up tightly into a laughable tax bracket. And that is fine. My societal equation minimally factors into the reality of my reality as I know that I am not simply a list of things that I have done or have not done. That is where the understanding comes in. However my input into my own life comes directly from what I can and can not accept by the time I've reached the end of my timeline. I can not accept that at 24 I've contributed the best of me to the world therefore I do take every opportunity in stride as to not look back ten, fifteen, twenty years from now and say "I wish I had given that a shot". So often we find ourselves becoming observers of everything including our own lives. We get wrapped up in letting life just happen to us that we don't continue to fight and pursue what it is that we desire. We get to a point where we say okay this is it, I've come as far as I can and then we step back years from now only to regret the shots we did not take.

But that does not mean that I am unhappy as my happiness stems from several different facets involved in life. True success can not be skewed to one ideal but is more a holistic sense of completion. I can accept many things including failure and I know that some things will just never happen no matter how hard I try. But in twenty five years if I never accomplished one of my goals but have a track record of continuous efforts and attempts then I will be completely satisfied knowing I tried...

               "He should've been someone everyone knows. Yeah… so what happened?- Life."