Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

                                                                             "That wasn't a turning point in my life. I was born again a year earlier, in Anaheim It had nothing to do with no woman." ----Al Green (taken from an interview excerpt in  Wax Poetics Magazine) In 2008, Al Green finally put a long-running urban legend to rest. It was a growing spiritual conversion over a series of concerts, not a rejected lover, a pot of grits, and a tragic suicide that prompted the soul legend to relinquish a platinum and gold-laden career to become a gospel singer and preacher.                                                                             Despite making $50,000 to $60,000 a night, Green felt lost. ("I have been in an arena with 40,000 people but I was the loneliest man there"). Mentally drained and suicidal, Green drove miles, seeking out Pentecostal churches he'd attend in disguise, blowing his cover when overtaken by the spirit (&quo

Leave it to Morris Day to write the closest thing we'll ever get to a Prince memoir. On Time: A Princely Life of Funk peels back so many layers of the flashy front man from the legendary funk band The Time. Thankfully, Day bypasses the sober reflections atypical of other memoirs that are so unworthy of his larger -than- life personality. On Time has a bounce that keeps the reader's attention throughout. How do I know? I pulled it out of my mailbox around 1:00am and sat  in my car reading it cover-to cover until I finished nearly three hours later. On Time also details the history of the Minneapolis Sound and Day's complex relationship with his friend and ally. Collaborator and mentor. Bandmate and occasional adversary. Day even brings Prince along for the ride, masterfully re-creating their sharp tag-team banter recalling their Purple Rain days. It works too. Prince's spirit hovers over Day, pushing, prodding and interrupting. So much so that their sim

 As another luminary of Black Star Power walks through heaven's door, another link in my childhood chain is broken. Is becomes was. History's pulse quickens, anxious to be documented before being overtaken by the sands of time. As Diahann Carroll tributes flood social media, my mind is transported back to Carroll's cinematic tour de force, Claudine. Momentarily leaving her Fifth Avenue Bergdorf sheen behind for an anti-star trip across 110th Street to Edgecombe Avenue, Carroll nailed her role as the Harlem single mother navigating her brood through poverty's turbulent waters set to a moving soundtrack that was the wing beneath the movie's wings.  Friends and neighbors, they graciously gave me access to their massive record collections when I visited. Thumbing through the racks, I rediscovered music that conjured up long lost memories banished to the corners of my mind. I could always count on seeing the Claudine soundtrack mixed in between Songs In T

                                                                                                                             "If you can see if you can solve the mystery, the answer revolves around your history."  The opening hook to Rakim's 1997 The Mystery (Who Is God?) easily defines the mystic legacy of the legendary emcee who changed the creative direction of hip hop music back in 1986. Golden era peers like Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane lamped in the spotlight in all their bejeweled glory. Rakim chose to play the background---oblivious of his popularity but always in tune with his greatness. His line from 1990's Set'Em Straight said it all: " one thing I don't like is the spotlight---cuz I already got light!"  Thirty plus years after his debut, Rakim invites readers to follow the leader into his literary universe Sweat The Technique: Revelations On A Creativity From A Lyrical Genius. Billed as "part memoir-part writing gui

  "I don't waste my talent/my talent is ample / And if you don't believe me/ then here is an example The words that I used by means of the brain/ transformed into words that can never be plain"                       Just Call Us Def---Steady B (1985)             "Fresh is the word/that's how I'm described              and so sweet is the rap/ of what I prescribe"               Fresh Is The Word---Mantronix (1985)                  "Biggest rap/no crap/I do not sing     You wanna show/let me know/just gimme a ring"     Together Forever (Live at Hollis Park '84)-Run-DMC  Today's streaming era reminds me of mid-eighties rap. It was about the single. Back when a 12- inch rap record's durability knew no end. The good old days when a hot song could rock for an entire year, the way records like Rapper's Delight , The Breaks, Feel The Heartbeat, The Message and Planet Rock marked time to hip hop