Sheldon Taylor's Souls of Black Notes

Forty-five years ago, Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" was released to critical and commercial acclaim. Jackson's breakthrough album solidified the singer's transition from child star to adult entertainer.  Let the madness in the music get to you..... I remember the time so very well because it was when I emerged from off the wall: a ten-year-old moving from music spectator to consumer. Since there were  no younger acts back then, every kid my age was drawn to music made by adults ten, twenty, and nearly thirty years older.  It was heady time.  From around '74 to '79, my life played out to a soundtrack that was one long musical highlight reel.  I wasn't buying music yet but it didn't stop me from reading about it or watching documentaries or television shows devoted to musical subjects.  As a toddler I was transfixed by Jackson Five album covers laying around the house. I can't remember when I first learned they were from my hometown of Gary, I...

                                                                "But if you can still hold onto what is yourself, that part of me that makes me Roberta and does not make me Chaka or Anita ... I'm going to hold on to that no matter what, and I'm going to nourish and cherish and nurture that and strengthen that."   Roberta Flack’s confident occupation of her creative space, captured in a 1989 Washington Post (“Roberta Flack; Charting Her Own Course") interview among the pantheon of Black female vocalists, evokes the title of one of her classic albums: quiet fire. There’s no one like her: traces of Minnie Riperton’s ethereal poetry live on in Jill Scott’s airy word-speak. Aretha’s litanies of longing are precursors of sorts to Mary J. Blige’s own heartache homilies. A young Evelyn King’s pairing with producers T. Life and...

                       Best known to the world as a member of the prolific Bad Boy Hitman production team that crafted hits dominating 90s radio,  Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence enjoyed an earlier life as one-half of rap duo Two Kings In A Cipher (TKO).  Creating the beats and sharing microphone duties with partner Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, TKO's debut album From Pyramids to Projects introduced metaphysical and Egyptology/Kemetic concepts to rap music.  Lost in the shuffle of like-minded releases for Brand Nubian, X-Clan, Public Enemy and KRS-One, Pyramids received a brief write-up in an October 1991 issue of  The Source but came and went without fanfare.   As Souls of Black Notes explores the era of conscious rhyme, Lawrence goes back in time. Quick to give credit to those who came before--he also makes a clear distinction between what separates TKO from the rest of the rap Black pack . ...