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Make The Road By Walking

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Menahan Street Band

 
Make The Road By Walking
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Avg: 4.5 (124 ratings)

The source of that awesome hook from Jay-Z's "Roc Boys" single. And so much more.

  • We Say...

    Review by Michaelangelo Matos

    Perhaps you thought, as I did initially, that "Roc Boys," Jay-Z's brilliant 2007 single, was bolstered by horns his producer P. Diddy had found (or had one of his minions find) off some early '70s funk record that, up till then, had somehow gone unmolested by crate-digging hip-hop DJs. As it turns out, the sample wasn't off an old album, but from a recent 7-inch: Menahan Street Band's "Make the Road by Walking," issued in 2006. Menahan Street Band is a side project of Thomas Brenneck, a multi-instrumentalist who'd made sizable contributions to the neo-funk acts in the Daptone Records stable; the label in turn issued MSB's music on a sub-label, Dunham.

    Brenneck's first full album comes with the Jay-Z selling point. But even if you notice how much harder the rapper's drum track kicks than the original's, it hardly matters, because not only is "Make the Road" its own glorious piece of music, it comes with an album to match. Few neo-funk bands have put together anything as front-to-back solid as this: nearly every track shimmers on its own. "The Contender," which features a good-natured duel between horns and woodwinds, both the brass and the groove under it derived as much from jazz as R&B but with the balance tipped definitively in favor of the latter. "Home Again!" has the warmth of instrumental late-'60s hits such as Hugh Masakela's "Grazing in the Grass." And they end it with a cover of Bill Conti's "Going the Distance," from the Rocky soundtrack — a touch corny, sure, but also an evenly tempered triumphant note to finish on. They deserve it.

  • They Say...

    Review by Steve Leggett, All Music Guide

    It's kind of difficult to describe what kind of music the Menahan Street Band make, although the ten tracks (there's also an unlisted 11th track) presented on this debut album share a certain pleasant, easy, and sunny vibe. All are unhurried instrumentals, and while it's tempting to call this stuff soul, it isn't that exactly. There's a jazz feel here, too, but it isn't exactly soul-jazz, either, and then there's a certain intangible Jamaican dub feel to how things are mixed, but one can't really call it dub, and while things get lightly funky now and then, it isn't funk. A loose-knit group of musicians drawn from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings (Dave Guy, Homer Steinweiss, Fernando Velez, Bosco Mann), El Michels Affair (Leon Michels, Toby Pazner), Antibalas (Nick Movshon, Aaron Johnson), and the Budos Band (Mike Deller, Daniel Foder), the Menahan Street Band recorded these tracks with producer Thomas Brenneck in his Menahan Street apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and if it's difficult to put a finger on what their sound should be labeled, it's not difficult to like it. Tracks like "Karina" and "The Traitor" have gently hypnotic and shifting grooves that have just enough nervous energy to stay interesting. Nothing here is going to set the world on fire but nothing here is going to make the world a worse place, either. The perfect Sunday morning listen.

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