Tanya Morgan, Brooklynati
Breezy, jazzy everyman rap with a freewheeling sense of discovery
Everyman rap can be a tricky thing. Dwell too much upon quotidian details and you can come off as a mere diarist; refuse to project an even slightly larger-than-life persona and any number of realer-than-thou fans will cry corny. Tanya Morgan's second full album sidesteps that template some by including sketches about, and a song "by," a made-up troupe of mad-faces called Hardcore Gentlemen. They work, too — an extreme rarity. But for the most part, Brooklynati does the day-in-the-life thing as effectively as any hip-hop album you can name.
While it's clear that for the trio — all men, none named Tanya or Morgan — the late-'80s Native Tongues groups (particularly De La Soul) is the alpha and omega of hip-hop, Brooklynati captures it exactly right here, with breezy, jazzy tracks that have the sense of discovery that accompanied De La, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers at their most freewheeling. The lithe funk of "Never Enough (Crazy Love)" (the sexy chorus is sung by Carlitta Durand), or the dusky strings and horns of "So Damn Down," or the calypso-style horns and cymbal-led swinging beat of "Bang & Boogie" make the argument for the album all by themselves.
But the lyrics bring it home. In this case, Brooklynati, like OutKast's Stankonia, is a made-up utopia with roots in real life, connecting Von Pea from Brooklyn and Donwill and Ilyas from Cincinnati. Indeed, one of the two most affecting moments of the album isn't even a song: "Intermission" consists of the group plus guest Peter Hadar extolling their imaginary hometown ("It's the place where my son was born, and where I was reborn") over smoking jazz-funk. The other is "Plan B," one of the warmest and most honest songs anyone's written about the distance between teenage dreams of stardom and the adult reality of scraping by on your art, and why it matters to keep pushing anyway. For one thing, you might someday make an album as good as this one.
