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by
30 January, 2009@1:44 am
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With the passing of J. Dilla, many of his peers, both from Detroit (Black Milk, Illa J, Dwele, Slum Village) and abroad (The Roots, Busta Rhymes, Madlib) have felt the need to carry on the sound of Jay Dee. Whether through the resurrection of unused beats, or by creating music with essentially the same sound, Dilla lives on as we enter the fourth year since his death. One group that shared close ties with the head Yancey boy was the Platinum Pied Pipers, made up of producer Waajeed and instrumentalist Saadiq. One might expect with their new album, Abundance, we’d find a big, Dilla-esque soul record, but once again, the duo has gone above and beyond the call of duty.

Comparisons are more likely to fall in the range of Gnarls Barkley, Mark Ronson, or even Outkast, as Abundance redefines PPP as a funk/soul band, creating throwback R&B jams with new vocalists such as Coultrain, Karma, and Jamila Raegan. You can ask “who?” all you want, but looking back at their 2005 debut will show the unveiling of previously unheard artists like Georgia Anne Muldrow and Tiombe Lockhart, among other established peers like Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Steve Spacek, and Dilla himself.

Abundance presents a much fuller sound than their previous works, as the duo teams to create tracks with live instrumentation rather than studio produced beats. Leading the pack here is male vocalist Coultrain, who kicks the album off with the rock & soul sounds “Angel”, obviously taking a page from Sly & The Family Stone with skull-snapping drums and sleazy guitar licks. Coultrain explores many different musical territories, with sticky space funk on “Ain’t No Ifs Or Maybes”, channeling Stevie on “Pigeon Hole”, and getting his Rico Suave Bossa Nova on with the Latin tinged “The Ghost Of Aveiro”. He also teams with Jamila Raegan for the exceptional “Sanctuary”, a lovelorn tune built upon a heavy string-section.

Jamila also chimes in for the Motown-means-mainstream-soul tune “Go, Go, Go”, but the other real standout talent here is fellow female vocalist Karma Stewart. Karma propels the album’s lead single, “On A Cloud”, a fitting up-tempo retro-soul cut that might make Amy Winehouse bat a fake eyelash. The Sa-Ra inspired “Luv Affair” also puts in her prime form, as she voyages over hard-hitting drums and melodic pianos buried in cosmic slop. Both Karma and Coultrain team up for a pair of songs with the swingy “Dirty Secrets” and the atmospheric “Rocket Science”.

PPP’s already flavorful musical palate now contains a wide variety of sounds thanks to the expanded arsenal of instrumentation found on Abundance. It’s not surprising to hear that each Cee-Lo, Estelle, and Mark Ronson protégé Daniel Merriweather have tapped Waajeed to produce tracks for them; that PPP branded Grammy can’t be too far behind.  – Pizzo

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