New Soul Music - Aloe Blacc

When I hear I really great new song, I have to hit replay and then I need silence. Then I email all of you to say "you have to buy this now!"

It happens rarely.

The last time I can remember doing it was John Legend's first album, which I bought because I read a review that compared him favorably to the Titans of Soul (Smokey, Stevie, and Marvin). Before that, it was D'Angelo's Voodoo and Charlie Hunter's Songs from an Analog Playground, which are in my top-10 albums of all time. (I ended up buying at least 5 albums of each from Amazon and shipping them to [some of] you.)

Ian on Notes from a Different Kitchen posted a few new soul tracks this morning.

I downloaded Aloe Blacc's Gente Ordinaria, which hits all of the things I love: it's a cover of Ordinary People in Spanish, but where the original is a spare piano track, this is a lush tropical arrangement with horns and drums. Because it couldn't get better, he also throws in the "la las" of My Cherie Amour.

Check it out here (Gente Ordinaria, Aloe Blacc) and then buy the album here.

In case my exhortation is not enough to convince you, here is part of the review from The In Crowd:

It's hard to really do this album proper justice in a review: dude basically takes sounds from the entire spectrum of the black musical disapora from jazz, blues, black folk field music to R&B, afro-latin jazz and hip hop and distills it down to a single, thoroughly modern yet unique sounding album.

So, buy it. Now.