The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq

(Best Album Cover of the Year?... probably)

I saw a review of The Way I See It in the subway newspaper (whateveritscalled) the other day and thought to myself: "Awesome, one of the Tribe Called Quest guys has a new album". Of course, after doing a little research (i.e. looking at Saadiq's wikipedia entry), I discovered that, basically Saadiq was just kind of buddies with ATCQ. Forgive me, but ATCQ's best stuff was a little before my time...

At any rate, it seems with this album TWISI (and bear in mind I haven't heard any of his earlier work with the exception of the single with Q-Tip 'Get Involved') has bottled (or ripped off) the Motown sound that made.... the artists of Motown so famous. And when I say he's bottled (or ripped off) the sound, I mean it. Not in a, Amy Winehouse I'm influenced by it and am doing something different kind of way, but in a I'm going to replicate the exact Motown sound kind of way. It works though, and it works very well.

As an aside:
I have an aunt who, sadly, I don't talk to much anymore, but when I was in elementary school she got me into stuff like Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Boyz 2 Men (listen to 'Motown Philly' again.. C'MON). and so I still have a soft spot for stuff like this even though I don't go out of my way to listen to R&B (or whatever you'd call this kind of music) much anymore.

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I've had this post sitting here for about a week, and after a few more spins, its likely that TWISI will crack the top-20. In part, I think its the infamous 'end-of-the-year-effect' combined with the 'need-to-include-a-genre-of-music-effect' combined with the fact that it is a terrific album. And one that, if my listening habits don't change to drastically, will continue to get sporadic play on my iPod Zune over the coming weeks/months/years.