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OLU DARA
Neighborhoods
Atlantic
On his second album as a leader, 59-year-old Olu Dara belatedly
finds his footing as the black chronicler 1998's In the World: From
Natchez to New York was hailed for revealing. Instead of resting on
his laurels as an assured avant-garde trumpeter and the father of
the rapper Nas, Dara figures out how to put together a fully
effective album of urban folk music, as the lilting Afrogroove of
an attention-grabbing lead track clears the way for the steady funk
to come. Dara never approaches the stylistic distinctiveness of the
Delta blues singers whose rough voices are supposed to excuse his
own. But his songwriting accomplishes something new: it records for
posterity the subculture he's seen. Twenty years on, the richly
detailed "Neighborhoods," "Herbman," and "Bell & Ponce (At the
Movie Show)" will stand as history lessons, while "Strange Things,"
"I See the Light," and Joseph Spence's indelible "Out on the
Rolling Sea" evoke a distinctly African African-American worldview,
suffused with the inexplicable.
Rolling Stone, 2001
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