c.2010 New York Times News Service
'I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING' (Cash Money/Universal Motown)
Lil Wayne
Lil Wayne's least interesting mode is fixation. Restless and free-associative, he's best when bouncing from one idea to the next, sticking around just long enough to master it, then splitting before boredom or self-consciousness sets in.
"Rebirth," the last album he released before he began serving a one-year jail sentence at Rikers Island, was his quixotic attempt at a rap-rock album, an out-of-date idea that he treated like aggressive scientific research. It failed less for its experimentation, which was spotty, than for the strenuousness with which he pursued it.
From somewhere among those recording sessions, and those rumored to be slated for "Tha Carter IV," his next album, came the songs found on "I Am Not a Human Being," an uncentered collection of odds and ends meant to sate interest until Lil Wayne's release from Rikers, which is expected to be early next month. (He was jailed on a gun-possession charge.)
In a sense it's an improvement on "Rebirth," even if a couple of the songs bear the scars of that period, particularly the Rick Rubinesque title track, and "Popular," which has some of the new wave sizzle he was toying with.
Lil Wayne's successes in the past few months have been in different, and divergent, modes - the hypnotic, no-fi "I'm Single," the bombastic "Right Above It" with Drake, both of which are here, and a somewhat preposterous, Haddaway-sampling, "No Love," from Eminem's "Recovery."
But while diversity is Lil Wayne's strength, it's a lack of commitment of a different sort that hamstrings this album. Too often Lil Wayne lapses into predictable flow structures, quick ideas paired with built-in rejoinders: "They say money talks/ but it's my spokesperson," and so on.
It's a style that's also been adopted by his protege Drake, who appears on three songs here, sounding more refreshed than his mentor, particularly on the ice-cold cuckoldry of "Gonorrhea," on which he employs a jackhammering 16th-note pattern: "I be with your babymama/You be with your child at home."
Drake also appears on "I'm Single" - not in actuality, but in shadow. "I'm Single" is Lil Wayne's most Drake-like song, woozy and sentimental. And it's a testament to his truly elastic capacities that he's able to absorb Drake's skill and template but not be fully reshaped by it. It's just one more tool in this sidelined superhero's belt that he knows how to use but probably won't again.
- JON CARAMANICA
'WHIRLING' (Smalls Records)
Harold O'Neal
The pianist Harold O'Neal has had an interesting decade. After he finished music school, in 2003, he was Greg Osby's new pianist for a moment, replacing Jason Moran, a role that can become a pivot-point in a jazz career; he made an appearance on Osby's record "St. Louis Shoes." Then, in 2005, he left New York for Kansas City, Mo., his hometown.
He didn't stop playing but has spent much of the last five years in competitive kickboxing and break-dancing circuits, teaching karate and studying shiatsu. In that time he made one record under his own name, "Charlie's Suite," a series of duet piece with the guitarist Rick Gibbins about his family saga. (His uncle is Pete O'Neal, former leader of the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panthers, who left the United States in 1969 while facing a jail sentence, eventually ending up in Tanzania, where the younger O'Neal was born.)
Now 29, he's back in New York. (He will perform Thursday night at 7 during the "Monk at 93" relay of short solo-piano sets at the World Financial Center.) "Whirling Mantis" is the record he might have started out with before rerouting.
With the saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, the bassist Joe Sanders and the drummer Rodney Green, he's evoking the sound of New York jazz clubs in the early oughts. He comes with a full, orchestral piano sound, rippling, weaving, punching like Kenny Kirkland's solos did in the 1990s, Shaw playing bright, nearly vibratoless, Osby-like lines that prettily expose one note at a time, then suddenly move very quickly, and Green using a style that predates all the semi-rock beats and the fractured, strange-metered funk that has become too common in New York jazz. (Well, there's a little of it, in "Neptune Dream." But not much.)
In other words, the record swings: a major plus for an unpretentious, accessible, this-is-who-I-am kind of record. On the other hand, "Whirling Mantis" comes with ideas, because O'Neal can write. He plays mysteriously sweet and ruminating ballads - "(A Wish) Song For" and "(A Rider) Whisper" are two. "Aint G" is one of the better recent variations on John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" chord progression, and the title tune sounds like his version of an Andrew Hill song, with an abrupt, curling, expressive line, free and independent from the song's strong, fast pulse. This recording was made two years ago and makes you want to hear a new report soon.
- BEN RATLIFF