Rooting around my entirely too-big media collection, I was lamenting the fact that most of my favorite Black Art (music, film and literature) was produced before the year 2000. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy modern Black Art, but it seems as if there isn’t that much worth paying attention to. You have shows like The Wire but—when you get right down to it—it is a better (and serialized) version of New Jack City. NJC was a great movie, but I already seen it the first time that it came out. Girlfriends is a less edgy and co-dependant version of the whitest of white shows—except maybe Friends—Sex in the City. Film? Don’t get me started. Brown Sugar (I have a real soft spot for that movie) and Eve’s Bayou were the best mainstream Black films that have dropped in the past little while. Soul Plane? Caught Up? Waist Deep? I mean, really now. I know that there are many Black Folks getting down artistically, but where are the decent Black films in the mainstream? Is it our fault for not collectively supporting good Black flicks? Most Black Folks are media junkies, so there is an audience (multiple audiences) for all types of Black helmed film and television shows. If you make them, we (hopefully) will come.
However, music has been a bit better. TV on the Radio (the best album of 2006, IMHO), Gnarl’s Barkley, Skye (formerly of Morcheeba), the T-Dot’s own K-OS, all of these albums warm my heart and get mad play on the ipod, but it is rare that they get as much broadly public shine, as say, T.I., Jamie Foxx and other greed lauding, sex hungry, Black Men and Women as commodities…stuff.
So I’m looking through my music and I stumble on Sananda Maitreya’s (formerly Terence Trent D’arby) first solo album, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’arby. I put it on and was transported. The album is incredible. It is the genesis of the sound that he would later dub Post-Millennium Rock (PMR). Dude’s voice is one for conjuring. When his voice travels from the falsetto to the gutbucket blues, you just know that spirits are raising up somewhere and dancing in delight. The comparisons to Prince are warranted, and just like the purple midget, Maitreya/D’arby’s physical appearance belies an almost hyper-masculinity. Back in the day, Sananda/Terence was coming for all the women-folk, and scoring. After reminiscing with the first joint, I immediately put on his second album, Neither Fish Nor Flesh. A revelation. It is like the leap from Tribe’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm to The Low End Theory; De La from Three Feet High and Rising to De La Soul is Dead and TV on the Radio’s Herculean power-move from Wild and Desperate Youth-Blood Thirsty Babes to Return to Cookie Mountain. It was the perfection of, and a radical departure from, an established style. And these albums so far eclipsed their predecessors; it led to these artists becoming paragons of their chosen form. Neither Fish is risky, breathtaking, dangerous and thought provoking; everything that art (especially music) is supposed to be, and so much more. Who is now making that Black, Post-Millennium-Rock? Who is being brave enough to push these boundaries on American shores? There are a slim few who are being musically brave but until the vanguard unite us under their banner and our ears and hearts move to a point of sophistication where we will able to vibe on Mos Def, Little John, Floetry and Beyoncé, all in the same play list, I’m just going to have to be content listening to this PMR: established in 1987, perfected in 1989, and banging into the AfroFuture.
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