Solely two years after fascinating listeners together with his debut album, Aijuswanaseing, Philadelphia native Musiq Soulchild returned with a masterpiece in 2002’s Juslisten. The LP not solely solidified Soulchild’s reputation, it additionally showcased simply how versatile and timeless neo-soul might be. Many years on, followers nonetheless join to those tunes that took him to the highest of the Billboard 200 and earned him a Grammy nomination for Greatest R&B Album.
Take heed to Musiq Soulchild’s Juslisen on Apple Music or Spotify.
Launched at a second when the “gangsta” way of life was closely glorified and the sounds of The South have been starting to make noise, Juslisen had one thing for everybody. It was a melting pot of musical genres, with R&B, hip hop, funk, and gospel all thrown into the combination. Hit single, “Halfcrazy” led the best way, sampling a Sixties French soundtrack for its delicate guitar. The music works so effectively as a result of it by no means fairly offers a transparent decision. In a 2021 interview for Vibe, Soulchild mirrored on this type of songwriting: “That’s the space that I like to work in. Most people like to do the black or the white, like to do the up or the down, or the good or the bad. I’ve never really been interested in the extremes. I want to talk about the gray. So much gray that no one likes to talk about.”
Musiq Soulchild’s clean, but rugged, method, at all times stood out amongst his friends. However there have been clear antecedents. In that very same Vibe interview, he singles out D’Angelo’s impression as an enormous purpose for his personal success. “There wouldn’t have been a lane, there wouldn’t have been context, there wouldn’t have been a reference, there wouldn’t have been the interest if he wasn’t a thing… There wouldn’t have been somebody saying, ‘Maybe, let’s take a chance on this kid from Philly that’s doing this whole neo-soul thing.’”
What makes Juslisen so distinctive is the subject material that Musiq Soulchild took on in such a candid approach. Few up to date artists have been coping with the identical points. You want to look again at artists like Stevie Surprise, Donny Hathaway, and Marvin Gaye to listen to somebody so gorgeously depicting the honeymoon section of catching emotions for somebody, as Musiq does on “Newness.” The daring vulnerability to linger on subjects like falling for somebody that isn’t utterly reciprocating – or is solely guarded attributable to previous heartbreaks – was distinctive in the intervening time that Juslisen was launched.
Maybe extra importantly, they’re subjects that proceed to resonate. When requested about what makes for a timeless love music, Musiq as soon as stated: “I think that it has to be something connected to something real. I had people say it to me all the time. ‘You’re speaking my life, you’re talking… You stalking me? You spying on me?’” Juslisen has loads of these moments as a result of timeless music has no expiration date.
Take heed to Musiq Soulchild’s Juslisen on Apple Music or Spotify.
