The legendary Al Green is bridging the gap between those who grew up on vinyl and those plugged into iTunes on his latest album, Lay it Down (his third on Blue Note/EMI Records), which is his most progressive, musically-adventurous album in years.
With Lay It Down, Green definitely isn’t resting on his laurels from his illustrious career that has spanned four decades, earned nine Grammy awards, plus accumulated 14 Top 40 pop hit singles and even more R&B chart hits. Notably, during the past year Green has been inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame, named one of Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 100 Artists (#65) of all time, and won a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.
Following two albums (I Can’t Stop in 2003 and Everything’s OK in 2005) where he reunited with his classic soul producer/writer Willie Mitchell, Lay It Down finds Green exploring new sounds and modern production by collaborating with drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson (of hip-hop/soul band The Roots) and Grammy-winning writer/producer keyboardist James Poyser (Erykah Badu, Mariah Carey).
One of the catalysts that triggered Green’s artistic inspiration for the record came from watching MTV’s Spring Break, when he realized those raised in the 21st century were lacking in a department he specializes in…Soul. "I watched Spring Break on TV with the kids out by the beach, kind of like a beach-party setting, and the girls all in two-piece bikinis," Green said. "It was about the rap and the shirt off, the physical drive of it, which we know is not the most important drive. The physical drive is fine, but still, there's a greater drive than that. There's a more soulful, a more emotional inner drive that makes things possible."
Ahmir Thompson of The Roots couldn’t have picked a better time to put in his request to work with Green. In the beginning, it started as a pipedream with Thompson and his manager, who contacted the rejuvenated Green about the possibility of collaboration.
The manner in which the collaboration happened became a central theme for Green. “Once we found out that The Roots wanted to work with me, it just came together,” Green said. “That is the thing about this CD - everything just kind of came together.”
After all the logistics were worked out and the production team was formed, Thompson began doing his homework. “You really have to do your research,” Thompson said. “I studied the engineering of every album, and I wanted to make every song that you hear on the album sounds sonically natural. To expect a musician from 30 years ago to record the same way we record today just doesn’t feel right to me.”
Al Green
During the recording process, they wanted everything on the record to have a natural feel in the sound quality. “We wanted to keep the sound organic,” said co-producer James Poyser. “We didn’t use any synthesizers, we just used live instruments. We just went into the room and began playing.”
The record, which features collaboration from such artists as Anthony Hamilton, Corinne Bailey Rae and John Legend, incorporates a lot of classic R&B sound. Green took the theme of his record, Lay It Down, literally and just simply went into the studio with a lot of improvisations.
“You can tell that on the record, we are just laughing and having fun,” said Thompson. "We didn’t have anything written down when we went in there. We had an idea and we just started writing these songs. It’s like everyone just jumped in and started making music, and that is what is important.”
Green, who recorded two songs with current soul star Anthony Hamilton, the title cut “Lay It Down” and “You’ve Got What I Need,” didn’t feel the need for a lot of structure in the recording process.
“Working with Green isn’t very structured,” explained Hamilton. “You can’t put him in a box and program his lyrics to where he is not free-flowing with it or he doesn’t feel good about it. It made for a great evening of singing and music slanging.”
Green, who has a total of nine Top 40, best-selling albums to his credit but hasn’t had a Top 40 album since 1975, came back in a flurry, and the result was a recent Top 10 debut (#9) on the Billboard album chart.
“This is an album that is unabashedly full of love songs,” said Green. “Baby, there’s love in it, out of it, on the side of it, on the top of it, and on the bottom of it. There’s love everywhere.”
Thompson eloquently described Green’s vocal versatility on the record: “I was familiar with all of his music. He is like a five-part harmony chorus inside of his own body. There is the falsetto Al Green, the church-growling Al Green, the ferocious soulful Al Green, there is a very church mouse Al Green, and there is the comic side that people rarely see.”
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