This week, I want to take y’all to Detroit to visit Moodymann’s self titled album from 2014. After 21 years of creating low key Detroit house music, James Dixon finally starts using his voice (literally, he doesn’t sing on any other of his albums) to show us his vision of his city. Detroit house music sounds like French House meets Motown. This album feels like a woozy tour of the D, where most of the songs are about blowing weed, sipping Remy, and getting with women.
What really makes this album special is Dixion’s voice: All the songs are sung in almost a whisper, but with the music around it, it makes complete sense. The album ends with his 11 minute remix of Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop. More suprisingly, there’s a goddamn remix of a Lana Del Ray song that acutally works and fits into the album perfectly. Also, throughout the album, he keeps playing little snippets of this song, Freeki Muthafucka, and when it comes on you’ll understand exactly why he did this and that it’s the only way to introduce this song.
That said, this album does have some skippable songs in the middle, but for the most part, this album is perfect for me. I would recommend that you give the first 6 tracks a listen, because they are def the strongest parts of the album, but they’ll hook you hard.
4.5 bags of popcorn