MIXTAPE OF THE WEEK: Lee-Lonn, Deprived In order for you to believe Lee-Lonn Walker isn't a charming dude who could take your girl and mine (and probably your best friend's), you'd have to also believe he doesn't exist. Crazy, no? That's him, though. He doesn't have the physically imposing stature of a contemporary like Jack Freeman, but does have one disarming charm that is undefeated -- a falsetto that doesn't ever quit.
Walker is no longer the precocious teenager who used to pop up at talent shows at the University of Houston, or seem like a choirboy who sung with his chest puffed up and his mind clear. No, he's an evolving presence, constantly seeing the world and making certain to leave his mark wherever he goes. The intriguing part is how it's translated into his music and how his instrument of choice -- that falsetto that aims to register more than a few swooning moments with his female audience -- has evolved with him.
His latest record, Deprived, doesn't lead off with a song discussing his growth as a man. It doesn't even start off with something to lighten the mood and charm listeners before the darker, murkier sounds come. "Detox" is what we're dealing with, a sex record of the best kind where none of the corny exists and the metaphors are top-notch. Steve-O and Bruce Bang strip away nearly everything from Walker to the point where his voice could double as the beat and the bass line underneath.
"What happens when we make love? It feels like heaven to me," he croons on "Shower," a charming number about a woman who has been on Walker's mind all day; he even can be clumsy in love, considering Chris Rockaway's guitars. But if you're really thinking that Deprived is all about sex and love, like a more nuanced Trey Songz album, you're mistaken. In its 19-minutes running time, it plays like a new-age love letter with dashes of lust, love, anticipation and even ripped-out sketches of ideas and thoughts. ("Naturala dedication," lasts only a minute.)
Best Track "Deprived": It's rather unfair, considering how strong the writing is on this EP. But the title track feels like an epilogue, a love letter to everybody who is going through something. There's no chicanery here, no cheap pops or tugs towards a select group. Everybody may not be getting laid ("Detox," "Shower"), and Bob Marley may not influence everybody, but everybody can at least play both sides of apathy and try to achieve something further.
TRACKS OF THE WEEK
BeatKing, "Ebola Freestyle" By the time you get done reading this column, "P.O.P, hold it dine" will have been in your life for the better part of a week and a half. It has already joined the pantheon of memes that are far better when known as jokes as opposed to extensions of fucked-up stories. For if you knew the actual story to Donna Goudeau and her "legally blind" claim, you'd be happy she's been in jail for the better part of two and a half decades.
Oh, that's right, BeatKing took enough time out of his Scandal marathon to grant us a freestyle where he takes Goudeau's voice, blends it into a neat little gumbo of trunk-rattling mass and cracks on Dallas' ongoing Ebola scare. Poor Dallas strippers, this entire thing is probably ruining your local economy.
Speaking of things in Big D, the Texans should have walked around chanting this track the entire time they were in JerryWorld last Sunday. Better yet, are we sure they didn't for all seven minutes they had on that second-to-last drive in the 4th quarter? (Sorry, that's the sound of me sobbing uncontrollably.)
DeLorean feat. Jack Freeman, "Focused" New rule: whenever I think I'm close to dying, I need Jack Freeman to magically show up to start singing about my pockets having no money but the lint being richer than anything else. Or something to that effect. I'm pretty sure that Jack's turn on "Focused," the latest roll-out from DeLorean, could sing about the struggle in 50 to 100 different ways and it will all sound like some Sunday gumbo you missed out on at church.
As far as DeLorean goes, he has one aspect down quite easily -- being easy to embrace. You get that at this point he could be a quixotic rapper from Missouri City who has released stirring tape after stirring tape, but that's not the only reason you keep coming back. "Focused" grinds along on top of Trakksounds' guitars and throat-punching drums with a singular hunger attached to it. DeLo is coming; prepare your speakers accordingly.
More new rap on the next page.
