Something To Hold On To
Bilal
Love For Sale (Unreleased), 2006

I’m 3+ years late on this one. This album was leaked online in 2006 and then shelved by Universal and has never come out officially in the U.S. (more details here). Apparently it’s available on vinyl in Europe. I don’t know if this is the actual artwork.

Wow, I like this album so much more than his first (don’t get me wrong I like the first album too, especially “You Are” and “Sometimes”). This album has that Like Water for Chocolate / Mama’s Gun Soulquarian circa 2000 vibe but it was actually made much later (in relative terms).

It was hard to decide which song to post. I opened my radio show last night with the 7:00 minute afrobeat/soul track “Sorrow, Tears & Blood” which features Common. “All for Love” is also really lush but I picked this track which is one of two that have showed up elsewhere. “Something To Hold Onto” was produced by Nottz and was also recorded by Jay Electronica (this is a crappy 128 kbps version for reference – all I have sorry). The year listed in the Jay Electronica track is earlier than the Bilal track but I have the feeling it happened the other way around – I have another track with the same tags where Jay is rhyming over “Love Is” by Common. Also, Bilal was more likely than Jay to have the budget for a Nottz Track in 2005/6.

There something really hypnotic about this track starting with the bass line and, of course, ending with the organ (I am a sucker for anything organ).

Bilal is featured on the excellent “Cheeba” on Shafiq Husayn’s forthcoming “Shafiq En A Free Ka” album coming out October 6th on Plug Research. You can hear it on my September 8th radio show.

Songs are available for two weeks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Covers, Music Appreciation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.