Rating:
Genre:
Jazz
Release Date: 07/13/2004
There is a long tradition in
jazz (not much in evidence in the early 2000's, it's true) of taking familiar
pop songs as the basis of
jazz improvisation. And there is a long tradition in middle-of-the-road
pop (also not much followed these days) of recording albums of the hits of the day in
easy listening style. The
Hidden Beach recording company attempts to restore these traditions with its
Unwrapped series, now reaching its third volume. The twist here is that the company has
smooth jazz artists record instrumental treatments of recent
rap hits. The problem, of course, is that
rap hits place such an emphasis on the raps themselves, with the musical underpinning often little more than a steady beat plus a sampled excerpt from some familiar song, so that when you strip off the
rap, what you have left is very little music, and that's usually borrowed. Producers
Darryl Ross and
Tony Joseph are not disturbed by this, however. After all, the steady rhythm tracks are often not all that different from those constructed in
smooth jazz. So, why not, for example, have violinist
Karen Briggs and electric guitarist
Peter Black improvise over the instrumental bed for
Eminem's
"Lose Yourself"? Or let keyboardist
Jeff Lorber and guitarist
Dennis Nelson loose on the underlying rhythm of
50 Cent's
"P.I.M.P."? In his liner notes,
Hidden Beach executive
Steve McKeever defensively claims that "the whole purpose of these CDs is not to 'water down'
hip-hop, but to pay homage to it." Of course, this is just semantics. The
Unwrapped series remains a collection of recordings for people forced to listen to
rap in their daily lives who wish those rappers would just shut up and maybe be replaced by a saxophone solo, just as some people in the 1960s preferred listening to
Ray Conniff play
orchestral treatments of the Top 40 than the actual hit recordings. If the intention is not to "water down"
hip-hop, it certainly is to make it more palatable, which is just about the same thing. (The CD is enhanced, containing a music video full of vintage black-and-white footage of
jazz greats and a portion of
the St. Lucia Jazz Festival featuring
the Unwrapped All-Stars.)
~William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
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