Maxwell — "Embrya" (1998)

cocoCUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRE

listen on youtube.
listen on spotify.

is this my favorite album of all time?

hey, great question.

maybe.

also i think, between this and the first sweetback album, i have a pretty good picture of what a mid-90s sade album would have sounded like, and yes i do think it would've been another alltime classic and possibly the greatest album ever made.

no idea what i'm going to vote for. i can say what it won't be, but that still leaves like eight choices. so idk.

may just vote "gestation" because fuck it, album's too good.

My least favorite Maxwell album: more jams than songs, and he's not great at jams imo.

"Cococure" and "Matrimony: Maybe You" are on his all-time list.

also my fave by Maxwell and possibly anyone. "Drowndeep" is kinda at the center of everything I love about it.

yeah, all time album. can't choose...

I thought this would easily be between “Luxury: Cococure” and “Drowndeep: Hula”, but I’m currently drowning in “I’m You: You Are Me and We Are You (Pt. Me & You)” and damn, whatelseisinstore?

he's not great at jams imo.

also there's very little actual jamming on this album. the arrangements are super tight and meticulously constructed. it vamps a lot, but always with the purpose of building layers and tension.

but alfred is entitled to his opinion, wrong as it may be. love you, man. =)

i initially planned to vote for "submerge" — but i legitimately can't choose after playing the album twice last night. i'm giving it a break for now and will revisit again in a day or two to hopefully narrow it down.

this is his best album. i'd hardly call it more jams than songs - i could understand someone saying that about voodoo for instance, but not this. the extended grooves are great too

i think it's "drowndeep"

Last few posts otm - this album is meticulous. These tunes are only "jams" in the sense that Kate Bush's 'The Ninth Wave' or 'A Sky of Honey' has jams.

Basically the whole album kills me and I haven't made up my mind yet, but no one has mentioned "Know These Things: Shouldn't You" or "Gravity: Pushing To Pull", so I'll boost those.

I'm quite alone, I guess, in believing he came into his own with Now.

Everwanting for me. That bass!

this is his best album. i'd hardly call it more jams than songs - i could understand someone saying that about voodoo for instance, but not this. the extended grooves are great too

― ufo, Sunday, July 25, 2021 4:15 AM

co-sign all this

boring choice probably but “drowndeep” for me

voted "submerge" because it's what you hear in the wormhole.

leaning towards matrimony

it's always been "drowndeep" for me

Absolutely love this silly record. It's the sort of thing I never would have bought unless I'd listened to it on one of those infinite banks of headphones-and-CDs at a Virgin or HMV

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"drowndeep"

everybody's all like, "hey this world is starting to really suck" and i'm over here listening to embrya. again.

just thinking, "hey. . . this isn't so bad."

it's so of a piece that choosing an individual song here almost feels like a mutilation

wtf @ the at-best muted critical response to this at the time, interesting when rock critics decide ambition and pretention are bad things

is oceanic R&B a thing (besides frank)

Mainstream critics were not reviewing Sade, D'Angelo, Badu, and certainly not the acts that scored top ten pop crossovers at the time, with today's precision and devotion.

IMO even R&B/hiphop critics are seen a bit too reverently in the rear view when it comes to the full scope of critical recognition: https://www.villagevoice.com/1998/07/14/he-wants-you-to-want-him/

lol that review "But Sade’s band always kind of sucked. She made the material interesting"

wtf @ the at-best muted critical response to this at the time, interesting when rock critics decide ambition and pretention are bad things

it's not even really that out there either, sure the track titles are goofy and it's not really trying to have radio hits, but that was enough to make them all write it off

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I voted for "Luxury: Cococure" but now wish I had thrown a vote to "Gravity: Pushing to Pull".

I said something to this effect above but this album is a lot tighter than its reputation would suggest. I don't think of it as more jam-based or out there than Love Deluxe or Voodoo or Mama's Gun, and rather less so than some other great adjacent albums like Comfort Woman.

almost voted for gravity myself

fwiw I vacillated b/w "Cococure" and "Gravity."

glad to see this got a somewhat decent turnout and also that i wasn't the only vote for "submerge"!

i was wondering if the dream hampton review would come up. what a joke.

This album had a somewhat affiliated b-side that came out on the "Fortunate" import single. "Maybe You, Maybe Not" somehow goes even further into left field. I had forgotten about it completely until I noticed that it's on streaming platforms under the title "Matrimony: Maybe You" — which of course is the title of a different cut on the album that was also a single. Sheesh, the unnecessary confusion. I knew those convoluted title formats would lead to something like this one day. Anyway, more Embrya is always good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MChrzH57RPM

That single is also where I heard the "Luxury: Cococure" remix that really takes the song in a different direction completely. Big mixtape favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJHLrVo6JYw