On "What Kind of Cool (Will We Think of Next)", the Atlanta-born, Tallahassee-residing soul crooner Cody ChesnuTT ruminates on a question that has driven the music industry for decades. As a sultry, self-conscious slab of smooth, Memphis-style soul, the song itself doesn't quite feel "next," but that's not the point. Its power comes from its source: ChesnuTT's got experience on the other side of the equation. In 2002, as the internet and web were ready to redefine DIY promotion, ChesnuTT was working his humbly titled 36-track debut The Headphone Masterpiece any way he could, to anyone he could find. He slipped it into stereos at random L.A. parties, and gave his number to equally random people at malls, inviting them to come back to his place for listening sessions. He'd been kicking around the scene for a while (long enough to get pulled onstage to pose at a 2002 Strokes gig in L.A.), and the demo soon wound up in ?uestlove's hands. When Masterpiece highlight "The Seed" was remade into the best song on the Roots' LP Phrenology, ChesnuTT and his album were instantly all kinds of "cool" and "next."
Masterpiece slotted perfectly into "neo soul" endcaps, and music nerds rushed to crown the album Sign O' the Times on Alien Lanes' budget. ChesnuTT was courted by major labels, copped a four-star Rolling Stone review that called him "a new breed of American troubadour," and was featured in the Guardian as part of a piece that (bizarrely) suggested he was the "new Hendrix." Until the release of Landing on a Hundred, Masterpiece's legacy was further defined as the sole release from the guy who subsequently disappeared, save a brief appearance in Dave Chappelle's Block Party and a quietly issued 2010 EP. In this regard, it's not just ChesnuTT's beautiful falsetto and lightly-scuffed tenor that recall Terence Trent D'Arby-- both were unconventional R&B prodigies with no shortage of swagger, who managed to drop off the pop map soon after their highly-praised debuts. According to ChesnuTT, his disappearance was planned: to start a family far away from music's exhausting business end. Landing is an apt reflection of an artist restarting after several years, but without sacrificing the eccentricity that initially made him such a compelling figure.
Recorded in part with a 10-piece band in the same studio where Al Green cut "Let's Stay Together", Landing largely situates itself in the early-1970s soul tradition of Green and Curtis Mayfield-- no matter how personal or political, the music is never too far from the pulpit. Opening cut "'Till I Met Thee" is positively beatific, ChesnuTT's scratched-out funk guitar alternating with a rich brass backdrop that lends the refrain an earthy gospel overtone. "Under the Spell of the Handout" is a dizzying trip through conflicting impulses that never tips over into the finger-wagging implied by the title. ChesnuTT's at his best when he can let his own contradictory spirit move him-- that's what Headphone Masterpiece did, in bulk-- and on "Handout" he begs to be let in "the caste" one second, and asks "what am I feeding on" the next. Hundred is occasionally wayward, but you can't expect ChesnuTT, even as a father of two in his mid-40s, to ever play it straight.
The eccentricities of Hundred are milder than Masterpiece, but they give the album much of its vitality. On "I've Been Life", he channels Muhammad Ali ("Since my birth/ I've been the greatest attraction on the earth") while shouting out an alphabetical roll-call of each African nation. The result sounds designed to slot between the Crusaders and James Brown in the "Zaire '74" music festival accompanying the Ali/Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle." On the peppy late album cut "Don't Wanna Go the Other Way", he rides a galloping bassline until it breaks, incorporating puffs of breath as a primary rhythmic component. Lyrically, he seems to be talking to the younger Cody ("Oh, frustrated young man/ Still carrying that load") while actively pushing himself to remain on a righteous path dotted with temptation. It's good advice: all the better because he seems to be heeding it.
