Memories of an album… Jazzmatazz

Guru – Jazzmatazz III – Street Soul

I kinda lost interest with Guru’s Jazzmatazz series after the second one but my brother Danny was the one that urged this album to me.

This was surprising b/c Dan is not an R&B person. His Ipod hip-hop playlists consist of “What We do”, “10 Crack Commandments”, “Hustlin’”, and any guitar-driven sample-based song by Just Blaze. But his encouragement for me to listen to a mostly R&B album by Guru made it a must-listen. Coming out in 2000, most of the soul artists were no ones or just on their first album. Its dope to look back and see these artists as staples in quality soul music. Guru had an eye for the future.

By far my fav joint was “Certified” with Bilal and Slum Village. “No More” also got a lot of play in my CD player. Although the album was heavily criticized for departing from the Hip-Hop-meets-Jazz format and being a little more commercial, I found the album to be a refreshing balance to the Ja Rule/R&B collabos that were being churned out at the time. Hip-Hop and Soul finally found a home on this CD where it could be less about the stereotypes and more about a marriage of the two genres.

Enjoy!

Tracklisting:

01. Intro
02. Keep Your Worries (featuring Angie Stone)
03. Hustlin’ Daze (featuring Donnell Jones)
04. All I Said (featuring Macy Gray)
05. Certified (featuring Bilal and Slum Village)
s06. Plenty (featuring Erykah Badu)
07. Lift Your Fist (featuring The Roots)
08. Guidance (featuring Amel Larrieaux)
09. Interlude
10. Supa Love (feat. Kelis)
11. No More (featuring Craig David)
12. Where’s My Ladies? (featuring Big Shug)
13. Night Vision (featuring Isaac Hayes)
14. Who’s There? (featuring Les Nubians)
15. Mashin’ Up The World (featuring JR Reid)
16. Timeless (featuring Herbie Hancock)