Where is Jaguar Wright NOW?

Bursting on the scene with a energetic, soulful, Gospel-tinged voice, Philly artist Jaguar Wright, may have left the airwaves but has never stopped performing music.
Doing strictly live shows and rolling with the Okay Player collective, Wright has blessed stages all around the world for the past eight years off the strength of 2.5 albums. In 2002, she debuted with "Denials, Delusions & Decisions," a record that combined the hip-hop beats ala Mary J. Blige, but with vocals sung in angelic smoothness, closer to the neosoul movement that it had sprung up around.
But Wright was no angel.
She had a little Millie Jackson in her, too, as evidence by not only the raw second verse of "When You Love Your Man," but from a very public spat with her mother-in-law who she has gone on record as calling "nuts ... delusional." Wow, that's tough talk toward fam.
Wright followed up the success of her debut with "Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul," a great record for those that had listened close enough to the strain -- the pain -- in Wright's first joint and which chronicles the end of her fascination not just with a flawed lover, as many of the songs detail, but her disgust with the music business as well.
A third album, "...And Your Point Is?" never saw the light of day due to the demise of MCA Records, her label.
So, where is Jaguar Wright now? She's still touring and communicating with the fans via Twitter and Myspace, where she released two new tracks last year.
We can expect big things in the future.


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Honestly, Do You Want the Old Maxwell Back?

I struggled with my feelings for weeks now; trying my darndest to come up with an excuse, a valid reason why I should keep "BLACKsummer's night" in the CD player.
I finally took it out last week.
In the end though it was simply about the music. Truth be told -- and I love Maxwell -- the CD just aint all that hittin'.
Truthfully, the reason why it's done so well in sales is because, well, we need Maxwell. Music needed him.
His music is what is it not so much because of what it is, but for what it isn't.
Radio today is brain dead. Creativity -- along with record sales -- has been sapped of all its vital juices (autotune).
Honestly, I like the old Maxwell better, the one with all the hair. It's like he had Samson Syndrome or something. Once he cut his mane and started to rock the fade, it seems his music lost something.
Now, don't get me wrong, "Pretty Wings" is a sensual jam, and all. But any cut -- any cut -- on "Urban Hang Suite" would dead "Pretty Wings."
I can't be the only one out there. Truthfully, is Maxwell's new CD all that?

Maxwell Finally Explains His Long Absence From Music

In case you missed it, Maxwell was featured in Sunday's New York Times. The crooner said the last set in the trilogy that is Black Summer's Night is so hot “like you might have to include condoms in it.”

He also finally explained his long absence from music when he said:
“When we all [him, D'angelo, etc.] came out,” Maxwell said, “it was just too much adulation, the accolades: the next this, the next that.” He felt confusion, he said, about “which part of you is that extension of the music and which part of you is that real person. I think my stepping away was my own sort of weird therapy for that.”
On the state of music today he said: “It’s made to have no peaks, no valleys. And we wanted [with this album], like, landscape. I wanted the music to sound like, ‘Oh my god, I’m looking at a vista, like I see a mountain over here, and water, and some clouds.’"

Will You Buy His Album?

In 1996, this man could do no wrong: cast within a trilogy (he, D'angelo and to a lesser extent Erykah Badu) of earthy-sounding new music (they dubbed it 'Neosoul,' despite the artists' frustrations with the term), the future of the music world seemed so bright.
Then, as quickly as it started, the lights began to flicker. Maxwell's two subsequent releases got lukewarm responses at best. Badu's eccentric ways got her labeled as "quirky" ("I'm an artist," was her only defense.)

And D'angelo? Drugs, not unlike Marvin and Donnie before him, did the Prince idol in.
Years have passed and now Maxwell is set to re-emerge this summer with his first album in nearly a decade. I don't usually do this ... but peep the first single here.