Didn’t expect it, but Dinh Tien Dat aka Mr. Dee makes some improvements with his sophomore solo, Giao Thong. The witty title track shows that Dee could craft a song based on a subject as mundane as traffic annoyances. While American rappers rhyme about anything cool but school, Dee makes it cool to be in school. On “Di Hoc,” he raps, “Nay cac ban nho phai that chiu kho / Dung thay qua kho ma cac ban lai bo / Vi trong cai kho moi lo cai khon.” Although his lyrical skill is still elementary, the positive message makes it justifiable. But that doesn’t mean Dee has not been making any progress with his writing. The autobiographical of “Chi Pheo” and the struggling of a homeless kid in “Khong Nha” proved that he has stepped up his storytelling artistry as well as his spontaneous deliveries and his ear-candy productions. Even if practice doesn’t make him perfect, it sure has paid off. Keep honing your skill, Dee!

Tuan Ngoc sings Tu Cong Phung songbook is a real treasure. It’s the best twelve dollars I had spent on an album. Beside the top-notch quality, such as singer’s vocals, musician’s arrangements, and writer’s lyrics, this rare gem could help you win a woman’s heart. Try to play this CD on a date. You don’t even have to say a word. Let the romantic voice of the charming man does all the talking for you. Really, who could resist Tuan Ngoc’s singing? He could reach beyond octaves and soar like a man who gives all his heart and soul to his lover. Take the title track, “Giot Le Cho Ngan Sau,” for example. At 4:40 minutes into the song, he takes off on the bridge, “Mot doi toi te tai…,” and just when you expect him to let his vocals evaporate into the air, he persists into the next passage, “Lang nghe muon cung sau hat xuong doi…,” without catching a breath. Even I could feel that shit, and I ain’t gay. Well, maybe not everyone could feel that shit, but if she (and her mom) hate “The master of closing his eyes and sings blindingly,” you don’t want her anyway. Drop her off, bye!

I read many American music critics—including Sasha Frere-Jones, Kelefa Sanneh, Jeff Chang, Jon Caramanica, Jon Pareles, Oliver Wang and Stanley Crouch—to get a feel for my own writing, and Greg Tate is the man that I admire most. His writing is sharp, provocative, and he always speaks his mind. Below is an except from his “Hardcore of Darkness: Bad Brains” to illustrate my point:

Hardcore? [Bad Brains] take it very seriously. You say you want hardcore? I say the Brains’ll give to you hardcore straight up the ass, buddy. I am talking about like lobotomy by jackhammer, like a whirlpool bath in a cement mixer, like orthodontic surgery by Black & Decker, like making love to a buzzsaw, baby. Meaning that coming from a black perspective, jazz ain’t it, funk it ain’t hardly, and they’ll probably never open for Dick Dames or Primps. Even though three white acts they did open for, Butch Tarantulas, Hang All Four, and the Cash, is all knee-deeper into black street ridims than the Brain ever been and ain’t that a bitch?

The essay came from his Flyboy in the Buttermilk, a book I have not one but two copies of. I thought I lost one so bought another one, but then found the other one.

Beside Tate’s book, Oliver Wang’s Classic Material: The Hip-hop Album Guide is a collection of hip-hop reviews that I come back from time to time for inspiration. One of my favorite pieces from the book is on Jay-Z contributed by Elizabeth Mendez Berry who is a brilliant critic I come to respect after reading up on her works, particularly with “Love Hurts.” In comparing Jay-Z with Che Guevara, she concludes her essay with:

Guevara abandoned a cushy career in medicine to pursue his lifelong goal, the creation of his an egalitarian society uncorrupted by decadence or deprivation, whereas Jay corrupted his community by selling street medication. Later, Che left the relative comfort of celebrity in communist Cuba to stir up revolution throughout Latin America, while Jay ditched dope-dealing for the relative comfort of Big Pimpin’ rap. Che died trying to change the world. Jay lives large in the world order. But even if you can knock Jay-Z’s logic, you can’t knock the hustle.

Damn, she sure knocked the hell out of Jay-Z’s logic, and I just love the way she ended the essay with the title of his track “Can’t Knock the Hustle” (his flow is virtuoso).

TTBlue’s response to my “Thanh Lam’s Memory Lane.” Sorry dude, no comments back on this site yet, but do keep your dream running wild.

This thick chick is not in my wild dream, but not so bad to look at.

A blog on book covers. Very nice!

Meant to post MOBA (The Museum Of Bad Art), but keep forgetting. It’s quite an interesting collection of arts that are “too bad to be ignored.”

Em, lai day voi anh
Ngoi day voi anh
Trong cuoc doi nay
Nghe thoi gian luot qua
Mua xuan khe sang
Chung nhu khong gian dang suoi am nhung giot tinh nong.

This song goes out to the one who reminds me to buckle up when I drive, shows me direction when I got lost, pulls me back when I stepped over the line, showers me with plenty of music, puts up with all my jazz and rap, dares to criticize my music taste, above all, gives me this space to say whatever I like, and never judges me for whatever I write. I am grateful for that.

Who is she? Again, just my very own imagination. In reality, who would want to be with this foul-mouthed motherfucker? I should learn a thing or two from my man Tuan Ngoc. Maybe when I get to his age, but not right now. Still appreciate how he could take Tu Cong Phung’s simple lyrics and fly with them. Of course, Duy Cuong’s skillful arrangement plays no small role in Tuan Ngoc’s performance.

Norah Jones, the girl who sold you sex without revealing her skin, is back with her third studio album Not Too Late. If Come Away With Me, which sold eight million copies, was to get you to runaway with her and Feels Like Home, which reached two million copies within the first month, had you settled down in a trailer home, Not Too Late, which will release at the end of January 2007, is a break-up-to-make-up deal.

On the album opener accompanied by an acoustic guitar ostinato, Jones wishes she could walk into a place you and her used to go, but she couldn’t without you. The memories are too strong, as she recounts in “Be My Somebody”: “I held your head up, do you remember? / When you wanted to make a blanket out of me / Oh I can’t lie… I been keeping score / And it’s your turn to wring me out / And lay me down to dry.” Yes, she’s mindfucking you again, and she’s damn good at it. She even invites you back to her jazzy “Little Room” that is big enough for you to do the things you like to do, and sings you a bluesy “Rosie’s Lullaby” if you are not in the mood to do anything. Can’t beat that, and it is still “Not Too Late,” to come home to mama, baby. She still wants you back because without each other, you both are going to be “Sinkin’ Soon” (a marvelous jazz arrangement with a kick-ass trombone break). So help her breathes and help her believes that you are “Not Her Friend” because she can’t pretend that you are. She can’t seem to stop “Thinking About You,” your cold hand, your broken voice, your twisted smile, and she knows exactly what you need to wash away your pain and to mend your “Broken” heart.

Talking about the art of album crafting. Jones and her musicians have mastered it by aiming straight at our soul from song to song, but in an easygoing route. Sex is presence (“Last night was a record to be broken / It broke all over the kitchen floor / Oh no don’t you go / I’m coming back with a rag / to wipe away the haze from the days / We’ve forgotten all about”) but never in your face. Affection is there but not over dramatic, thanks to that gruff voice, which sounds like a concoction of wild honey and cognac. Not Too Late will continue to dominate the pop chart and sellout like cocaine hits the street similar to its predecessors.

For a retrospective, Thanh Lam recovers eighteen selected tunes that are closed to her heart as well as her listeners’. The double-disc Giot… Lam shows that her singing has became more and more dramatic over the years. With the excessive use of vibrato, she delivers each song as if she’s about to burst into flame, but the musical productions appear to have ran out of propane. Nevertheless, the collection has its share of scintillating moments.

My patience is running out on Tung Duong. After his luminous Chay Tron debuted, he’s on the hideout for real. With the title track and “Trang Khat,” he got me so excited about the Vietnamese jazz scene. His thick, soulful voice combined with his potential to scat like a trumpet gave me so much hope, but he has nothing to follow up with for more than two years. Don’t sleep on me, man.

Since I already gave this album my 2 cents, let’s look at it in a different perspective—the art of crafting an album. As much as I adore the little iPod Shuffle, I gave it to my sister who could use it for exercise routine because I am not the type that listen to all the hits or only my favorites. I like to spend time with an entire CD, especially with hip-hop joints, to get a complete experience of what the artist is trying to communicate. Most of the time, Vietnamese singers just throw in a bunch of songs together to make an album. Rarely do they think about how an album should start or end, but Chay Tron is not the case. I am not sure if Le Minh Son did it consciously or unconsciously, but the songs fall together so perfect that the sequence created an epic. In the course of endless listening, I have noted some fluff on how the album is like a little fancy tale. It could be just my own imagination, but what the heck. Imagination is all I have, and it has been running pretty wild lately. So read on at my own peril.

Yeu

He’s wandering by himself searching for her in his dream. She is untouchable.

Chay Tron

He’s reminiscing the good old days when they still played hide and seek. She was his first sweet love.

Trang Khuyet

But the painful part comes when he reflects on their quarrels. Mad at him, she threw the moon back to the sky.

Lua Mat Em

When she was mad, he could see the fire in her eyes. She was burning like hell.

Trang Khat

Although he could see the flame in her complexions, she was still as beautiful as the moon and river.

Den Ben Anh Diu Dang

And when she came to him, she brought him joy and happiness.

Oi Que Toi

Who is she? It turns out that he’s referring to her as his homeland all these time.

Great designers don’t steal. We take inspirations wisely. With Thuy Nga’s Vi Yeu album cover, one could argue that it was inspired by Vanity Fair. Whoever photographed the cover just failed to move beyond what he or she has been influenced by. Let’s be real. Whatever design you come up with, people have done it. Just point out a project and the design observers like Steven Heller and Mirko Ilic will show you where they have seen something similar. In fact, that is exactly what they have done in The Anatomy of Design. With forty-nine projects selected, they unveil an array of sources where the designers might have picked up. The purpose of the book is not to point out where the designers have copied their work from, but to show how designers could still come up with their original work drawing from their inspirations. At the end, what makes your final piece distinctive is your own design sensibility, not the ones that influenced you.

After she did such a wonderful job with Ngoc Ha’s Nuoc Mat Mua Thu, I challenged her to take on Y Lan’s Hoi Tinh. As a chemical engineer who writes instructions on how to operate pharmaceutical equipments, could she move beyond her dried, mechanical style into something creative and erotic? To my surprise, she did not only nailed the translation, but also makes it more sensual than my original intention with her good use of Vietnamese.

Ý Lan là một trong những người đàn bà không muốn trưởng thành. Cũng chẳng tội tình gì, tuy cũng có lúc cô cũng đáng bị đét cho vài cái bởi cái tính ỏng ẹo như đứa con gái mới lớn, khi mà cô đã bước qua cái tuổi 50. Làm sao thay đổi bây giờ, bởi chính cô cũng thừa nhận đó là cái tính bẩm sinh của mình. Cô là một người đàn bà sở hửu một trái tim non dại, một tâm hồn trẻ trung và tràn đầy dục cảm.

Khi mới nghe qua đĩa nhạc Hỏi Tình mới nhất của Ý Lan, tôi lấy làm khó hiểu không biết cái dụng ý của cô là gì. Nhạc truyền thống, nhạc jazz, tình ca, và cả liên khúc hổn độn. Nhưng sau khi nghe lại một vài lần, tôi chợt hiểu thì ra đây là một động tình chứa đầy sự cám dỗ. Cô mời gọi tình yêu với “Hỏi Tình” để rồi van xin tình yêu đến với mình trong khi cô “Còn chất chứa tình yêu một thời để rồi nghe tàn phai / Bóng anh xa dần mãi còn lại tôi giữa cơn đau này” (“Còn Nghe Tiếng Gọi”). Trong “Anh Là Tất Cả,” cô thao thức trông chờ ban mai đến để được đến với tình vì chỉ có tình mới xoa tan mọi lo lắng phiền muộn trong cô. “Thôi thì… thôi thì… như thế cũng xong / Bao năm… bao năm chăn gối trông hòng gì đâu? / Đắng cay hờn tủi đã nhiều / Lệ tuôn như đổ trăm chiều khô đâu.” Cũng dể hiểu thôi, ở cùng lứa tuổi với cô có bao nhiêu người đàn ông có thể chìu chuộng cô như thời còn trai trẻ. Cô cần một gã thanh niên cường tráng để có thể song hành với cô trong cơn thác loạn (“Đêm Thấy Ta Là Thác Đổ”). Tiếng rên rỉ trong “Áo Lụa Hà Đông” như để khoấy động lòng người. Và như thể là chưa đủ, cô buông lời trêu gẹo lúc “Khỏa Thân Đêm,” để làm cho ta thêm thèm khát.

Có thể không ưa cái ỏng ẻo của Ý Lan, nhưng phải nói cái tính này đôi lúc cũng làm cho con người ta thèm ước. Không nên nghe dĩa nhạc này nêu như ta là kẻ ngoan đạo bởi nó sẽ đẩy ta vào con đường tội lỗi. Đó là trái với lời dạy của Chúa.