THE NEW YORK TIMES: In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album
THE NEW YORK TIMES: In the Wake of Ferguson, a Style-Blurring Album
BY SETH COLTER WALLS
“Throughout the album, Mr. Phillips can be heard rendering these varied cultural signals into a heterogenous work of art — but one that has a coherence the world often lacks. And this, in the end, seems like his latest understanding of “the digging of everything.” Sometimes that digging may involve appreciation; at other points, it is simply a process of documentation, or of profitably trying to sort one’s own complex feelings.
‘New Black Music is expression,’ Baraka once wrote, ‘and expression of reflection as well.’ A work like ‘The Grey Land’ serves as contemporary proof.”