It may be a hard market to sell to, but I just want to say that mid-nineteen hundreds music needs be mixed with modern day music more often. Personally I love 'Blue Eyes Meets Biggie' which is a mix of Sinatra and Biggie material and in my opinion works almost perfectly. This album, while not being as consistent, contains some good stuff that helps extend my belief. It tries to mix the great, charming voice of Nat with beats of many different styles that maintain a certain oldness to 'em from his era, but also use some of today's hip hop themes among other genres.
The best tracks are great,. Largely 'Lush Life' and 'More and More of Your Amour'. Others particularly in the first half of the album (which feels more like something from his era) like 'Straighten Up and Fly Right', Day in Day Out, 'Brazilian Love Song', 'Hit That Jive, Jack' are also worth checking out. The tracks with the rap features are okay. 'The Game of Love' works better than 'Walkin' My Baby Back Home' where the rap which is at the end of the song doesn't really fit in. I'm a fan of Nas but to be honest 'The Game of Love' probably could have done without it also, but it works fairly well anyway.
As the album moves on, you get more skippable tracks. The second half musically moves further away from the traditional 1950s jazz and doesn't work as well. The Marley brother's track 'Calypso Blues' and 'El Choclo' are okay... and then 'Pick Up' doesn't even feel like a song, most of it is just Nat and a chick talking to each other trading lines. After that, 'Anytime Anyday Anywhere' isn't bad with its soulful jazzy beat and then 'Nature Boy' finishes the album off with an Indie rock type of lo-fi beat behind it which doesn't do it for me.
Overall, it's a mix of good and okay, as it is fairly broad from a genre point of view a touch like this year's 'The Spirit of Apollo', it's not surprising that it's fairly hard to like everything on offer. On the whole there is nothing too bad and I'd be happy to listen to this whole thing again even if there are only two to three really enjoyable tracks.
Best Tracks: Lush Life, Brazilian Love Song, More and More of Your Amour, The Game of Love.
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