Bilal

How a soulful singer-songwriter got over and got free.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Sep 21, 2010

Neal Santos IS THAT JAZZ?: "I wrote a lot of these new songs like Wayne Shorter would write a song," says Bilal. "Better still, how Miles Davis would cover a Shorter composition."

When Germantown native Bilal Oliver released 1st Born Second in 2001, the future looked golden. He had a fanciful falsetto voice, swerving, soulful melodies and Interscope's major-label backing.

Things changed with 2006's Love for Sale. The album was free, open-ended, frenetic — far adrift from the neo-soul wave he came in on. "I was fighting the whole time I was making that record, with the label, as I was writing lyrics in the studio," says Bilal, who lives in Harlem these days but returned to Philly for a show last week. "I had the session cats telling me my songs were weird and that nobody's going to like this. I had to literally stop tape and throw those guys out of the studio." He's laughing as he remembers. Interscope had signed Oliver for a certain sound and, in his estimation, didn't expect or want him to grow into the free-jazzy guitar-slinger he had, in actuality, always been.

"That's how I started out doing in college — the singer-songwriter thing where you sit down at a desk, write a song, then make the track. Not just start with a track." Bilal still digs 1st Born Second. There's so many moods for him to love. But that album had a dozen-plus producers, including Philly's James Poyser and ?uestlove. This second CD had a more singular vision of soul music, maybe one with louder guitars and less hip-hop. "But I was told that's not how black people make records." When Love for Sale got leaked and bootlegged before release, Interscope shelved the record. But don't think of Bilal and Love as hostages. They are legends of the ether, free as birds and joyfully all over the place.

The same goes for Airtight's Revenge, his new album.

"It's all free," says Bilal of vocals that glide, wheedle and bleat unbound with music that covers the sonic waterfront. "I wrote a lot of these new songs like [jazz saxophonist] Wayne Shorter would write a song. Better still, how Miles Davis would cover a Shorter composition by taking Wayne's complex notions of harmony and chord changing and breaking it down to this simple whole tone scale." Bilal sought to create arrangements so open ended that in live performance, they'd become a different song every night.

While the jutting rhythms of "All Matter" and "Restart" sound like King Crimson, "Cake & Eat It Too" is a bleakly feverish avant-blues jam. "Flying" is a blackly tart tune about a dope dealer's daughter breaking her hump on a stripper pole. "It is a rough story," laughs Bilal, who was inspired by Iceberg Slim and his terrible tales of women doomed from the start. "Levels" may sound darkly electronic and horn-filled, but its words are confessional.

"[With] 'Who Are You,' though, I'm challenging the world to look deeper," he says. Longtime fans may remember that Bilal grew up with a Christian mother and a Muslim dad. Thoughts of uplift and religion have long weighed heavily on his mind. "There're more similarities amongst the religions than there are differences."

Bilal has lots of plans, like moving home to Philly to start an arts lab ("too expensive in New York City"). But right now he's concentrating on "fucking with people's psyches. I want this to be as freeing to hear as it was to make." So is Airtight more of a relief than a revenge? A sweet revenge, maybe. "It's not a dark negative revenge I'm talking about. It's about me having so much new love, new purpose for what I do. That's the revenge." Then he takes a deep breath and laughs hard and long. "It's definitely a relief, though."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

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