Joking they’re “the band formerly known as The Time,” after one Prince Rogers Nelson refused the group he founded as an offshoot in 1981 to use their name, they still have it.
Back in the ‘80s when Prince ruled as a unicorn-ish sexual avatar, equal parts Shakespeare’s Puck and a naughty cherub, Morris Day offered the demi-illegal street counterbalance. The Time found its boomBUHbuhBOOM rhythmic thrust in Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who Prince fired in a bit of pique in the mid-’80s; Day being the Pimp Extraordinaire, a man of equal nastiness, but a much more real-in-the-ghetto-gone-uptown modality.
“777-9311” was the phunkee sauce to Prince’s more diaphanous carnality. That down-in-the-grind grooving marked “Jungle Love,” “Jerk Out” and “The Bird” as both vain and primal. Wide lapel suits in crayola colors, razor sharp moves and blaring horns, this was a full-immersion punk-funk-dirtyness.
Condensate would be easy to write off as quaint, time traveling back to 1988 without irony. Today beats are thicker, techno’s the norm and there’s a hard-(on-the)-ho attitude that’s more brutal than sexual.
Yet, there is a deliciousness to Condensate that’s undeniable. Even the ham-fisted “skits” that break up the tracks wield a dorky charm to make the randy sexcapades and turbo-luxe lifestyle facades more throwback than lame posturing.
There is silken R&B, with synth-strings, lush vocals and swirling melodics on the gold-digger seen for what she is on “Lifestyle,” where freak factor brokers entrée to a Learjet life that’s check-listed like some “Falcon Crest” design sheet. Equally romptastic is “Role Play,” where a fat-bass part tempers the obvious bald-faced shamelessness. Then the allegoric “Cadillac” celebrates rides of the big engine and flesh-covered ilk.
Still, you get lost in the multi-rhythm percussion of “Faithful,” delineating Day’s morality in an open and honest fashion… suggesting there are those he chose and those he’ll sample, and that’s how it goes.
Like a franker Cee Lo Green, this is the creamy center of desire, etched with the stinging guitar of Jesse Johnson, the comic foil-ery of Jerome, Day’s faithful valet, and an audacity of “who I am” that makes Day an even more irascible lothario than Prince.
If “Trending” tries too hard and “Condensate” is dumb, the hard undulation of “Strawberry Lake” is sheer exuberance for the sake of the jam—and the satiny closer “gohometoyourman” is a soul jewel as luxurious as prime Teddy Pendergrass.
Sometimes old is good. This ain’t a Cee Lo recasting, but the real deal—slamming like they never left the party.