| Nu Blaxploitation | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Don Byron |
| Cover: | Nu Blaxploitation.jpg |
| Released: | 1998 |
| Genre: | Funk, jazz, hip hop[1] |
| Label: | Blue Note[2] |
| Producer: | Don Byron |
| Prev Title: | Bug Music |
| Prev Year: | 1996 |
| Next Title: | Romance with the Unseen |
| Next Year: | 1999 |
Nu Blaxploitation is an album by the American musician Don Byron, released in 1998.[3] [4] He is credited with his band, Existential Dred.[5] Byron supported the album with a North American tour.[6]
The album was recorded in December 1997 and January 1998. The poet Sadiq Bey performed on many of the tracks.[7] Biz Markie contributed rap verses to "Schizo Man".[5] Reggie Washington played bass; Uri Caine played piano.[8] "Blinky" is about the abuse of Abner Louima by the NYPD.[9] "If 6 Was 9" is a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song; it contains a passage from the Turtles' "Happy Together".[10] [11] Byron covered a couple of Mandrill songs; the band was one of Byron's childhood favorites.[12] "Dodi" references Dodi Fayed, while "Furman" refers to racist LAPD cop Mark Fuhrman, known from the trial of OJ Simpson.[13] "Domino Theories" was inspired by the work of political scientist Andrew Hacker.
Time called the album "overtly political funk and rap" full of "dark, fertile electric grooves."[14] The Chicago Reader deemed it "an incisive collection of loose-limbed funk, acerbic spoken word."[9] Stereo Review considered Nu Blaxploitation "a mix of old-school groove, social protest, and surrealistic asides—just the kind of ambitious sprawl you'd expect from someone who dedicates his album to both Latin/funk purveyors Mandrill and classical composer Arnold Schoenberg (among others)."[15]
Jazziz wrote that the album "unfolds like a series of existential concerns set to a backbeat—a churlish, unapologetic bit of brilliance that vamps, grooves, strolls, and riffs on several levels at once."[16] Newsday labeled it "a one-of-a-kind testimony on what it's like to be a caring, daring African-American intellectual-bohemian at the tail end of the 20th Century."[17] The Washington Post stated that "Byron has writer Sadiq tiresomely spell out his points with words that recall the sophomoric scribblings of punk poet Henry Rollins."[18]
AllMusic praised the "somber, chamber jazz arrangements and a bevy of funky, swinging charts."