Diandra Reviews It All

If ever I wanted a soundtrack for city life it would be made by Karriem Riggins. As a matter of fact, he would not even need to make it because he already has. Headnod Suite makes me want to breakout in dances across side-walks and under the city lights of my community. It bustles with a liveliness that feels to exuberant when compared to “real life”, which is why I say it represent “city” or “urban” life.

In 29 tracks, you feel like you have entered a summer’s day in Brooklyn. Riggins’ rhythms are the graffiti markings that course through building walls to color-splash its rigid structure; the building, in this scenario, being you. The strange greatness of music is its ability to make you realize how stiff you are as you walk through life by showing you that you can glide through it. Riggins interplays between jazz, funk, and, predominantly, Hip Hop feels like giant self-displays of listeners capacity to catch a good beat. There is no way that in listening to this album you will not want to move. From the saxophone of “Suite Intro” to the “gaming” bassline of “Oddness” or the funkadelic synths of “Joy And Peace”, Riggins’ Headnod Suite show that life, in essence, is an arcade game. While this album can be considered Hip Hop instrumental, there are electro-waves that course through its arrangements to make you feel like its “city vibes” have been digitized. Thus, you are not walking through “any sidewalk”, but one where the Super Mario Bros. might pop into to share in your party. This may sound like a humorous analogy but it capture the fun, analog- nature of this album.

Riggins is a renown multi-intrumentalist, which explains for the sporadic nature of this Headnod Suite. Each of its 29 tracks are distinct from the other and do not always flow so smoothly into the next song, but I, actually, enjoyed the “off” nature of Riggins’ arrangements. Like any genius/ human being, his thoughts are not always synchronized or fluid. For example, I loved the combustible kick-drums and psychedelic guitar flows etched within “Cheap Suite 1-4”. There is never a moment of stillness or no surprise in this record, which not only makes it danceable but sparkling of imagination. If he cannot move your body to his symphonic Hip Hop dream, he can definitely move your mind into the Headnod Suite, which you can buy by clicking here.