Maxwell: Maxwells Urban Hang Suite Album Review

Table Of Content

• Maxwell's Waiting Game: R&B Hitmaker Talks Loyalty, Longevity
• Prices, Payments, & Policies
• Maxwell, Fantasia, October London & More Confirmed For Cincinnati Music Festival
• Lifestyle
• Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise: February 10-14, 2024
• Expand music menu
• Ledisi to Receive Honorary Doctorate From Berklee College of Music

The official website lists a casino, spa, art gallery, fitness center, and more as additional amenities. His vocalizing—Brooklyn Baptist church-inspired but Quiet Storm smooth—remains a timbral wonder. On falsetto-driven torch tunes like “Lonely’s the Only Company (I&II),” his luscious voice wafts out of the speakers, floating on whispery utterances and feline coos that can cause shudders like the unexpected stroke of a hand down the spine.

Maxwell's Waiting Game: R&B Hitmaker Talks Loyalty, Longevity

Maxwell was selling a bohemian throwback version of gentleman soul at a moment marked by intense commercial pressure for black male R&B artists to keep it real and pledge allegiance to the street. Though it shares its name with Maxwell’s debut album from 1996, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise does not yet mention what songs the singer will performed on the trip. In 2018, he announced the final installment of his trilogy, Night, but the album has yet to surface. There’s no such thing as a rural hang suite; Maxwell only ever envisioned black love as a nuevo asceticism for contemporary urbane lifestyles. During the recording process, live musicians replayed MPC samples, early drum loops, and other demo sounds. In addition to multi-instrumentalist Maxwell and Matthewman, Urban Hang Suite’s other accomplished session players include Scritti Politti and Meshell Ndegeocello collaborator David Gamson, and Groove Collective keyboardist Itaal Shur (who co-wrote “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder”).

Prices, Payments, & Policies

Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite debuted at No. 38 on the Top R&B / Hip-Hop Albums chart, and I can recall my surprise, at the time, that Tower Records slashed the price of the cassette format to $7.99 (most new release cassettes at the time cost more than $10). “Chill” conveniently describes Urban Hang Suite’s atmospherics, as well as its central thematic concern. Long before Tinder-era millennials hijacked the word “chill” as a euphemism for “hook up,” the album staked out ground as makeout music that was also very much about the complex interpersonal politics of chilling, aka hooking up.

Maxwell, Fantasia, October London & More Confirmed For Cincinnati Music Festival

Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise To Set Sail With Ledisi, Musiq Soulchild & More In February 2024 - SoulBounce

Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise To Set Sail With Ledisi, Musiq Soulchild & More In February 2024.

Posted: Wed, 12 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

More than two decades after its April 1996 release, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite—one of that decade’s constitutive R&B albums alongside Meshell Ndegeocello’s 1993 Plantation Lullabies, D’Angelo’s 1995 Brown Sugar, and Erykah Badu’s 1997 Baduizm—remains a decidedly urbane New York City record. Born Gerald Maxwell Rivera and mostly raised by his mother in Brooklyn’s gritty East New York neighborhood, Maxwell started out crafting demos on a janky Casio keyboard when he was 17. Over the next few years, he bopped in and out of NYC recording studios, formulating his sound. Maxwell cut his live chops and developed a solid reputation, crooning at nightclub venues like Nell’s in downtown Manhattan. With melodious hooks to spare, Urban Hang Suite captures the sparkling intimacy and free-flowing conviviality that characterized New York’s R&B open mic nights in the 1990s to a greater degree than almost any other album of its time. Along with the special Valentine’s Day weekend concerts, parties, comedy shows and other activities will also be held on-board.

Lifestyle

The cruise comes off the “Sumthin’ Sumthin'” singer’s sold-out 25-date arena run, The NIGHT Tour, with Anthony Hamilton and Joe. The inaugural cruise will take place on the Norwegian Pearl with stops at Great Stirrup Cay and Nassau in the Bahamas. In addition to two performances from the Brooklyn native, attendees will also be treated to special guest appearances from Ledisi, Robert Glasper, Sabrina Claudio, Musiq Soulchild, Leela James, Gallant, and more. In the event that the cost of fuel increases between now and the time we sail, a fuel surcharge will be imposed to each passenger for our sailing. All passengers will be notified via email if such fuel surcharge is added to the cost of your cabin.

Cool and classic, Maxwell has remained everywhere and barely there in the culture, simultaneously indispensable and inaccessible. The long-stroke idealization of sex as intimate connection ran counter to romance-challenged, freaky-sex tunes storming the charts around the same time, like R. What’s more, Maxwell’s cosmological orientation was squarely rooted in R&B, not in hip-hop, which distinguished him from more ruffneck peers like D’Angelo, Ginuwine, and Mark Morrison.

Expand music menu

If you make additional payments totaling $500 and your next scheduled payment due is $500, nothing will be charged on the due date. If you make additional payments totaling more than the next scheduled payment amount, the overage will be deducted from your final payment. “Whenever Wherever Whatever,” a drum-less Matthewman co-write that sets Maxwell against tense acoustic guitar, is the set’s most blatant Sade homage.

Ledisi to Receive Honorary Doctorate From Berklee College of Music

Maxwell has announced the inaugural Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise, a four-night ocean cruise that takes place February 10-14, 2024. In addition to two exclusive sets by the R&B singer himself, it will feature performances by Robert Glasper, Ledisi, Gallant, Sabrina Claudio, Musiq Soulchild, and Leela James. The cruise takes place on the Norwegian Pearl with stops at Great Stirrup Cay and Nassau in the Bahamas. Maxwell is bringing his talents to new shores, inviting fans for a tropical experience in celebration of his debut album.

Maxwell is readying an album with teenage-era songs but first ‘NIGHT’ must fall

Prior to the cruise, Maxwell will hold a three-night engagement at the Wynn’s Encore Theater in Las Vegas on August 9, August 11 and August 12. The limited engagement, titled NIGHT, The Trilogy Show, will also signal the singer’s final installment of his blacksummers’night trilogy, which began in July 2009. Set to sail in February 2024, Maxwell will host an inaugural cruise in celebration of his critically acclaimed debut album, Urban Hang Suite. This 4-night Norwegian Pearl cruise will feature two exclusive performances by Maxwell. Guest artists include Ledisi, Robert Glasper, Sabrina Claudio, Musiq Soulchild, Leela James, and Gallant. The Neo-Soul singer is poised to release blacksummers’NIGHT — the final album of blacksummers’night trilogy he started in 2009 — soon under his imprint, Musze with BMG.

Disconsolate and sullen break-up joint “Lonely’s the Only Company (I&II)” comes up next. But the warmly optimistic “Reunion” suggests things are looking up, and by the time we get to “Suitelady (The Proposal Jam),” Maxwell has pledged his life eternally to his lady. Two dusky smooth jazzy instrumentals, opener “The Urban Theme” and closer “The Suite Theme,” bookend the album. The dramatic album sequencing turns Urban Hang Suite into soul music as hushed erotic breathing, rhythmic like warm blood coursing through the veins, the sensual choreography of two better halves moving toward a musical vision of holy union. He sported a outtasight, blow-out afro and retro-bohemian fashion that evoked the Afrocentric Fort Greene coffee bars, elegant brownstones, and sandalwood-smoky poetry lounges of mid-’90s Brooklyn.

The 3-time Grammy-winner will headline ‘Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite Cruise’ where he’ll perform twice from February 10, 2024 through February 14, 2024 on the Norwegian Pearl. With stops in The Bahamas’ Great Stirrup Cay and Nassau, additional performers on the cruise include Musiq Soulchild, Ledisi, Robert Glasper, Leela James, Sabrina Claudio and Gallant. Maxwell serenaded sold-out crowds last month at Los Angeles’s Hollywood Bowl and is preparing for a four-show stint at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center next week with the National Symphony Orchestra. He says he’s still taken aback when he learns fellow celebrities and everyday fans have loved his music.

Maxwell will release project with teen-era music after he releases 'NIGHT' - Mississippi Valley Publishing

Maxwell will release project with teen-era music after he releases 'NIGHT'.

Posted: Fri, 06 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

While D’Angelo constructed 1995’s Brown Sugar out of low-end sonics and throwback jazz, Maxwell had admiration for the Black British artists of the ’80s and early ’90s like Sade and Omar, given that they seemed to exert more artistic control than their American counterparts. In pursuit of Sade’s autonomy as well as her atmospheric jazz-inflected sound, he recruited her collaborator Stuart Matthewman as co-writer and co-producer, as well as other members of Sade’s Sweetback band to play on the album. Mixer Mike Pela, who’d also worked with Sade, helped deliver the album’s spacious mix.

“A guy from the record company came in and said, ‘It’s really beautiful, have you got drums coming in? '” (No.) While “Whenever Wherever Whatever” is another demonstration of Maxwell’s dexterity in the upper register, “Suitelady (The Proposal Jam)” has more hoarse bite, along with a rhythmic slink not unlike what Prince was playing with around the same time. The cruise comes off a sold-out 25-date arena run – The NIGHT Tour with Anthony Hamilton and Joe as well as a select run of U.S. and international tour summertime dates. The dates feature a three-night engagement at Hollywood Bowl, San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall (accompanied by the San Francisco Symphony), Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center (accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra) and Wynn’s Encore Theater in Las Vegas. Setting sail over valentines day weekend (Feb 10 – 14), the cruise will be stopping at two Bahamian destinations, Great Stirup Cay & Nassau.

According to the cruise’s official website, cabin sales open Thursday, July 13, at noon ET. The four-night cruise, which will feature two performances by Maxwell, will make stops in Great Stirrup Cay and Nassau, Bahamas. Stay informed with the latest news and offers from your favorite artists, events, and happenings. Maxwell has released a handful of singles in recent years, like “Off” and “We Never Saw It Coming,” and reissued his sophomore LP, Embrya. In 2021, he performed at the Soul Train Awards where he was honored with the Legend Award, and, last year, he covered Michael Jackson’s “The Lady in My Life” at the Billboard Music Awards. Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite was issued in 1996 and features the hit record “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)”, which took the debut to new heights.

Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite heralded the arrival of a top-of-the-class graduate of the old school of soul, one who could sing about romantic aspiration and tribulation with heart-wrenching emotion. It was as if the aesthetic that [Marvin] Gaye ascribed to -- 'music that has feeling, hope and meaning -- all the things people are looking for' -- had been rediscovered after a long, hedonistic interlude. The well-received Urban Hang Suite was a leading album in the neo-soul movement of the 1990s. Singles from the album included "Ascension (Don't Ever Wonder)" and "Sumthin' Sumthin',” and the Urban Hang Suite has since been certified 2x Platinum. In 1997, Maxwell followed his debut with an MTV Unplugged concert and album, which went Gold. According to a press statement, the Urban Hang Suite cruise will also feature comedy shows, parties, and more at sea during the Valentine’s Day holiday weekend.

(He didn’t give a release date.) Though hesitant to give details about the album that will follow it, the excitement on his face while talking about giving the world songs from his musical infancy couldn’t be hidden. In addition, the bass-heavy rhythmic engine for D’Angelo and Badu was hip-hop — both their debuts were co-produced in parts by Bob Power, who helped mix and engineer A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory. In the years since Urban Hang Suite was released, it’s frequently been name-checked, along with D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar (1995) and Erykah Badu‘s Baduizm (1997), as a foundational album for the neo-soul movement. But those two albums are really separate endeavors; Maxwell’s music is airier and often more dance-floor friendly, pushing past the 95 b.p.m. mark into a region where Brown Sugar never went, and that Baduizm only flirted with. Given the ubiquity of ghetto-centric hip-hop and R&B in 1996, Columbia wasn’t entirely confident they could successfully market Maxwell’s throwback, boho style to a desirable young black demo, nor were they initially sure that they could effectively cross him over to an international audience.