The Headphone Masterpiece
When you put the word "masterpiece" in the title of your debut double CD, you'd damn well better be able to back it up. Thankfully, Cody Chesnutt has the goods. This precocious, sex-obsessed, spaced-out, spiritual singer is practically bursting at the seams with talent and ideas. WithThe Headphone Masterpiece, he delivers a homemade, lo-fi stew made of smooth funk, forceful rock, and gritty hip-hop, all topped off by the sweet-crooning voice of a great soul singer. Across 36 tracks, Chesnutt invites you into his psyche, and it's a unique journey to say the least, wending as it does from the weightiest of spiritual concerns to that morning's hard-on. So is it a masterpiece? Well, not quite. Even Mr. Chesnutt must believe that he's got better music still in him. ButThe Headphone Masterpieceis an ambitious opening salvo from an artist who may well take his place in the celebrated lineage that extends fromHendrixandSly StonethroughGeorge Clinton,Prince,D'Angelo, and so on. Once he learns to harness his surging electricity, Chesnutt may offer us a true masterpiece--or even a few of them.--Marc Greilsamer