Uptown Saturday Night

Amazon.com

While they aren’t the first to do so, Camp Lo’s Sonny Cheeba and Geechie Suede make a direct appeal from hip-hop’s current generation back to the blaxploitation era on Uptown Saturday Night, which recrafts the up-tempo, party atmosphere of the swinging 1970s, resplendent in the musical and cultural iconography of Harlem- and Bronx-style blaxploitation. Even for listeners who never watched Shaft, Superfly, or The Mack, Camp Lo’s songs carry themselves with a cool air of slick styles. As critics have noted, Cheeba and Suede’s lyrics are often nonrhyming barrages of key blaxploitation terminology that–read conventionally–actually make no sense, but their spitfire pacing makes up in style what their verses lack in content (which is actually a pretty good description of blaxploitation, if you think about it). Much credit needs to go to producer Ski (who was also the musical mastermind behind Jay Z’s impressive debut, Reasonable Doubt), who shows a smart sampling ear with bubbly pop tracks that are infectious enough to rock the party while still appealing to hardcore hip-hop heads. –Oliver Wang