Several members of The West Coast Get Down (WCGD), heard on Kamasi Washington’s hella bloated “The Epic,” are branching off with their own releases. Coming from the same marathon jam session that spawned The Epic, comes such fantastic releases as Thundercat’s Drunk, Miles Mosley’s Uprising, and now Cameron Graves’ Planetary Prince. The WCGD are really taking the jazz/funk/R&B world by storm, and giving a huge kick in the nards to one of the most unpopular genres as of late. To quote Frank Zappa, “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.”
This 78 minute progressive jazz fusion journey is inspired by The Urantia Book, which is about the universe and spirituality and things (I haven’t read it). I guess the number 7 is referenced a lot in it, so he uses the 7 time signature quite often. So Hideous did this with Laurestine, 7 tracks, 7 time signature, etc.
Planetary Prince screws up that whole 7 thing by having 8 tracks on this album. Sad day. Sitting right in the middle of it all is my favorite track off of the album, Adam & Eve. It starts off very loose and chill, but when it really starts going and Cameron kicks into the piano solo, it absolutely DESTROYS.
Up next in the WCGD, I have Ronald Bruner Jr's album in my sights, Truimph.
