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K-OS crosses musical boundaries with BLack on Blonde
If K-OS had released his sprawling double-CD, BLack on BLonde in 2007, perhaps American rock critic Sasha Frere -Jones wouldn't have stirred up a hornet's nest by accusing contemporary musicians of divorcing white rock from its black roots.
In his essay, A Paler Shade of White: How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul, that appeared in the New Yorker magazine six years ago, Frere-Jones wondered why "rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties." Unsurprisingly, his position, along with his use of the word "miscegenation," created quite a controversy. (The word is defined by the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary as "the interbreeding of different races.")
It's uncertain exactly what effect K-OS was going for by christening his new album BLack on BLonde, but as evidenced by the set's 19 tracks, it was interbreeding of the musical kind that was uppermost in his mind.
For those who've been tracking his career, the news that K-OS was releasing a double-disc of 10 hip-hop jams BLack ) and nine rock songs (BLonde) didn't seem particularly radical. Exit, his major label debut in 2002, was celebrated for its eclectic mix of musical styles even then, and he's always continued on...