Through her cutting and renowned Beloved Trilogy, author Toni Morrison cradled beautiful multitudes within her many captivating and boundless words. She spoke of suffering in the past and present yet saw into the future. Though her voice will reverberate forever, her omnipresent torch has been passed down across generational lines, grasped by the persistent voices of the present, afflicted as ever but determined to be the clairvoyant she was. Enter Virginia-grown, now Chicago-based emcee, McKinley Dixon.
Dixon is a natural storyteller, meticulous with his words but shouting to be heard nonetheless. Like the aforementioned Pulitzer Prize winner, he's filled with righteous anger, harmony, reason and love. He's a necessary voice of poetic multitudes who, on his sophomore record Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? — an obvious homage to Morrison's trilogy — tries to hold her flame with tender hands, sustaining its burn with every breath exhaled through each powerful verse stirring within him.
Throughout Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, Dixon continues to show off his acrobatic way with words and parades his affecting precision of imagery. There's a young man who lifts his head for a murmur of butterflies to escape his lungs and out the mouth ("Dedicated to Tar Feather"), and another who was once a withering plant afraid of the sun, now verdant with its branches flung high ("Mezzanine Tippin"). However, it's Dixon's illusory ways with memory that will have listeners suspended, attentive, and in awe of his storytelling genius.
"Live! From The Kitchen Table" draws from childhood memories at the table where a mother struggles to keep a house a home, while "Run, Run, Run" presents a less pointed memory but still transports listeners into that kindred environmental feeling of survival coursing through neighbourhoods like the ones he grew up in. Whether it's a flashback of running around, dodging bullets with friends, or gazing across the table at a loving mother with uncertainty hanging above like a chandelier, Dixon, like Morrison's Sethe and Paul D in Beloved, has 'more past than anybody." He desires "some kind of tomorrow," but he must still remember. Remembering keeps him from flying too close to the sun, as he envisions a utopia where Black boys and girls don't die.
Filled with images of violence and childhood memories, Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? still sees Dixon's heart elsewhere and beyond despite the perforated stills that flip through his mind. He savours moments far more innocent or untouched because they allow him to turn everything he encounters into gold — he's not only Icarus, he's also King Midas too. So even when he recounts the slaying of his dear friend Tyler, he honors his name so those who listen to "Tyler, Forever" will know it forever, as it is exalted with a parting message that life should be celebrated and adorned with flowers long before they're placed on top of caskets. Again, the past is just that for Dixon on Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? But it must be reckoned with to see the beauty of the present and for the future to be realized.
This desire to be touched by the sun is not without acknowledging the concrete Dixon had sprouted from. A sense of vision and hope are detectable in his voice throughout the record, but callousness, frustration and remorse live there moments too. Thankfully, there's nuance — one extreme never outweighs the other — as each is acknowledged in dialogue. And this is where this album differs from his last. For My Momma and Anyone Who Look Like Her showcased a more carnal Dixon, reactive to the pain that lurched in his thoughts. The chain he donned two years ago on "Chain So Heavy" still weighs achingly, but it no longer pulls him beneath the dirt, gasping for air. Now, as the sun hits his chain, with "light from pendant piercing right through [his] shirt" ("Mezzanine Tippin"), Dixon reflects hope and light unto others all around as he embraces a version of himself that is measured enough to contemplate and weigh the pressures of life.
When Dixon breaks through the frenetic instrumental and his verbose onslaught on "Tyler, Forever" to ground himself — "Ahhh, shit / Settle down" — he pushes onward with a steadiness, dressing it in sentimentality and what-if's: "I'm sure if he was here now he'd say 'that shit's unheard of' / I'd laugh, say 'Yeah, you right, it's prolly true.'" This composed posture breathes life into all of Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, resulting in an aura deeply comprehensive of feelings and experiences expressed by Black voices years before and a voice that will speak long after his own. Like Morrison, Dixon knows the necessity of scaling the boundaries of history and memory to reconcile the past, both good and bad — a slain friend and a loving mother, all of it — to manifest a future filled with life touched by the sun, some kind of tomorrow cast in gold and love.
(City Slang)Dixon is a natural storyteller, meticulous with his words but shouting to be heard nonetheless. Like the aforementioned Pulitzer Prize winner, he's filled with righteous anger, harmony, reason and love. He's a necessary voice of poetic multitudes who, on his sophomore record Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? — an obvious homage to Morrison's trilogy — tries to hold her flame with tender hands, sustaining its burn with every breath exhaled through each powerful verse stirring within him.
Throughout Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, Dixon continues to show off his acrobatic way with words and parades his affecting precision of imagery. There's a young man who lifts his head for a murmur of butterflies to escape his lungs and out the mouth ("Dedicated to Tar Feather"), and another who was once a withering plant afraid of the sun, now verdant with its branches flung high ("Mezzanine Tippin"). However, it's Dixon's illusory ways with memory that will have listeners suspended, attentive, and in awe of his storytelling genius.
"Live! From The Kitchen Table" draws from childhood memories at the table where a mother struggles to keep a house a home, while "Run, Run, Run" presents a less pointed memory but still transports listeners into that kindred environmental feeling of survival coursing through neighbourhoods like the ones he grew up in. Whether it's a flashback of running around, dodging bullets with friends, or gazing across the table at a loving mother with uncertainty hanging above like a chandelier, Dixon, like Morrison's Sethe and Paul D in Beloved, has 'more past than anybody." He desires "some kind of tomorrow," but he must still remember. Remembering keeps him from flying too close to the sun, as he envisions a utopia where Black boys and girls don't die.
Filled with images of violence and childhood memories, Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? still sees Dixon's heart elsewhere and beyond despite the perforated stills that flip through his mind. He savours moments far more innocent or untouched because they allow him to turn everything he encounters into gold — he's not only Icarus, he's also King Midas too. So even when he recounts the slaying of his dear friend Tyler, he honors his name so those who listen to "Tyler, Forever" will know it forever, as it is exalted with a parting message that life should be celebrated and adorned with flowers long before they're placed on top of caskets. Again, the past is just that for Dixon on Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? But it must be reckoned with to see the beauty of the present and for the future to be realized.
This desire to be touched by the sun is not without acknowledging the concrete Dixon had sprouted from. A sense of vision and hope are detectable in his voice throughout the record, but callousness, frustration and remorse live there moments too. Thankfully, there's nuance — one extreme never outweighs the other — as each is acknowledged in dialogue. And this is where this album differs from his last. For My Momma and Anyone Who Look Like Her showcased a more carnal Dixon, reactive to the pain that lurched in his thoughts. The chain he donned two years ago on "Chain So Heavy" still weighs achingly, but it no longer pulls him beneath the dirt, gasping for air. Now, as the sun hits his chain, with "light from pendant piercing right through [his] shirt" ("Mezzanine Tippin"), Dixon reflects hope and light unto others all around as he embraces a version of himself that is measured enough to contemplate and weigh the pressures of life.
When Dixon breaks through the frenetic instrumental and his verbose onslaught on "Tyler, Forever" to ground himself — "Ahhh, shit / Settle down" — he pushes onward with a steadiness, dressing it in sentimentality and what-if's: "I'm sure if he was here now he'd say 'that shit's unheard of' / I'd laugh, say 'Yeah, you right, it's prolly true.'" This composed posture breathes life into all of Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?, resulting in an aura deeply comprehensive of feelings and experiences expressed by Black voices years before and a voice that will speak long after his own. Like Morrison, Dixon knows the necessity of scaling the boundaries of history and memory to reconcile the past, both good and bad — a slain friend and a loving mother, all of it — to manifest a future filled with life touched by the sun, some kind of tomorrow cast in gold and love.
