Orange is beautiful, like plugging headphones into a blender full of back issues of Wax Poetics. Juba Dance, (Audio8 artists Benjamin Lamar and Polyphonic the Verbose), succeed in time traveling through what seems like the entire history of Black American music… in just 13 tracks. From hip hop, to the blues, to disco, to r&b, toreal r&b, to jazz, to electro, Orange not only encompasses it all, but creates hybrid after hybrid until the conventional timeline of what-influenced-what is all but forgotten. The group further manages to incorporate elements of afro beat, salsa, and of course bossa nova. Benjamin Lamar, a current resident of Rio de Janeiro by way of Chicago, raps, sings, belts out the blues, and blows his horn over a mix of organic and electronic backdrops. He sounds equally at home on top of live instruments as he does over Polyphonic’s hypnotic synths and programmed drums.

Orange’s real triumph is its powerful, yet subtle, demonstration that all (good) America music shares the same African roots. The do-it-all approach used in conveying this message makes Orange, in a weird way, a concept album… or perhaps Juba Dance a concept group. In any event, it is this concept that holds these diverse songs together. While standouts like “Cachaca” and the masterpiece “Adams & Wabash” sound even better in light of this concept, some songs appear to have missed their mark unless their context is considered. This makes for an album that takes time to fully appreciate. Initially, I found Orange to be very inconsistent. In fact, at first I even wrote off Lamar as a mere jack of all trades. Fortunately, as I gave Orange a chance, I realized that Lamar’s accomplishment does not depend on total mastery of his many talents, but rather on his willingness to use them. He evokes the same earnest ballsiness which carried Black American music through these different genres in the first place.

This album succeeds not because it bridges the gaps, but because it closes them. No, Benjamin Lamar is not the best emcee, singer, horn player, song writer, nor percussionist you’ve ever heard, but he does it all seamlessly. By demonstrating that music as far removed as the blues and electronica can come from the same person, Juba Dance reminds us that this music came from same people.

- M. Steve Hammer