JNez@thirtydaes.2010

so…Madonna is turning 50 guys. Wow. So that means we’re old too. k. so, many of us have children. and they’re getting older. and asking questions. and demanding two-way accountability. and the older they get, the further we drift from the way we were when we were that age. dangit, lost my train of thought…

…anyway…so Madonna is turning 50. and she has a 12-year old daughter and an 8 year old son. Madonna guys, yes that Madonna. bouncing out of a wedding cake, writhing around on the floor with her lace panties showing. the Madonna who demanded to introduce sex and sexual fulfillment into her music like no other woman before her. the Madonna who challenged authority & religion by ripping up the Pope’s picture and publicly ridiculing what were then “family values” with artistic statements that were so inflammatory as to be banned and publicly denounced. but damn, through it all, i can’t front, she did a darn good job of turning those experiences into hot, hot dancefloor hits. heck i like to get my dance on like anybody else…well at least I did.

but I’m 35 now. yes. I have 3 daughters, 13, 9, and 7. collectively we laugh at the young person I was. they cackle over photographs of me with a flat top and imitating Bobby Brown & MC Hammer. and i cackle and shake my head with them, wondering what the heck was I thinking. that person in those photos is LONG gone…my daughters have never met him. if i even had an inclination to bring him back or resurrect that persona in any dimension other than karaoke i would be jested out of my home. word.

Lady M has flirted with and returned to several music genres over her long, illustrious career: dance/pop, r&b, dance, electronica, pop, industrial, techno…the list goes on. For Hard Candy, her last album with Warner Bros./Sire Records, which also coincides with her 50th birthday celebration in August and comes off the heels of her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; guess what she does: Madonna mugs hip hop. I was going to give her credit for renting it, but she barely does that with the songs on this cd. this is more like a thief in the night swiping of hip hop beats and swagger. on a 50 year old white chick, mind you.

so at what point do you come to terms with the reality that you don’t even target certain demographics with your art? after all, those of us who enjoyed you 25 years ago have aged too and as our children have reminded us, we’re happily distanced from the overtly trendy shit. heck, we’ll be ridiculed if we even attempt to appropriate it. my girls reinforce that for me all the time…

so at what point does someone tell Madonna that…at the least…ok..let’s choose a more demure cd cover? it’s extremely difficult to even get past that misstep of a re-introduction of Madonna enough to even sample the cd…but when you do…there are surprises, and then there are no surprises. i mean let’s be clear, Madge has always had an r&b flair, no matter how she tried to distance herself from it in the wake of her worldwide stardom. 14 years ago, she recorded an r&b album, Bedtime Stories that is most memorable for its hit debut with Babyface, “Take A Bow. but that turned out to be an adult contemporary smash, the radio format that seems to have most supported the longevity of her career. r&b radio ignored that song and the rest of the cd’s cuts, even though great producers of the time “Dave “Jam” Hall and Dallas Austin blessed Madonna with incredible and shamefully overlooked beats.

after her last cd, Confessions On A Dance Floor, all but solidified her abandonment of her r&b roots and audience, what a shocker to discover that for her last album with Warner Bros., Madonna returns full on to r&b/hip hop and its undisputed dominion over mainstream pop music over the past decade. Timbaland & Pharrell Williams are the producers who have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create with pop music’s undisputed queen and ruler. make no mistake, these guys are up the task and bring their absolute best beats, represented here on half of the album’s 12 cuts:

in any case, Hard Candy hits stores next Tuesday, April 29.