Love for Sale (Bilal album)

Love for Sale is the unreleased second studio album by American singer and songwriter Bilal. It was recorded from 2001 to 2003 at Electric Lady Studios in New York. Written and produced mainly by Bilal, the album was a departure from the producer-driven, hip hop-influenced neo soul music of 1st Born Second (2001), his moderately successful debut album for Interscope Records.

Love for Sale
Front sleeve of an early promotional pressing
Studio album by
Bilal
Released2006 (Internet leak)
Recorded2001–2003
StudioElectric Lady (New York)
Genre
Length58:59
Label
Producer
Bilal chronology
1st Born Second
(2001)		 Love for Sale
(2006)		 Airtight's Revenge
(2010)

Bilal pursued a more raw and independent direction with Love for Sale. He recorded alongside a live band featuring the trumpeter Leron Thomas, the drummer Steve McKie, and the pianist Robert Glasper, one of several alumnus the singer enlisted from his time studying at New York's New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. With the assistance of a few select producers, such as McKie and J Dilla, Bilal experimented with longer free-form compositions, drum-programmed sounds, and arrangements drawn from jazz and the blues. The resulting music features a densely layered fusion of genres, including soul, funk, and rock, with unconventional song structures and rhythms. Bilal's varied falsetto vocal performances throughout the album include sensual and ecstatic expressions of romantic devotion and lovesickness.

The album's experimental nature was met with resistance from Interscope, who delayed its release, although Bilal continued to lobby for it. As he mixed the album and neared its completion, a preliminary mix leaked and circulated widely on the Internet in 2006, becoming among the most notorious such cases during the rise of online piracy. Interscope responded by shelving its commercial release indefinitely, which furthered the conflict with Bilal and led to his release from the label. The leaked album quickly enjoyed an underground popularity and acclaim that inspired the distressed singer to tour performing its songs and continue his recording career. A cult favorite among black music fans, Love for Sale has since been considered Bilal's masterpiece and a forerunner to similarly progressive R&B music that developed later in the 2000s.

Background
Robert Glasper (in 2006), Bilal's music school alumnus and professional collaborator

Bilal developed an interest in singing while growing up in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, where he participated in a church choir at the behest of his Baptist mother.[1] On occasional trips to the city's jazz clubs with his father, he witnessed the working habits and lifestyles of musicians, which inspired him to pursue music seriously. Starting as a vocal student at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Bilal advanced to studying the music theory and language shared by the instrumentalist students so that he could socialize with them. In 1999, he went to New York to train at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where he developed a reputation among his peers for challenging their musical sensibilities. He also began recording professionally, contributing guest vocals for a few albums by R&B and hip hop acts, which connected him with the Soulquarians collective. His performance at a Prince tribute concert the following year generated much buzz in the music industry, leading to a recording contract from Interscope Records.[2]

Bilal's tenure at Interscope was marked by conflict, beginning when the label disapproved of the alternative rock-style demos he recorded for his prospective debut album.[2] Recorded with members of the Soulquarians and other high-profile producers, the resulting neo soul album 1st Born Second was released in July 2001 and became a top-10 R&B chart hit, while earning Bilal comparisons to the genre's contemporaries D'Angelo and Maxwell.[3] Despite its modest success, Bilal felt uncomfortable with the media's neo soul categorizations, finding them restrictive of black musicians.[4] He did not want to labelled as "the soul guy", according to the pianist Robert Glasper, who studied with Bilal at the New School and went on to play in his band.[2] As the singer explains, "I was trying to come from a jazz perspective ... trying to write open ended tunes that could go in any direction when played live."[5]

Writing and recording
Electric Lady Studios in New York

While performing on tour for 1st Born Second, Bilal and his backing band developed his music further in the directions of funk, rock, and jazz fusion. This experimentation informed his songwriting for Love for Sale.[5] Mainly a keyboard-oriented composer, Bilal composed most of the songs himself on piano, a process he cites as the beginning of his singer-songwriter experience.[6] He tells Vibe magazine that he was feeling "rebellious" and eager at the time to write, produce, and play music on his own.[7] After declaring his intention to Interscope for a more independent project, Bilal proceeded to record Love for Sale entirely at Electric Lady Studios in New York.[8]

Bilal pursued "a raw, bluesy feeling" for the album, inspired by the blues singer Howlin' Wolf's recordings, and used more live instrumentation than on 1st Born Second.[9] He worked with several new musicians for the first time, such as the hip hop producers Nottz and Denaun Porter, and enlisted fellow alumni from his time at the New School, including Glasper.[10] Others recruited into the band at Electric Lady were the trumpeter Leron Thomas, who had performed as part of Bilal's touring ensemble, and the Philadelphia-based drummer Steve McKie.[11] An unadventurous musician up to that point, McKie felt encouraged to leave his comfort zone and experiment more while working with Bilal.[2] In his account of the sessions in 2001 and 2002, he recalls walking into the studio and seeing only a Rhodes piano and a bass amp in the room with "really great acoustics" intended for drumming: "I felt like I was in [high school] tapping on tables and we just made kick from candle and notepad, put a drum mic on the floor and made a wild acoustic kick."[12]

An Akai MPC 2000, similar to the one used by Steve McKie

The majority of the production was done by Bilal, who experimented with arrangements from jazz and the blues, drawing from Wolf and the bassist-composer Charles Mingus in particular.[13] Some songs were composed and recorded with a few producers the singer chose personally, deviating from Interscope's preference for an entirely high-profile production.[14] He worked on the songs "Gotsta Be Cool" and "Lord Don't Let It" with McKie, who had begun exploring production at the time.[12] McKie recorded the musicians using a Roland VS-880 digital audio workstation, making adjustments to the drum sounds, and sampled the recordings through an Akai MPC 2000. "My screen went out on me a few times", McKie recalls of the sampler. "It was pretty amazing how we did the stuff ... That was the most bizarre way to do it but when you only have two pieces to work with you figure out how to make things work."[12]

Nottz and fellow producers J Dilla and Dr. Dre – who had both produced on 1st Born Second – assisted the recording in limited roles.[15] Bilal learned from Dilla an approach to arranging songs by way of drum programming. "He had this thing where no matter what he picked up he could bend his will into it ... throw the funk in it", the singer explains.[7] "Sweet, Sour U" was produced by Sa-Ra Creative Partners, a trio of producer-musicians working with electro, hip hop, and soul sounds.[16] The rapper Common performed with Bilal on "Sorrow, Tears & Blood", a remake of the Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti's 1977 song of the same name. Bilal cites Kuti's mix of jazz and folk tastes as another influence on his music.[17] Speaking on the entire process making Love for Sale, he says that he "grew a lot ... and felt the most comfortable as an artist there".[18]

Music and lyrics

Musically, Love for Sale features a fusion of several genres, identified by SoulTracks writer L. Michael Gipson as funk, electric rock, and "innovative, sometimes deconstructed soul".[19] Gipson adds that it departs from the contemporary hip hop sounds of 1st Born Second in favor of strong experimentation with "progressive jazz".[20] Consequence of Sound writer Chris Coplan also describes the sound as undergoing a "transformation" but closer to blues rock, while A.D. Amorosi of The Philadelphia Inquirer considers it "weirdly rock- and folk-tinged".[21] In the opinion of Prefixmag.com critic Rafael Martinez, the "incredibly dense and layered" album is "drenched in a soul flavor".[22]

The songs feature unorthodox rhythms and free-form composition, deviating from the conventional three-minute song structures of popular music.[23] Sarah Godfrey of The Washington Post calls them "genre-bending", "trippy", and generally lengthier than the average radio song.[24] Time Out magazine's Brad Farberman observes "haunting, otherworldly funk junkets" alongside "spare, earthy R&B rituals", while Eric Tullis of Indy Week makes note of "boogied-out anthems" such as "Something to Hold on To" and "Hollywood".[25]

According to LA Weekly's Rebecca Haithcoat, the album-opening "Something to Hold on To" serves as "the equivalent of foreplay" as Bilal declares his devotion to a lover. She interprets the lyrics to be "a letter (or text) dashed off after waking at 4 AM in a lovesick sweat", while Godfrey finds them to be more "grounded".[26] Haithcoat observes more brazen sentiments in "White Turns to Grey", citing the lyric, "Did I hear you say, 'come harder, baby'".[27] "Make Me Over" is "a manic funk love song" and "Sweet, Sour U" is a "sorrowful" one, in Godfrey's words.[16]

Bilal sings in a falsetto register throughout the album, performing in what Tullis suggests is a combustible manner comparable to a diesel engine or fireworks.[28] On "Something to Hold on To", Haithcoat identifies his vocal style as "ranging from throatier sensuality to his signature ecstatic falsetto".[27] "Make Me Over" demonstrates the singer's use of various vocal influences in the manner of other "chameleonic" musicians such as Sarah Vaughan, George Clinton, David Bowie, and Prince, according to the black-music academic Emily J. Lordi: "Bilal makes himself over in the sonic image of about five different singers (to my ear), from John Legend to Sly Stone."[29] Craig D. Lindsey from The Village Voice describes it as "perhaps the best Prince song Prince never recorded".[30] Bilal sings in a more wail-like manner on ballads such as "All for Love", on which he is accompanied by a punchy horn section.[31]

Marketing and leak

After the recording's completion in 2003, Interscope executives responded unfavorably to the album's avant-garde direction and delayed its release.[32] According to Bilal, "they really felt the record was kind of dark and not really sexy."[14] The production company contracting him at the time also reacted negatively. "They kept saying 'It's so fucked up and weird'", he explains. "Everybody except my band was like 'I don't know. This shit is so dark.'"[7] According to WBUR journalist Arielle Gray, Love for Sale was "shrouded in controversy and eschewed by his label because it deviated from the sound of his previous project."[33] Interscope's demand for different music, particularly a suitable single, was met with resistance from Bilal, who cites the conflict as his "weakest point" as an artist.[34]

Unwilling to record anew, Bilal continued to lobby for its release and mix the album in the studio, nearing its completion.[35] As he tells The Root, "I went to battle on that album on a daily basis, which I felt was kind of stupid because I felt the music was really dope, and most people I was playing it for were feeling it and loving it."[14] In mid 2005, he premiered a few of its songs at an event in Philadelphia hosted by the Beat Society producers showcase. Demonstrating a stylistic departure from his first album, the premier started a growing buzz about Love for Sale.[36] In January 2006, Bilal performed "All for Love" as a guest vocalist for Glasper's Jabane Ensemble at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York.[37] A promotional copy of Love for Sale was manufactured on vinyl.[1]

Title was Love for Sale and the shit never went on sale [Laughs]. Love for Free [Laughs].

— Bilal (2010)[7]

In early 2006, a preliminary mix of the album mysteriously appeared on the Internet, originally on a torrent site.[38] Copies of the leaked mix were shared on peer-to-peer networks and blogs, eventually being downloaded more than 500,000 times.[39] According to The Shadow League's music contributor Travis Larrier, "fans ate it up and passed the album around like [a] viral internet meme".[40] Gipson notes that there was also a "vinyl leak".[20] Shortly after the leak, Bilal posted a statement on his MySpace profile, expressing concern that this could end in the album being shelved by his record label.[36] Interscope wanted to abandon the project altogether and have Bilal start from scratch, which he refused. "I was really happy with the work that I had done, and we just started to go back and forth", he explains in retrospect.[41]

In September 2006, Adrian Covert reported for Prefixmag.com that neither Bilal nor Universal Records (Interscope's parent company) had made a statement about Love for Sale in the seven months since its leak, while noting the singer's absence from the artist roster at Universal's website. This led Covert to deduce that Love for Sale had been shelved.[36] Rumors circulated about the reasons and circumstances of the shelving, including theories that Interscope used the leak as an excuse to abandon a project that was too experimental to market, or that it was leaked by the label for this same reason. Bilal believes the rumors to all be "the truth to a certain extent".[42] Ron Hart of Blurt attributes the leak to "an industry insider" and calls it a "career near-death experience" for the singer, while Bonafide Magazine's Alex Naghshineh says it rendered the album's title "tragically ironic".[43]

Popularity and touring
Bilal (2007) toured on the strength of the leaked album's popularity.

Love for Sale's shelving distressed Bilal for some time and made him consider retiring from music.[44] According to Larrier, it appeared for a moment that Bilal would be another artist from "the soul music vanguard" of the late 1990s and early 2000s to succumb to professional setbacks and fade from the public view, similar to D'Angelo and Lauryn Hill.[40] Interscope released him from his contract soon after, although his fanbase expanded due to the album.[1] The leaked mix was praised on the Internet and developed a cult following, becoming more popular with his fans than 1st Born Second.[45] As the music journalist Aliya Ewing explains, it "seemed to be a more authentic and unbridled reflection of who he was as an artist at that point in time", while Gipson says that it revealed "Bilal's freaky side and phenomenal range in a way that 1st Born Second only hinted at".[46] According to Tullis, "he had become an unclassifiable soul hero".[28]

He didn't look like a man who enjoyed being on stage despite his deftness at it.

— Jalylah Burrell (Portland Mercury, 2010)[47]

Bilal began touring and performing the album's songs, introducing them as "MySpace hits" and "bootleg specials".[48] The concerts were lucrative for the singer, who witnessed Love for Sale's popularity among live audiences singing along verbatim to the songs.[49] "People would have it on their iPods and knew the songs", he says recalling its impact. "It was kind of a blessing in disguise. We were able to tour off of that album which is crazy."[7] In the opinion of AllMusic's Andy Kellman, "He must have had some mixed feelings when he performed the material to appreciative crowds who knew the material – off a technically unreleased album – inside out."[1]

While taking a break from writing music, Bilal focused his artistic ambitions on live performance and quickly developed a reputation for erraticism on stage. As Portland Mercury journalist Jalylah Burrell chronicles, the singer performed in a "hyper-expressive" manner in the vein of Prince and the Rolling Stones, creating a "delirium" in concert that was undercut by "his ostensible unhappiness and occasional erratic behavior".[47] "People might've thought I was on drugs or intoxicated, but that wasn't it", Bilal explains to Philadelphia Weekly. "I just didn't give a fuck because I was looking for the art. I wanted to be out, like when John Coltrane started playing with his wife, Alice. I just wanted to rip open music with my voice."[50] Attending his January 2007 show at the Black Cat nightclub in Washington, D.C., Godfrey observed the ardent support of Bilal's fans for the new songs and was especially impressed by the rendition of "Make Me Over", featuring a James Brown-style bridge by the band. "Bilal's incredible range has never sounded better, and he's never seemed more euphoric", Godfrey concluded in her review for the Post.[16]

Aftermath and legacy

Love for Sale's positive reception among critics and audiences inspired Bilal to begin writing a new album, composing music purely for his own artistic fulfillment.[51] He explains that its aftermath shaped his maturation as an artist, comparing it to how the rapper 50 Cent had his vocal delivery changed by a shooting to the face: "So in life, I guess, a certain pain, a certain fermentation, the same thing that happens to some good wine, set in."[47] At the same time, "the album's mystique and legacy grew as one of the most notable casualties of the digital piracy era" as well as "one of the most stunning and progressive musical statements of its generation", according to Larrier.[40] Bilal was highly pursued as a featured hook singer for other recording artists during these years, when Love for Sale became what Lindsey describes as "a much-bootlegged favorite amongst r&b enthusiasts" and "the black-music equivalent of Fiona Apple's once-shelved (and also notoriously bootlegged) album Extraordinary Machine".[52] Larrier explains that the album's genre-defying direction distinguished Bilal artistically from his peers in soul during a creatively stagnant period for the genre, while in Gipson's estimation, it showcased a musical experimentation outside of soul that would culminate in the singer's next album.[53]

Because the music was so good, it kind of created a life of its own. It broke away into a space where I was able to be free to do what I wanted to do.

— Bilal (2018)[33]

Love for Sale's repute helped create buzz for Bilal's third album, Airtight's Revenge, released independently in 2010 and titled in reference to the singer avenging the circumstances of the preceding album's leak.[54] Experimenting further with rock and electronic sounds and darker storytelling, Airtight's Revenge widely impressed fans and critics but failed to eclipse its predecessor's renown.[55] Bilal believes that "the real revenge" was how Love for Sale had become such an "underground" triumph in spite of "the whole long, drawn-out standstill" with Interscope, comparing it to the myth of the phoenix rising.[14] Its following continued to be evident through his 2011 Little One Tour supporting Airtight's Revenge. In attendance for a tour date in St. Louis, Jerome A. Redding of The St. Louis American observed the venue "filled with cult followers as the audience sang along line for line" to his opening performances of songs from Love for Sale.[56]

Fans of Bilal regard Love for Sale as his masterpiece.[41] Kevin C. Johnson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls it his best album, while Erin E. Evans of The Root calls it "a near cult classic" and Gipson deems it a "tour de force cult classic".[57] Donald "Donwill" Freeman, from the rap group Tanya Morgan, names it one of his five favorite albums.[58] Larrier also regards the album as a "tour de force" whose story is crucial to honestly appraising the singer's career, while Hart considers it the "great 'lost' [soul] album" of its generation with a continued presence in "online purgatory".[59] In Kellman's opinion, had it received a commercial release, the album would have been representative of the alternative R&B that developed later in the 2000s.[60] After the alt-R&B singers Frank Ocean and The Weeknd freely released their own albums online in 2011, The Music magazine's Cyclone Wehner credited Bilal with having "pioneered [this] very promotional strategy" through Love for Sale, "ironically".[61] Reflecting on the album's history, Bilal says it was "a bad thing that turned into a – I wouldn't say a good thing because it would've been good if it came out. But it kind of turned into this little, ironic twist to my life".[41]

Common (2003), one of Bilal's regular collaborators since the album

McKie went on to work further with Bilal after Love for Sale, producing and drumming on Airtight's Revenge and 2013's A Love Surreal. He considers his production and drumming on Love for Sale among the best of his career and says that the album was "wild" and "innovative" as it "crossed a lot of boundaries".[62] Glasper, also a frequent collaborator of Bilal, believes that the singer was "ahead of his time" while recording the album, predating similar music that André 3000 would record for his hip hop duo OutKast's split double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003).[2] Common also continued collaborating with Bilal in the years following Love for Sale, beginning with the rapper's 2002 album Electric Circus.[63] In 2011, they reunited for an outdoor concert performance in Los Angeles and were filmed by the multimedia artist Michael Sterling Eaton, who used the footage to create a music video for their original "Sorrow, Tears & Blood" recording.[64]

Love for Sale's recording sessions had produced several discarded tracks, including a cover of the soul musician Stevie Wonder's "Rocket Love" (1980). According to McKie, he and Bilal tried to include them on Airtight's Revenge, but "the label erased the file for whatever reason."[12] A version of "Rocket Love" appears on 2012's The Retrospection, a career-spanning mixtape of Bilal's music curated by the DJ Vikter Duplaix. The mixtape also features the Love for Sale tracks "You're All I Need (Feels Like Heaven)", "Gotsta Be Cool", and "Hollywood", as well as the rapper Jay Electronica's remix of "Something to Hold on To".[65] Bilal says there are nine unheard songs he recorded for Love for Sale that he "loved" and different versions of the original 12 that he prefers to the leaked mix, which "maybe one day" Interscope will let go.[66]

Interscope controls the masters to all the music Bilal recorded for the label.[47] He says he had planned for some time to release Love for Sale through E1 Music, the label that would release A Love Surreal, but the idea fell through.[67] Along with Interscope's involvement, he suggests that his previous contract with a music publishing company – from the Love for Sale period – remains an impediment to its release.[41] According to Covert's 2006 report, another label can acquire publishing rights to the album in 2021.[36]

Track listing

Information is taken from a promotional pressing of the album.[68]

No.TitleLength
1."Something to Hold on To"4:06
2."You're All I Need (Feels Like Heaven)"4:43
3."Gotsta Be Cool"5:38
4."Make Me Over"5:17
5."Get Out of My Hair"4:23
6."Lord Don't Let It"5:08
7."All for Love"4:47
8."Hands of Time"3:45
9."Hollywood"3:38
10."White Turns to Grey"6:17
11."Sorrow, Tears & Blood"7:43
12."Sweet, Sour U"3:23

See also

References
  1. Kellman 2013.
  2. Gonzales 2013, p. 30.
  3. Kellman 2013: Lindsey 2013b.
  4. Gonzales 2013; Anon. (a) 2013; Lordi 2013.
  5. Anon. (a) 2013.
  6. Bilal 2010a; Bilal 2010e; Bilal 2010f.
  7. Bilal 2010a.
  8. Lindsey 2013b; McKie 2010.
  9. Herrera 2009; Gray 2018.
  10. Anon. (a) 2013; Gonzales 2013, p. 30.
  11. Koutoudjian 2016; Gonzales 2013, p. 30.
  12. McKie 2010.
  13. Kellman 2013; Abdusalaam 2010.
  14. Bilal 2010e.
  15. Kellman 2013; Lindsey 2013b.
  16. Godfrey 2007.
  17. Bilal 2011.
  18. Dowling 2011.
  19. Covert 2006; Gipson 2010.
  20. Gipson 2010.
  21. Coplan 2009; Amorosi 2010.
  22. Martinez 2006.
  23. Covert 2006; Wehner 2013.
  24. Wehner 2013; Godfrey 2007.
  25. Bilal 2013b; Farberman 2013.
  26. Haithcoat 2010; Haithcoat 2010.
  27. Haithcoat 2010.
  28. Bilal 2013b.
  29. Lordi 2013.
  30. Lindsey 2013a.
  31. Bilal 2013b; D-Money 2011.
  32. Simm 2010; Bilal 2010b; Bilal 2010g.
  33. Gray 2018.
  34. Bilal 2010c.
  35. Lear 2015; Bilal 2010e
  36. Covert 2006.
  37. Chinen 2006.
  38. Covert 2006; Bilal 2010g.
  39. Covert 2006; Larrier 2013; Lear 2015.
  40. Larrier 2013.
  41. Lindsey 2013b.
  42. Bilal 2010b.
  43. Bilal 2010g; Bilal 2011.
  44. Lear 2015.
  45. Lindsey 2013b; Iai 2010; Bilal 2010g.
  46. Bilal 2010b: Gipson 2010.
  47. Burrell 2010.
  48. Lear 2015; Godfrey 2007.
  49. Herrera 2009.
  50. Bilal 2010f; Gonzales 2013, p. 30.
  51. Anon. (a) 2013; Gray 2018.
  52. Lindsey 2013a; Lindsey 2013b.
  53. Larrier 2013; Gipson 2010.
  54. Iai 2010; Bilal 2010a.
  55. Larrier 2013; Bilal 2010a.
  56. Redding 2011.
  57. Johnson 2011; Evans 2012; Gipson 2010.
  58. Callender & Freeman 2017.
  59. Larrier 2013; Bilal 2010g.
  60. Kellman n.d.
  61. Wehner 2013.
  62. McKie 2010; Gonzales 2013, p. 30.
  63. Iai 2010.
  64. Butta 2011.
  65. Anon. 2012.
  66. Bilal 2010d; Bilal 2010g.
  67. Bilal 2013a.
  68. Anon. 2003.

Bibliography

Further reading
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