?uestlove: Today’s Greatest American Hero

Thanks to an MTV interview where he dropped a bunch of tantalizing bombs about his production work on the forthcoming Al Green LP that apparently (might) feature(s) contributions from Justin Timberlake (eh), Anthony Hamilton (swoon), and D’Angelo (!). Read on, and if you listen close you can hear the rest of my family shouting for joy somewhere in Pennsylvania:

“It’s been putting gray hair in my afro,” ‘Love laughed. “I’m not producing, I’m reducing it. I’m trying to take him back to 1974 — very dry, very dirty, very grassroots sound. One of the biggest mistakes of modern technology, it doesn’t sound gritty, doesn’t sound raw. A lot of the favorite records we sample from today, those were recorded in studios that were very lackluster. Those weren’t the best studios in the world. Pretty much, I want this album to sound very cheap, very dirty … the vibe the Amy Winehouse album gave you. More than just the song, the creative aspect. I wanted the engineering to feel like it was made 30 years ago.”

I don’t normally give a shit one way or the other about Jack White-style big-dick retro-studio talk about the purity of analog and the grime you can only get from a dusty mixing desk and yadda yadda. And this is the kind of dream line-up that will eventually get compromised–the label will stick on a cameo from Young Jeezy, or ?uestlove will draft his boyfriend John Mayer. But screw it, it’s Al Green: I’m going to officially get excited for this, especially after how good that last Roots album came out.

Justin Timberlake In Talks To Appear On Al Green Album [MTV]