We’ve been waiting for the official release of Ryan Leslie’s Black Mozart since the day he left the courtroom over his $1 Million dollar settlement to the alleged retriever of his lab top containing all of his music. Fortunately, we’ve been blessed with singles and music videos throughout this process. Live performance videos from different countries all over the world were also included. A R. Les show is definitely worth the price of admission. Mr. Leslie grabbed his crew and flew them to Vienna, Austria to record this gem of an album. Through a 4pm-4am schedule Black Mozart was filmed and recorded between December 8th-14th 2012 .If you were a registered member of the #RenegadesNYC you received Black Mozart on August 31st. This is Mr. Leslie’s close and direct connection to his fans and followers in which he personally responds to via text, email or even phone calls. I don’t believe an artist has ever been this accessible to his fans as much as the producer/songwriter/instrumentalist has been.
One of the first releases was “Carnival of Venice” which the live performance music video at Irving Plaza NYC and music video, both previously reviewed by yours truly. Black Mozart is a solid contribution. I have to give it to Ryan, he has lyrics and flow so don’t dismiss the kid. This is a nice piece of work and I have a couple of favorites like “I Love It” track produced by Cadenza and Ryan Leslie with “Bright lights no shade, thinking back to my broke days/I paid dues for like 6 years I did dope beats for like no pay.” Just relishing the struggle to get where he is today basically doing it all on his own maintaining the independent route. The word is the album was written in 2 days added with the events of the lawsuit, this was incredible. Respect the mogul and his mogul movement. He put his fans on his back dropped a fan driven album that will satisfy any R. Les fan and grab some new ones.
“History” is an inspirational song produced by Cardiak & Kyle Abacon and R. Les for anyone trying to be more part of something but be great at something. He even takes a positive swing on the lawsuit with “And I tell the kids, ‘you can do what I do’/Buckle down homie, focus on that High School/Yeah, and I paid my dues/Studio videos got major views/When I lost my court case I made the news/So I guess that was a milli it paid to lose.” For me this was a listen through album. The !Illmind produced “Only The Lonely” featuring Courtney Bennett is a definite banger along with “Green” featuring Fabolous. The 16-year-old talk of the town rookie producer WondaGurl lends her production expertise with Mr. Leslie on “Evacuation.” Now take a moment roll out the music cart, stop playing and pick up “Black Mozart.”
