★★★★★
This Brooklyn artist stretches out on his adventurous fifth album, a bold, expansive set of eclectic R&B incorporating elements of funk, blues, hip hop, psych-rock, grunge, dubstep, folk-rock and more, combining a muscular, more guitar-oriented sound with James' supple baritone. 6/12/2014
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- kexp.org
2014-06-14
★★★★★
A blast of Hendrixian guitar opens "While You Were Sleeping," singer José James's fifth album; a close cover of the hushed Al Green masterpiece "Simply Beautiful" closes it. Stretched between these sonic and iconic markers are 12 tracks with all the stylistic freedom we've come to expect of James -- an equal aficionado of chamber jazz and left-field electro-soul club settings -- and today's swelling movement, hosted in part at Blue Note, that is reuniting disparate strands of soul, rock, and...
- www.bostonglobe.com
2014-06-11
★★★★★
After building an underground following with a pair of sleek, electronic-edged soul-jazz albums, José James turned mainstream heads last year with his first record for the venerable Blue Note label. "No Beginning No End" presented the singer as an old soul with new ideas; it also earned countless comparisons to D'Angelo's 2000 landmark, "Voodoo...
- www.latimes.com
2014-06-11
★★★★★
When the spirit of Nirvana surfaces in a song, the artist paying tribute almost always shares style points with that treasured band. The hair is shaggy, the clothes a little ragged; the lineage unfolds, relatively neatly, from punk to the present. Imagine, however, a jazz-trained vocalist fluent in hip-hop's vocabulary, laying down a track as ferociously driven as "In Bloom," but with the negative-ion cool of "Heart Shaped Box...
- www.kcrw.com
2014-06-10
★★★★★
Everyone's favorite artist eventually takes an unexpected left turn. The question is whether you're willing to go along for the ride. There is this unusual notion among some artists that fans who will not follow their favorite artist down his or her new detour are more interested in boxing "their" artist in and keeping that artist stale than letting them "grow" in their creativity...
- www.soultracks.com
2014-06-06
★★★★★
Track List:
1. Angel 2. U R The 1 3. While You Were Sleeping 4. Anywhere U Go 5. Bodhisattva 6. 4 Noble Truths 7. Dragon (feat. Becca Stevens) 8. Salaan 9. Without U 10. EveryLittleThing 11. xx 12. Simply Beautiful (feat. Takuya Kuroda)
Photo courtesy of the artist
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- www.kcrw.com
2014-06-02
★★★★★
Despite the mainstream public's enduring and bewildering resistance to knowing his name, jazz darling Jose James consistently demonstrates why they are the ones missing out. A cognac smooth approach to lyric and a hip-hop-meets-bebop swing to his scat haven't done it. Witty, seductive, innovative, yet still accessible modern jazz compositions have not done it. Iconographic imagery on cover after cover hasn't done it...
- www.soultracks.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
When the young Brooklyn vocalist José James was introduced to British audiences on DJ Gilles Peterson's Brownswood label five years ago, he immediately sounded like the real deal, possessed of a voice fusing soulful delicacy and jazz flexibility. This set is his debut for Blue Note, featuring avant-funk jazz celebs Robert Glasper and Chris Dave, as well as composer/singer and regular collaborator Emily King, and Moroccan vocalist Hindi Zahra...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-04-02
★★★★★
In case there was any doubt, No Beginning No End, José James' stunning Blue Note debut, confirms his place among the soul brethren elite, alongside Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Bill Withers. This 11-track set of originals, nine written or co-written by James plus two from celebrated R&B; vocalist and guitarist Emily King, showcases a shifting lineup of stellar players, including keyboardists Robert Glasper, Kris Bowers and Grant Windsor, drummers Chris "Daddy" Dave and Richard Spaven, guitarists...
- jazztimes.com
2013-03-10