There are two songs on Mayer Hawthorne’s debut album worthy of the hype surrounding this Jew from Cali: Make Her Mine, a sweetly simple tune about trying to romance a girl who lives in the wealthy part of town, and the new record holder for most apostrophes in a song title, Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’. Download these two feel-good tracks and you’re all set.
Mr. Hawthorne will remind you of someone. For me, it’s G. Love. Fun for a few songs, but dull over the course of an entire album. The disc is heavily influenced by soul giants such as Curtis Mayfield and the Isley Brothers, to the point of being derivative. There’s nothing new going on here, and nothing all that interesting, aside from the above-mentioned songs, which aren’t super original, just happen to hit a good mark.
While Mr. Hawthorne, born Andrew Mayer Cohen, probably puts on a pleasing live show, the album is too produced and often not loose enough to allow for any warm soul to sneak in. Better to throw on a Stevie Wonder record and call it a day.
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.