Paradise Presents Jazz Funk Hip HoPoetry by Paradise

Visiting the holding pens for African captives during the slave trade there brought on a spiritual awakening. "I was inspired to provide an alternative," says Jackson. "Something that musically could match what's out there but has more social consciousness, more political awareness. I chose Paradise because he has an intense,

almost unparalleled talent for spoken word and rap, but I need to emphasize, he has a real positive spirit and he refrains from negativity."

"I consider myself Middle School," says Paradise. "Old School flava with New School twist. I want to carry the torch for my generation and follow the path of music from spiritual to blues, soul, R&B, funk and hip hop from this particular Black man's perspective." Indeed, from album opener, How to Be a Black Man in America’s (now an extended remix) dynamic fusion of hard electro-funk and polemic freestyle rhyme to the warmly humorous braggadocio of Equal Opportunity Lover (now with added percussive rhythm of conga drums) to the joyful bumptiousness of African-American heroes tribute Keepers of the Flame to Cocoa Venus’s intoxicating, sultry Afro-Latin groove that moves like the beautiful women of color it exalts, this CD bridges the generation gap.

It's Ok to Be a Black Girl and Ain't Yo Mama Black are thought-provoking, soul- stirring celebrations of Black womanhood and Africa, the Universal Mother; respectively. The album's tour de force is Two-Minute Warning. "Actually, it's two different songs," muses Paradise. "The first, I Love Everything About You But You, started out as a love song. Then I thought, this is bigger than me and her. Then the

words started coming to me, ‘They want the Black spirit/they want the Black mind/they want the Black soul/they want the Black behind...’ and it just turned out to be a little

folk song/rap/poem combination. And Two-Minute Warning is a protest about the aftermath of Katrina. In football, you have a two-minute warning before the end of the game and we as Black people after Katrina got a wake up call. We're at that two-minute warning."

Paradise Presents Jazz Funk Hip HoPoetry defiantly picks up the torch once held by the Godfathers -- Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets and the Watts Prophets. For Paradise, it represents something greater and more personal. "Poetry is very religious or spiritual when you live it as a lifestyle.

To me, it's like you're in communion with the Creator. That's my love, that's my passion.

Music is poetry without words and poetry is music. So to me, they are one and the same." Word to power.

By Tom Terrell, March 28, 2007

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