The No. 1 Album Of 2020: SAULT's 'Untitled (Black Is)'

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Radio Milwaukee's Tarik Moody leads a discussion on NPR Music's number one album pick and why it's one of 2020's most important and potent releases.

In just over a year, Sault has released three albums with little warning and scant member information. If the group's previous albums, 5 and 7 brought the funk-soul party, then UNTITLED (Black Is) "funnels rage and sorrow into contemplative streams of thought, over equally brooding music meant to slow your heart rate," Marcus J. Moore wrote in his review for NPR Music. He further called the album "a robust collection of funk, soul, meditative spoken-word and protest chants meant to score the full spectrum of Blackness."

This conversation about the Sault album originally ran live on NPR Music's YouTube channel shortly after the record was released in June.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey Robin. Hey Bob. Hey happy holidays. Good to see you. Yeah listen before we eat I wanted
0:08.9	to stop by the store here. I've been saving up to get me a new shoe stereo. What? A
0:16.5	shoe stereo. Look at it. It's battery operated shoes with speakers built in CD player and
0:21.6	the heel. They've also got this tiny turntable with a titanium needle and they're covered
0:26.0	in fur for noise reduction. Oh my gosh this is ridiculous. You don't need any of this
0:29.8	you know it's the season of giving right? Yeah. If you really want to feel good and make
0:34.3	a difference you should give to your local NPR station. I guess that would help. I don't
0:38.4	know make the world a better place. Oh definitely. When you give to your local NPR station
0:42.6	it helps make things like all songs considered new music Friday and tiny desks possible. You
0:47.4	support your station, the station support us and that sends a whole lot of goodness out
0:51.8	into the world. Okay what do I do? Just go to donate.npr.org slash music.
0:57.0	That's right. It's so easy. Donate.npr.org slash music and once you're there you can find
1:04.0	the station of your choice and get started. Just be sure to do it before the end of the
1:07.1	month. Right? Right. Season of giving and support for the shows you love. Donate.npr.org
1:12.4	slash music. Exactly. Now before we go let's just go ahead and see how loud these shoes
1:16.9	can get. From NPR music it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. If you haven't already
1:24.4	checked it out we have posted NPR music picks for the top 50 albums and top 100 songs of
1:30.6	2020. There's a whole lot of great stuff to discover or to rediscover and the NPR music
1:35.7	team loved way more music than we could ever fit on these lists. But our number one album,
1:41.5	the one that got the most love across the board is the salt record untitled black is. Back
2:00.6	when salt released this album in June we did a live listening party for it on NPR music's
2:06.0	YouTube channel we played the entire record and talked about it. So to celebrate the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.