Smoke And Love
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The Seed (Rock N’ Roll)
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Blackman vs. Batman
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Album: The Headphone Masterpiece (Promo, 2002)

Back in 2002, I had a standing DJ gig at the Hudson Hotel in NYC. It was probably the highlight of my short, professional DJ career. The hotel was hipster central, I could play whatever I wanted, and I met tons of beautiful people. I even got a hug from Ed Lover.

Every once in a while, some hustling musician would try to slip me a CD in the hopes I would play one of their songs. I am kind of a purist about vinyl, so even though the Hudson provided CD players along with turntables, I politely gave him or her a thanks but no thanks.

One memorable evening, some dude graciously gave me the LP you see above. He was cool and laid-back, suggesting I should listen to it at home, preferably with headphones. The record looked totally ghetto, with a partially hand-written label. The cover was a standard white cover sleeve with an ugly pink/aqua textured spoke pattern. (Click on the image above to see it in gruesome detail.)

But I liked the dude’s low-key style, and gave The Headphone Masterpiece a listen. What I think was intended as the single was eh, but there were a couple of tracks on the B-side that had woozy, appealing charisma and catchy melodies. The recording quality was lousy, but I think that was by design. Cody Chesnutt (though I’m amused by the spelling, I’m not buying into the alt punctuation… ChesnuTT?) wasn’t quite fully formed, but he was original.

“Smoke And Love” has lyrics that are collegiate and silly, but he sings it with such sincerity that it’s hard to resist.

“The Seed (Rock N’ Roll)” might be familiar to fans of The Roots. They threw Cody a serious bone, beefing up the backing track, adding a Black Thought rap, and rebooting it as “The Seed 2.0” It was a minor hit for them and used pretty effectively in a Six Feet Under episode.

I also threw in “Blackman vs. Batman.” I have no idea why he chose that title for this brief instrumental.

Though the promo was only 7 songs, the official release of The Headphone Masterpiece was a massive, 36-track double album. It made a bit of a splash but Cody hasn’t released another album, to my knowledge. His MySpace page has some new tracks but I find the accompanying text more entertaining than the music.

I wish him much success, though. I wonder if it was Cody himself who handed me this weird little record.