Chocolate Genius (these days "Chocolate Genius, Inc.") is the alter ego/collective project of one Marc Anthony Thompson, a well-connected but not well-known artist. I was visiting V2 Records in New York (before V2 got huge with Moby, the White Stripes, etc.) and got this as a freebie. These days I'm more familiar with the album because every time I update iTunes these tracks keep getting updated regardless of if I listened to them or not. Not sure what causes that to happen, but just about every song title is burned into my brain.
Fans of Breaking Bad will recognize the first track, "Life", which was played in the finale of Season 2. Whoever did that show's soundtrack music was a very perceptive and clever person. The rest of the album is pretty much along the same morose tempo, drifting a bit around genres, making the "R&B" tag sort of default in nature, as the music incorporates rock, jazz, folk, and even a little electronica. Thompson has a fairly large ensemble backing him on these tracks, most notably New York jazz regulars John Medeski, Chris Wood, and Marc Ribot, as well as the venerable Abe Laboriel, Sr. contributing to the songwriting. Pretty solid connections!
This album doesn't get the "lost band of the 1990's" branding because Thompson had somewhat of a solo career in the 1980's and the CG Inc. project continued to release albums into the next decade. Maybe someday I'll go check some of them out.
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