There are two sides to seemingly every artist in the industry, and if there’s one in the underground who wants us to know this and appreciate everything he has to share this fall, it just might be The Al Ur Pal Project’s own Al Wordlaw. Born in Chicago and raised on Motown classics, Wordlaw has all of the right ingredients in his artistry to give us something larger than life whenever he steps into the recording studio, but it’s only through a disciplined approach that he’s able to produce something as grand as he does in the new single “My Honey (His Drips)” and its remix “My Honey (Her Drips).” In this his and hers of pop, we’re introduced to a player more swaggering than unsure of his hand, which leads us right into the grip of his emotions before we know what to do with them.
The tension here is pretty significant, but it’s utilized to create fluidity for both the bassline and the drums in a manner that I’ve been missing in the majority of R&B I’ve been reviewing out of the American underground in the past couple of years. This isn’t an outright rhythm and blues performance, but you can tell that Wordlaw takes a lot of influence from the soul movement of the 1970s, specifically as it relates to his construction of harmonies in the “His” incarnation of “My Honey.” He gets a lot of help from collaborators The Asidors, but there’s also no debating who is in charge of the studio here.
As a critic, I’m attracted to the melodic underpinnings of a pop single more than I am to any particular verses, and this is a good thing in the heady “Her” version of “My Honey.” Melodically speaking, a lot is going on here – so much that a lesser journalist might be inclined to get hypnotized by the overwhelming interactions between the percussion and the instrumental harmony in the latter half of the song – but it’s all in the name of getting us to the same poetic statement we find in the other track. Wordlaw is having a lot of fun showing off the different ways he can say the same thing, and right now, this is what we need from him more than any amount of virtuosity in the booth.
A relentless presence from our leading man is part of the reason why I would rank “My Honey” among the more charismatic listens I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with in the past few months, but I get a sense of development within this project that is bound to come forth with a lot more exciting content in the future. At this point in time, The Al Ur Pal Project is just getting on the map and trying to score some exposure on either side of the dial, but I wouldn’t think it’s going to take Wordlaw very long to find his signature groove within the industry and, moreover, an audience he can call his own.
Chadwick Easton