Love for Sale (Bilal album)
Love for Sale is the unreleased second studio album by American singer and songwriter Bilal. Written and produced mainly by Bilal, it was a musically experimental departure from his neo soul debut album, 1st Born Second, to the dismay of his record label, Interscope Records, who delayed its release. While the singer lobbied for the album, a preliminary mix leaked and circulated widely on the Internet in 2006, prompting the label to shelve its commercial release indefinitely. The leaked album quickly enjoyed a cult following and remains online.
Background
Bilal developed an interest in singing while growing up in the Germantown area of Philadelphia, where he participated in a church choir at the behest of his Baptist mother. On occasional trips to the city's jazz clubs with his father, he witnessed the working habits and lifestyles of musicians, which inspired him to pursue music seriously. Starting as a vocal student at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Bilal advanced to studying the music theory and language shared by the instrumentalist students so that he could socialize with them. In 1999, he went to New York to train at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where he developed a reputation among his peers for challenging their musical sensibilities. He also began recording professionally, contributing guest vocals for a few albums by R&B and hip hop acts, which connected him with the Soulquarians collective. His performance at a Prince tribute concert the following year generated much buzz in the music industry, leading to a recording contract from Interscope Records.Bilal's tenure at Interscope was marked by conflict, beginning when the label disapproved of the alternative rock-style demos he recorded for his prospective debut album. Produced with members of the Soulquarians, the resulting neo soul album 1st Born Second was released in July 2001 and became a top-10 R&B chart hit, while earning Bilal comparisons to the genre's contemporaries D'Angelo and Maxwell. Despite its modest success, Bilal felt uncomfortable with the media categorizing him as neo soul. He did not want to labelled as "the soul guy", according to the pianist Robert Glasper, who studied with Bilal at the New School and went on to play in his band. As the singer explains, "I was trying to come from a jazz perspective... trying to write open ended tunes that could go in any direction when played live."
Writing and recording
While performing on tour for 1st Born Second, Bilal and his backing band developed his music further in the directions of funk, rock, and jazz fusion. This experimentation informed his songwriting for Love for Sale. Bilal wrote most of the album on his own, a process he cites as the beginning of his singer-songwriter experience. He tells Vibe magazine of his mindset at the time, "I was getting rebellious. I was like I'm gonna get more into my songwriting and more into playing and producing on my own."Love for Sale was recorded entirely at Electric Lady Studios in New York, with more live instrumentation than on 1st Born Second. Bilal worked with many musicians for the first time, such as the hip hop producers Sa-Ra, Nottz, and Denaun Porter, and enlisted fellow alumni from his time at the New School, including Glasper. Steve McKie, a Philadelphia-based drummer, was also recruited into the band at Electric Lady. An unadventurous musician up to that point, McKie felt encouraged to leave his comfort zone and experiment more while working with Bilal. As he explains in an account of the recording sessions, "I walked in the studio and there was no drums – just a Rhodes and a bass amp. The room that was going to be for the drums had really great acoustics. Back then, 2001, 2002, I felt like I was in tapping on tables and we just made kick from candle and notepad, put a drum mic on the floor and made a wild acoustic kick."
The majority of the production was done by Bilal, although Nottz and fellow producers J Dilla and Dr. Dre assisted in limited roles. While mainly a keyboard-oriented composer, Bilal learned from Dilla an approach to arranging songs by way of drum programming. "He had this thing where no matter what he picked up he could bend his will into it... throw the funk in it", the singer explains. McKie, who was beginning to explore production at the time, worked with Bilal on the songs "Gotsta Be Cool" and "Lord Don't Let It". He recorded the musicians using a Roland VS-880 digital audio workstation, making adjustments to the drum sounds, and sampled the recordings through an Akai MPC 2000. "My screen went out on me a few times", McKie recalls of the sampler. "It was pretty amazing how we did the stuff... That was the most bizarre way to do it but when you only have two pieces to work with you figure out how to make things work."
Music and lyrics
Love for Sale is described by SoulTracks writer L. Michael Gipson as an album of funk, electric rock, and "innovative, sometimes deconstructed soul", abandoning the contemporary hip hop sounds displayed on 1st Born Second in favor of strong experimentation with "progressive jazz".Marketing and leak
Interscope executives were unenthusiastic about the album's avant-garde direction and delayed its release. The production company contracting Bilal at the time also reacted negatively. As he recalls, "They kept saying 'It's so fucked up and weird'... Everybody except my band was like 'I don't know. This shit is so dark.'" According to WBUR journalist Arielle Gray, the album was "shrouded in controversy and eschewed by his label because it deviated from the sound of his previous project." Unwilling to record anew, Bilal continued to lobby for the album. In mid 2005, he premiered a few of its songs at an event in Philadelphia hosted by the Beat Society producers showcase. Demonstrating a stylistic departure from his first album, the premier started a growing buzz about Love for Sale. A promotional copy of the album was issued on vinyl.In early 2006, a preliminary mix of the album mysteriously appeared on the Internet, originally on a torrent site. Copies of the leaked mix were shared on peer-to-peer networks, eventually being downloaded more than 500,000 times. Shortly after the leak, Bilal posted a statement on his MySpace profile, expressing concern that this could end in the album being shelved by his record label.
In September 2006, Adrian Covert reported for Prefixmag.com that neither Bilal nor Universal Records had made a statement about Love for Sale in the seven months since its leak, while noting the singer's absence from the artist roster at Universal's website. This led Covert to deduce that Love for Sale had been shelved. Rumors circulated about the reasons and circumstances of the shelving, including theories that Interscope used the leak as an excuse to abandon a project that was too experimental to market, or that it was leaked by the label for this same reason. Bilal believes the rumors to all be "the truth to a certain extent". Ron Hart of Blurt magazine attributes the leak to "an industry insider" while calling it a "career near-death experience" for the singer.
Aftermath and legacy
Love for Sales shelving distressed Bilal for some time and made him consider retiring from music. Interscope released him from his contract soon after, although his fanbase expanded due to the album. Copies of the leaked mix developed a cult following, becoming more popular with his fans than 1st Born Second. In the opinion of music journalist Aliya Ewing, it "seemed to be a more authentic and unbridled reflection of who he was as an artist at that point in time". Bilal began touring and witnessed Love for Sales immediate impact in concert: "We started doing shows and people would have it on their iPods and knew the songs. It was kind of a blessing in disguise. We were able to tour off of that album which is crazy." According to AllMusic's Andy Kellman, "He must have had some mixed feelings when he performed the material to appreciative crowds who knew the material – off a technically unreleased album – inside out."While he took a break from writing music, Bilal focused his artistic ambitions on live performance and quickly developed a reputation for erraticism on stage. "People might've thought I was on drugs or intoxicated, but that wasn't it", he explains to Philadelphia Weekly. "I just didn't give a fuck because I was looking for the art... I just wanted to rip open music with my voice." With Interscope still withholding Love for Sale, its positive reception among critics and audiences inspired him to write a new album, composing music purely for his own artistic fulfillment. Love for Sales following helped create buzz for his third album, Airtight's Revenge, released in 2010 and titled in reference to the singer avenging the circumstances of the preceding album's leak.
McKie went on to work further with Bilal, producing and drumming on Airtight's Revenge and 2013's A Love Surreal. He regards his production and drum contributions to Love for Sale as among the best of his career and says that the album was "wild" and "innovative" as it "crossed a lot of boundaries". Glasper, also a frequent collaborator of Bilal, believes that the singer was "ahead of his time" while recording the album, predating similar music that André 3000 would record for his hip hop duo OutKast's split double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. The rapper Donald "Donwill" Freeman, from the hip hop group Tanya Morgan, names Love for Sale one of his five favorite albums. The Root writer Erin E. Evans calls it "a near cult classic", and Hart considers it the "great 'lost' album" of its generation while noting its continued presence in "online purgatory". According to Gipson, "the tour de force cult classic showcased Bilal's freaky side and phenomenal range in a way that 1st Born Second only hinted at", as well as a musical experimentation outside of soul that would culminate with Airtight's Revenge.
Love for Sales recording sessions produced several tracks that were discarded and left without commercial release, including a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Rocket Love". According to McKie, he and Bilal tried to include them on Airtight's Revenge, but "the label erased the file for whatever reason." Bilal says that there are also different versions of the Love for Sale tracks that he prefers to the leaked mix, and that "maybe one day will let them go." According to Covert's 2006 report, another record label can acquire publishing rights to the album in 2021.