Publication: The Daily Telegraph [UK]
Date: June 27, 1992
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Title: "Miles Better Than It Might Have Been"
Written By: Charles Shaar Murray

AT THE time of his death last September, Miles Davis had two pet projects on the go. One was a collaboration with Prince, and the other was a hip-hop album. Ever since he commenced his funk-rock experiments in the late '60s, Davis had been obsessed with recasting his music in the popular modes of the time, and so producer Easy Mo Bee was entrusted with the sobering task of dropkicking the maestro into the 1990s.

During the sessions, Miles went into hospital for what was assumed would be routine surgery: he never returned to the studio. Additional material was created by the simple expedient of discarding unsatisfactory accompaniments from previous sessions and surrounding Davis's trumpet with new musical frames.

The resulting mixture - "not doo-wop, but be-bop mixed with hip-hop", as Mo Bee puts it in one of his raps - may not have created Miles's greatest album (or even one of his greatest 20 albums), but it's certainly an intriguing reminder of one of Davis's most admirable qualities: his restless inquisitiveness and eagerness to experiment. The startling cover photograph catches the viewer unaware: is this is a picture of a sexuagenarian or a child? It's both: it's a photo of Miles Davis.

Have Deee-Lite and The B-52's ever been seen in the same room at the same time? This matched pair of two-men-one-woman trios each have a double set of roots: Deee-Lite sprout from the electro scene of the '80s, which itself grew from the pioneering '70s funk of George Clinton (hence the presence of Bootsy Collins and a horde of other Clinton alumni all over this album); while The B-52's emerged via late-'70s New Wave, playing music rooted in that kind of noise which invariably accompanied the "party scene" in cheesy early-'60s movies.