If any album can convince you to get a belly button piercing, it’s going to be this one.
Most of us know Cree Summer as the raspy-voiced woman behind our childhood cartoons as “Numbah Five” from “Codename: Kids Next Door,” or Susie Meyerson from “Rugrats” amongst many others.
My Gen X-ers know Summer as the ever-spunky Freddie on “A Different World.”
However, my favorite incarnation is the scratchy and soulful singer of the here-and-then-gone 1999 album “Street Faërie.”
Summer’s lyrics walk the line between fresh and cynical, intimate and erotic, poetic and plainspoken in a way that feels almost reminiscent of Erykah Badu’s work.
She effortlessly weaves that earth-mother-barefoot-beauty with a decidedly tough, no-nonsense sensibility.
“Street Faërie” was produced by Lenny Kravitz, whose fingerprints are sonically all over the album.
From lush arrangements to backing vocals, he added tangible shape and color to Summer’s vision.
Forget Don Henley and Stevie Nicks; Kravitz and Summer create auditory leather and lace together.
Her vocals are equal parts delicate and forceful, uniquely free of her signature spoken rasp, whereas his guitar has that tell-tale driven ’90s crunch laced with powerfully ’70s swagger.
While the album reeks of what I can only imagine is Lenny Kravit’s spicy cologne, it feels like a disservice to dismiss it as his pet project as some reviewers have.
As far as content goes, it’s all Summer – from “Curious White Boy” to “Naheo,” she pulls from her reality to find the beauty in mundanity.
Her songs run the gamut from interracial dating to period sex, each one handled with a deeply personal intimacy that brings the listener deeper into a wonderland entirely of her making.
Despite what the title may suggest, the whimsical “Street Faërie” keeps both feet firmly planted in reality.
