Love for Sale is an unreleased studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bilal, originally meant to be his second album. It was recorded from 2001 to 2003 at Electric Lady Studios in New York during the height of the Soulquarians era, a period in the studio's history marked by the frequent and innovative recording activity of that musical collective, in which Bilal was a member. Written and produced mainly by Bilal, the album was a departure from the producer-driven, hip hop-influenced neo-soul music of 1st Born Second(2001), his moderately successful debut album for Interscope Records.
Bilal pursued a more raw and independent direction with Love for Sale, which he mostly composed on piano. At Electric Lady, he held improvisatory jam sessions with a live band featuring the trumpeter Leron Thomas, the drummer Steve McKie, and the pianist Robert Glasper, one of several former classmates the singer enlisted from New York's New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. With the assistance of a few select producers, such as Dr. Dre and Soulquarians member J Dilla, Bilal experimented with different recording techniques, longer free-form compositions, and arrangements drawn from jazz and the blues. The resulting music features a densely layered fusion of genres, including soul, funk, and rock, with unconventional song structures and rhythms. Bilal's varied falsetto vocal performances throughout the album include sensual and ecstatic expressions of romantic devotion and lovesickness, with lyrics reflecting a distaste for writing what he called "contrived love songs".
The album's dark and experimental nature was met with resistance from Interscope, who demanded Bilal record new music and delayed the release. The singer refused and continued to lobby Love for Sale while mixing the recordings in the studio. As he neared its completion and a prospective release date, an unfinished mix of the album leaked and circulated widely on the Internet in 2006, becoming one of the most notorious such cases during the rise of digital piracy. Interscope responded by shelving Love for Sales commercial release indefinitely, which aroused suspicion and controversy among Internet communities and exacerbated the label's conflict with Bilal, ending in his dismissal.
The leaked album quickly enjoyed an underground popularity and online acclaim, inspiring the distressed singer to tour performing its songs and continue his career in more artistically daring directions. Its growing mystique as an innovative but neglected musical work helped enhance Bilal's profile, as he was sought after for recordings by other artists, while several of the album's contributors went on to work on his future projects. A cult classic among black music fans, Love for Sale has since been considered by some critics to be Bilal's masterpiece and a forerunner of similarly progressive R&B music that developed by the end of the 2000s decade. Interscope retained control of its master recordings, and another company has held the publishing rights, although the songs remain available online.
Background
Bilal started his music career in 1999 while attending the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, where he studied jazz singing and practiced writing original songs. With his classmate and friend Robert Glasper, he frequented local music clubs such as the Wetlands Preserve, where he met members of the Soulquarians, a rotating collective of experimental black music artists who often collaborated on each other's recordings.; . A demo recorded with the musician Aaron Comess, who Bilal met at a jam session set up by New School professors, earned the singer a recording contract from Interscope Records and encouraged his exit from the school to concentrate on music professionally, including the projects of the Soulquarians.
Bilal's tenure at Interscope was marked by conflict, beginning when the record label disapproved of the alternative rock-style demos he recorded for his prospective debut album.; . With contributions from the Soulquarians amid pressure from Interscope for more high-profile producers, 1st Born Second was released in 2001 to modest sales but critical acclaim.; . It was recognized as a pivotal release in neo soul and earned Bilal comparisons to D'Angelo, his contemporary in the genre.: .
However, Bilal felt uncomfortable with the media's neo-soul categorizations, finding the term restrictive of black musicians.; ; . He did not want to be labeled as "the soul guy", according to Glasper, who went on to play piano in his band. As the singer explains, "I was trying to come from a jazz perspective. I was trying to write open-ended kind of tunes that could go in a lot of different directions live." Bilal's concerts featured a backing band and dynamic that departed from contemporary R&B conventions and helped expand his fanbase, although Interscope wanted higher album sales from the singer.
Writing and recording While performing on tour in support of 1st Born Second, Bilal and his band developed his music further in the directions of funk, rock, and jazz fusion. This experimentation informed his songwriting for Love for Sale. Mainly a keyboard-oriented composer, Bilal composed most of the songs himself on piano, a process he cites as the beginning of his singer-songwriter experience.; ; . He experimented with writing music to different cadences and forms beyond the traditional verse-chorus structure of popular music, in an attempt to deconstruct his composing methods and sensibilities, which he felt were becoming contrived.; . He tells Vibe magazine that he was feeling "rebellious" and eager at the time to write, produce, and play music on his own.
Bilal's desire for a more independent project was met with some resistance by Interscope. The label allowed him recording time at Electric Lady Studios, where he had previously recorded 1st Born Second. Built in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1970 under the commission of the rock musician Jimi Hendrix, the studio had at this point become a home base for the Soulquarians and their innovative recording sessions, which often drew on the creative freedom of Hendrix's music. According to the music journalist Michael Gonzales, this was at "the height of the Soulquarians' heydey", as members such as D'Angelo, the singer-songwriter Erykah Badu, and the rapper Common were all working on music there when Bilal started his sessions.
Bilal pursued what he described as "a raw, bluesy feeling" for Love for Sale, inspired by the blues singer Howlin' Wolf's recordings, and used more live instrumentation than on 1st Born Second.; . He worked with several musicians for the first time, such as the hip hop producers Nottz and Denaun Porter, and enlisted former classmates from the New School, including Glasper and the trumpeter Leron Thomas, who had performed in Bilal's touring ensemble.; ; .
The Philadelphia-based drummer Steve McKie was also recruited for the recording. An unadventurous musician up to that point, McKie felt encouraged to leave his comfort zone and experiment more while working with Bilal, who gave the band freedom to improvise in jam sessions. In his account of the sessions in 2001 and 2002, McKie recalls walking into Electric Lady and seeing only a Rhodes piano and a bass amp in the room with "really great acoustics" intended for drumming: "I felt like I was in [high school] 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."
Production The majority of the production was done by Bilal. He experimented with recording techniques in the studio, as well as arrangements from jazz and the blues, influenced by Wolf and the bassist-composer Charles Mingus in particular.; . According to Rachel Swan of the East Bay Express, "he took a very considered approach in making the beats, creating layered melodies and chord voicings that sound as though he had a full band in the studio with him." Bilal also experimented with different methods to manipulating the sound of the recordings, including tape reel distortion and processing them through the Akai MPC 2000 (a music workstation). In another attempt to challenge his songmaking habits, he tried using different carrier signals in the process of modulating the recordings.
Some songs were composed and recorded with a few producers Bilal chose personally, deviating from Interscope's preference for an entirely high-profile production. "Sweet, Sour U" was produced by Sa-Ra Creative Partners, a trio of producer-musicians working with electro, hip hop, and soul sounds. Nottz and fellow producers J Dilla and Dr. Dre, who had both worked on 1st Born Second, were among those who assisted Love for Sales production in limited roles.; . Dilla, a multi-instrumentalist member of the Soulquarians, showed Bilal an approach to arranging songs by way of drum programming.; . As the singer explains:
Bilal worked on "Gotsta Be Cool" and "Lord Don't Let It" with McKie, who had begun exploring production at the time. McKie recorded the musicians using a Roland VS-880 digital audio workstation, making adjustments to the drum sounds, and sampled the recordings through the Akai MPC. "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." Bilal recounts that using such computerized equipment in the studio made him feel "like a wizard". Speaking on the entire process of making Love for Sale, the singer says he "grew a lot" and "felt the most comfortable as an artist there".
Music Stylistically rooted in soul, Love for Sale nonetheless features a densely layered fusion of genres, identified by SoulTracks writer L. Michael Gipson as "innovative, sometimes deconstructed soul", funk, and electric rock.;; . Andres Reyes of Shook explains that "this wasn't your typical neo-soul or R&B album", finding Bilal and his band's performance emulative of Howlin' Wolf, the jazz fusion group Return to Forever, and the experimental rock musician Frank Zappa. Gipson adds that it departs from the contemporary hip hop sounds of 1st Born Second in favor of strong experimentation with "progressive jazz", and Smash Gordon, of the Fabric club's blog, recognizes jazz inflections in Bilal's wide-ranging and "colorful" productions.; . Consequence of Sound writer Chris Coplan also describes the sound as undergoing a "transformation" but closer to blues rock, while A.D. Amorosi of The Philadelphia Inquirer considers it "weirdly rock- and folk-tinged".; . Meanwhile, Time Out magazine's Brad Farberman interprets the end result as "haunting, otherworldly funk junkets" alongside "spare, earthy R&B rituals". These include "Something to Hold on To" and what Amorosi describes as its album-opening "tinkling pianos" and "breezy" R&B in the vein of blaxploitation film soundtracks.