| Since the
mid-1980s, Earth, Wind & Fire's output had been erratic and
quite uneven. One never knew whether the veteran soul/funk band
would come out with something as impressive as Share the World
or something as embarrassing as Heritage.
After many years with Columbia,
EWF switched to Warner Bros. — ironically, a label that gave
Maurice White and friends the boot back in 1972 — with Millennium.
While Heritage found EWF bending
over backwards to appeal to urban contemporary tastes, sounding
unnatural and even silly in the process, Millennium is a more
honest and organic recording.
Though hardly in a class with
That's The Way Of The World or Spirit — or for that matter,
Share The World — Millennium is a decent offering that finds
the crew being true to itself.
Much of the material, especially
"Sunday Morning," "Chicago (Chi-Town) Blues" and "Honor the
Magic," is fairly memorable. Unfortunately, the urban contemporary
audience wasn't receptive to EWF's honesty.
As influential as EWF had been,
and as often as it had been sampled in hip-hop, the group was
treated like it was expendable.
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