Title: Maxinquaye
Artist: Tricky
Release Date: 18/4/1995
Record Label: Island Records
Tracklisting:
1.
Overcome
2.
Ponderosa
3.
Black Steel
4.
Hell is Around the Corner
5.
Pumpkin
6.
Aftermath
7.
Abbaon Fat Track
8.
Brand New You're Retro
9.
Suffocated Love
10.
You Don't
11.
Strugglin'
12.
Feed Me
After having been a member of
Massive Attack for the release of the
trip hop defining
album,
Blue Lines,
Tricky signed to
Island Records as a solo artist and released his
debut album, Maxinquaye, on the 18th of April 1995.
Critics were (rightly)
unanimous in their praise for the ground-breaking work, and it entered the UK
album charts at No.3, hung around at the top and eventually went
Gold.
Track 1,
Overcome, is basically a reworking of
Karmacoma, track 2 on
Massive Attack's second
album,
Protection, which
Tricky sang (and probably wrote) anyway.
Track 3,
Black Steel, is a
bizarre (in my opinion) cover of
Black Steel in the hour of Chaos from
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by
Public Enemy, which somehow works.
Track 4,
Hell is Around the Corner, is a reworking of
Eurochild, which also appears on
Protection. It also uses the same
Isaac Hayes sample used by
Portishead on
Glory Box.
The album is named after
Tricky's mother,
Maxine Quaye. A few years ago,
Finley Quaye claimed he was
Tricky's cousin/uncle (different versions abound) and
Tricky's mother's name would lend some credibility to the story (which
Tricky vehemently denies to be true), although, as far as I know, the matter is still unresolved.