“Platinum chains and rings is all a brother knows now / Girl you’re one of the first to know that gold is back in town / So you gotta serve this royalty,” he sings. On the slow-burning hip-hop/soul anthem “Serve This Royalty,” the singer’s vocals slither around a horn-laden beat. “We’re very complex individuals and because we’re all exposed to the same worldly things, we can relate.” “The personality is an amalgam of things,” said ChesnuTT, explaining the pimp/lover dichotomy of his words. On the poppy ode to infidelity, “The Seed,” ChesnuTT deadpans the racy chorus, “Push my seed in her bush for life / It’s gonna work because I’m pushing it right / If Mary dropped a baby girl tonight / I would name it rock ‘n’ roll.” But, on the 45-second Motown-inflected gem “The Most Beautiful Shame,” ChesnuTT turns into a lovelorn Romeo as he croons, “A piece of my heart would me missing / If you let my kissing stop / It would be the most beautiful shame / If our beauty didn’t stay the same.” Being prolific is a blessing but your true objective is to let each piece have its own life. “Songwriters are just music lovers, and true music lovers don’t want to hear the same song over and over,” said the soft-spoken ChesnuTT, 32, in a recent phone interview. Listening to The Headphone Masterpiece is just like flipping the stations on a radio dial but, instead of an endless stream of mind-numbing rubbish, each different frequency is playing exactly what you want to hear. Whether he’s playing reggae, ’60s-style pop, lo-fi indie-rock, Motown-flavored doo-wop, Southern-fried hip-hop, gritty R&B or even folk, ChesnuTT, with his sweet, soulful voice, consistently excels and often amazes.
The album is a thoroughly eclectic affair that never gets boring. Ample evidence of his mercurial nature can be found on his pleasingly schizophrenic debut double-album, ambitiously titled The Headphone Masterpiece (Ready, Set - Go!). He’s the guy who can’t help but constantly change the radio station in his car, desperately trying to find something worth listening to. Cody ChesnuTT seems like the type of guy who needs to be on the move at all times.