Quest Love: Al Green

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AL GREEN TRIED to make a hip-hop record, but no matter how hard producers Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and James Poyser tried, they couldn't do it.

"I told them to go play the hip-hop if they wanted to, put all the hip-hop moves in there go in and hit me with it," said the legendary soul singer. "And the more they tried to play it hip-hop, the more they played it just like Al."

In fact, it had a reverse effect: Green's recent CD, "Lay It Down," actually sounds more like his '70s heyday albums than anything else.

"The more they tried to get the songs, and rehearse the songs, the more they sounded like the first stuff we been cutting — and that was the Willie Mitchell [produced songs in] 1973, '74, '75," Green said. "It just sounds like it's homegrown, man. We didn't mean that, man — that's the just the way it happened. I'd say, 'Hey are you playing the hip-hop?' and the guys say, 'Yeah, I'm playing the hip-hop, but every time you sing it, I play it like you singing it.'

"I really like the hip-hop flavor and I like the moves and everything, but I don't know — I got to be me, man, I got to be me. So, I try to do what the master got for me," continued Green, an ordained preacher.

Thompson and Poyser, who produced the album along with Green, both come from the hip-hop world: Thompson plays drums in The Roots and Posyer has produced work by Common and Talib Kweli. While Thompson has received a great deal of credit for returning Green to his '70s sound — much like the career revitalization Jack White gave to Loretta Lynn on "Van Lear Rose" — Green actually gives Poyser equal, if not more credit.

"I think [Thompson's] a great producer as far as the sound and stuff is concerned, but I think that James Poyser is going to carry a little bit more weight because he's playing keyboards," Green said. "?uestlove is on the drums and you're playing a beat and that's fine, but you can't read the notes, you can't read the musical design."

The project's original intention was to be a collaboration record of sorts, with young soul stars such as Anthony Hamilton, John Legend and Corinne Bailey Rae dueting with Green.

"That's what we started out with, we wanted to do just maybe a couple of songs with Anthony, then a couple of songs with John Legend," Green said. "But when [Legend] started hearing our songs he forgot about [the songs he brought in] and started singing our songs. 'Stay With Me (By the Sea)' was our song — me and Corinne had already finished it — but John liked it so he started singing so he sung on the part that Corinne was already on."

While cuts featuring all three crooners ended up on the record, the album became very distinctively Al Green, very quickly — especially with the initial sessions featuring Thompson, Poyser and the album's core backing band, which features The Dap Kings, the horn section acclaimed for backing Amy Winehouse.

"Well, we didn't come [into the studio] with anything," Green said. "We came in we just wanted to get acquainted to see if the vibe was right. ... And the vibe was so right that we ended up cutting eight songs the first day. That's a little bit overload, I know, but I went home and slept like a baby because I was completely exhausted."

Green is so proud of "Lay It Down" and his new songs that no less than five times during our interview did he break into song, singing the chorus to the title track emphatically three times. And Green said attendees at tonight's Wolf Trap show should expect to hear "Lay It Down," as well as the new CD's "Standing in the Rain" and "Stay With Me (By the Sea)" sprinkled in among hits such as "Let's Stay Together" and "I'm Still in Love With You."

He also wanted to warn the people of Virginia of one thing:

"Al's got a problem: My problem is L-O-V-E and I think it's the most beautiful thing in the world."

» Wolf Trap, 1645 Trap Road, Vienna; with Amos Lee, Tue., 8 p.m., $25-$42; 877-965-387.

Written by Express contributor Rudi Greenberg

Photos by Christian Lantry