Have you ever seen an album cover that had you at hello? For me, that album cover would be Preston Love’s Preston Love’s Omaha Bar-B-Q (featuring Shuggie Otis on Guitar). I’d never heard of Preston Love. Or at least I didn’t know I had. You see, you know Preston Love even if you don’t know you know him. His song “Chili Mac” from this album was used in Usher’s “Whatever I Want” song from the Confessions deluxe edition.
But let’s talk album covers because there’s so much to talk about. For starters, Preston, who was a saxophonist from Omaha, hence the album title and, well, picture, was quite a solid sax player. But this Black man decided to play the sax while barbecuing and that’s pretty Black. I mean, on the list of Blackest things you can do, I’d wager that being ON the grill while playing a sax is pretty high up on the list. When you add in the apron, which was clearly not art directioned but probably straight from the Preston Love kitchen, well, we’re working with some shelf Omaha Blackness here. The hat is the icing on the cake.
And real talk, every song on the album is named after some food-like something-or-other and well, it all just kind of somehow works. There is both some solid drum work and sax work, and, of course, Shuggie Otis brought that funk on the guitar.
And there’s a song here called “Pot Likker.” You just don’t see enough of that nowadays. Shouts out to Preston Love and his Black AF album cover.