Jamaal Recommends

Jamaal shares his most influential albums and inspiring films, all available to listen to/watch online during quarantine.

Master Li, a warrior, gives his jade sword to his lover Yu Shu Lien in order to keep it safe. However, when the sword is stolen, Li embarks on a mission to find it.

Jamaal comments, “This was one of the first movies I selected from Blockbuster Video as a preteen, and it radically shifted my view on art. Up until this point any depictions of Martial Arts and movies with fighting in it were often cheap americanised comic versions which meant I had bought into the sort of prepackaged idea of what movies were and where their value was. It was with this movie that my preconceptions about art were thrown out of the window, and I credit a lot of artistic identity back on this experience.

Essentially…  The reason I consider any of these further examples as ‘works of art’ is because of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a 2018 action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games.

Set in America in 1899 as lawmen hunt down the last remaining outlaw gangs in the Wild West. After a robbery goes badly wrong, Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang are forced to flee. As deepening internal divisions threaten to tear the gang apart, Arthur must make a choice between his own ideals and loyalty to the gang who raised him.

Jamaal says, “There’s a single 6 minute sequence for why I chose this game. At around the midway point, with some of your gang and others separated, I was forced to take a long ride back to camp.  I was unable to skip the journey, there were no interventions, only the ride and a ‘D’angelo’ song playing in the background.

In an age where movies, music, the news are delivered in more delicately wrapped up bites to better suit our lifestyle, Red Dead Redemption asks you to truly slow down and immerse yourself in an experience and world that has long been forgotten.”

This is the third studio album by the American rapper released on March 15, 2015.  The album received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised its musical scope and the social relevance of Lamar’s lyrics. It was ranked as the best album of 2015 by many publications, as well as one of the best albums of the 2010s , with The Independent placing it first. The album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. By June 2017, the album had sold one million copies in the United States.

Jamaal shares,  “I don’t even really know where to start with this album.  It’s just perfect.   Like… perfect… not a single note is dropped.  I won’t have enough words for this so I’m gonna have to bullet point it…

1. The many voices of Kendrick Lamar
2. Seamless collaboration of Jazz, Rap, Funk & HipHop
3. Social conscious lyrics, culminating in the biggest released track “Alright” becoming the Anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement
4. The slowly revealing poem which ends with an edited Tupac/Kendrick Interview
5. “Sun beamin’ on his beady beads exhausted, Tossin’ footballs with his ashy black ankles”
6. Rapsody

Liverpool’s incredible UEFA Champions League final victory over AC Milan in 2005, where the Reds came from 3-0 down at half time to win on penalties in a match labelled ‘the Miracle of Istanbul.’

Jamaal comments, “No explanation needed for this one!”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is a media franchise and shared universe centered on a series of superhero films, independently produced by Marvel Studios and based on characters that appear in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The franchise includes comic books, short films, television series, and digital series. The shared universe, much like the original Marvel Universe in comic books, was established by crossing over common plot elements, settings, cast, and characters.

23 movies in 11 years.

Are you kidding me… 23 movies all intricately connected with interwoven storylines, character crossovers, end credit scenes and fully realised heroes and villains culminating forever and finally in the oh so perfect, critically acclaimed, highest grossing movie of all time ‘Avengers Endgame’.

It required patience, dedication and concentration to stick with it… words can’t express what these 23 movies in 11 years mean to me… but this video can

The celebrations in this video are GENUINE… they are not added on… they happened at almost EVERY single showing that I saw

And I saw this movie a lot.