TRACKLIST
A1 Never Can Say Goodbye
A2 (They Long To Be) Close To You
A3 Nothing Takes The Place Of You
A4 Man's Temptation
B1 Never Gonna Give You Up
Medley
B2a Ike's Rap II
B2b Help Me Love
B3 Need To Belong To Someone
B4 Good Love 6-9969
Medley
C1a Ike's Rap III
C1b Your Love Is So Doggone Good
C2 For The Good Times
C3 I'll Never Fall In Love Again
D1 Part-Time Love
Medley
D2a Ike's Rap IV
D2b A Brand New Me
D3 Going In Circles
DESCRIPTION
For all the name Black Moses conjures, for all that it confers, it was not a name Isaac Hayes gave himself; that title was bestowed by a radio DJ sermonizing an intro to one of his songs. It was not a name Isaac Hayes — raised by his god-fearing grandparents in a former sharecropper’s shed after his parents died before he turned two years old — thought was even appropriate. It seemed sacrilegious to him. But that name, it meant something that even Hayes had to acknowledge. He had ascended to a plane that no Black performer before him had ever reached before. He topped the R&B charts and, eventually, the pop charts without ever having to compromise who Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. was. He had shown his people that James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” edict was possible. He dripped in gold chains inside his album gatefolds and drove cars literally trimmed in it. Unapologetically.
Black Moses towers as Hayes’ crowning solo achievement. Its 14 songs stand as a 90-plus-minute testament to Hayes’ nonpareil greatness, songwriting ability, singing, and arranging. A monument to authenticity, Black Moses projects a self-confidence so mammoth it feels like receiving the stone tablets of swagger down from the mountain of cool.