He Opened Doors: Moby’s Play at 25

Caveat emptor: I like Moby, and I’m pretty sure that was the consensus in the ‘90s.

His intense essays about veganism and the hypocrisy of the church tucked into the booklets of progressive rave albums that flirted with metal and gospel and ambient classical added up to a colorful, outspoken misfit to have around, throwing chocolate and peanut butter about in the alt-rock and electronic worlds.

Maybe he had haters before 1997’s polarizing Animal Rights; I’m sure Everything Is Wrong being named SPIN’s 1995 Album of the Year made some Pavement fans livid the moment Kochie Banton’s toasting went in one ear and Rozz Morehead’s piercing diva wail the other on “Feeling So Real.” But most of my absorption of music came via reviews and record guides and early websites rather than lol socializing. And I certainly wasn’t attending any raves as a teen who didn’t obtain a driver’s license til 22 or a car until 28.

So my first exposure to Moby hate came from a Play review in the Tower Records house magazine Pulse! (remember? Their Sam Goody rival was Request; my first byline, at 15, was in NJ chain CD World’s trade paper Liner Notes) by a name I still remember, Todd Inoue. I remember being shocked to see a two-star review of something being praised almost unanimously elsewhere, and confused by the reasoning, which I can’t quote a quarter-century later but centered on Moby’s dependence on sampling Black voices to achieve his artistic credibility. At the time, I wasn’t even sure this was, like, allowed to be printed. Now I recognize the moment as my introduction to the discourse of cultural appropriation.

I don’t think Moby’s sampling was any more disrespectful than, say, the Beastie Boys. I just think his unassuming nonchalance at being a rhetorical bald head in a greatly anonymous sea of techno artists rubbed people the wrong way. Like how he’s always described Play’s origins as a dance producer’s dream because Alan Lomax’s gospel and blues field recordings were royalty-free public domain. He’s right! But now I can see how that didn’t sound great in conjunction with the white guy’s penchant for hiring and sampling Black vocalists.

Still, I think his bluntness about the world’s painful contradictions makes him sound less self-aware and more desensitized than he actually is. His memoirs chronicle the symbiotic relationship between his low self-esteem and addiction struggles, and you can grok one of the most crippling cases of impostor syndrome from virtually any interview with him. When I interviewed him for Grammy.com circa Play’s 20th anniversary in 2019, Moby actually said that me asking him about it was the closest he’d come to having any kind of discussion about concerns of historical sensitivity: “Culture is evolving and it’s fluid. I’m sure if I sat down with someone like Cornel West, I’m sure they’d have a different perspective on Play and I’m sure that I’d agree with their perspective.”

Of course, after remarkable word of mouth, the 12-million-selling Play became the all-time bestselling electronic album, and the punchline is that Moby’s plainspokenness about the racial component of his success most echoes that of his bizarre adversary Eminem, the all-time best-selling rapper. You can definitely compare them in 2024: inarguably significant white figures in their respective genres whose commercial and artistic peaks coincided with the millennium and fans of said genres mostly consider to be sort of a punchline today, regardless of their technical bona fides and candid grasp on their occupancy in Black culture. And I think people struggle with the fact they at least somewhat deserve it. I’ve never seen Eminem require any kind of artistic defense, his verbal fireworks have always spoken for themselves and even his dodgy moralism about his provocations has always generally deferred to a heart in the right place after the smoke and checks clear.

 

VIDEO: Moby “Honey”

Play is really the only Moby album that ever sparks conversations, which isn’t a surprise because it’s both handily his best album and the trickiest one to defend. The songs truly wrote themselves; “Run On” was already an Elvis- and Johnny Cash-covered standard he discovered only after painstakingly arranging every line manually with proto-Pro Tools technology. “Honey,” “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” “Natural Blues” and “Find My Baby” are all stunning marriages between the turn of one century and another, richly performed hymns granted celestial eternity by not too much adornment. Some artificial strings here, a little dusty boom-bop there. The Black voices in question are gorgeous, and their production choices are less innovative than utilitarian. I’d argue this was a more respectful approach than radically recasting them, though. The effect is like that of a painting being carefully restored in another dimension’s timeline.

And then, aside from the outlier “Bodyrock,” a big-beat valentine to the Treacherous Three, there’s a dozen other songs that fall into two categories. Pop songs dryly sung by Moby himself, and mostly instrumental ambient pieces. The former mostly hit (literally in the case of “South Side” and the Starbucks mixtape special “Porcelain”) and the latter mostly don’t (shout-out to “My Weakness,” though, mostly a warping loop of, uh-oh, an indigenous Kanak choir).

I admit I’m prone to laughing off the cultural appropriation question when virtuosic students like Vampire Weekend and tUnE-yArDs (and Eminem) powerfully make their borrowings their own. It’s a little trickier when five of Moby’s seven best pop songs really do hinge on those Black voices and his own monotone isn’t exactly the selling point of the other two. And I more or less still love Play but I’ve never cottoned to those joyless instrumentals or the one he talks over. They’re competent, stiff, kind of a worst-case scenario if you’re trying to convince people the guy is the opposite. (2009’s Wait for Me makes a much better case for his quietude.)

 

VIDEO: Moby “Bodyrock”

Since the ‘90s were a utopian time for music, I choose to believe Moby cares — he’s since upped those manifestos with VEGAN FOR LIFE tattooed on his neck — and selected those Black voices to uplift himself when he never expected Play to find an audience, and has maybe, millions of dollars later, come to understand it worked for others as well. Play got him in the Guinness Book for licensing all 18 tracks to some commercial or another, which for once helped more people hear the music, and even earned Moby his own short-lived touring festival Area: One (and its sequel Area: Two), whose lineup he filled with fellow overthinkers like himself (and a number of Black voices): The Roots, Incubus, the Roots, Nelly Furtado, New Order, Kelis.

I didn’t get to see an Area show, but I did catch the Play tour, which was a blast. On different songs, Moby mostly DJ’d his earlier stuff, played guitar among other instruments, kept soul singers on hand to bring Play to life, and, toward the end, even sang one of the sample-based hits himself, I believe “Natural Blues.” Without Beck’s sense of looseness and irony, most of the conviction was channeled into Moby’s belief in the found melodies and proven beats. But he was a lot less stiffly competent than what Beck became after the ‘90s. And if you really need more proof of what Moby gave back, look no further than Lil Wayne’s Everything Is Wrong-sampling “I’m Me,” one of the greatest songs by the Best Rapper Alive.