Monday Mixtape, Vol. 169

If this first track isn’t the party rap anthem off the year, I don’t know what is. This song is amazing, and it’s got some rappers I love like Big K.R.I.T and Curren$y and a new one I’ve gotten into recently, Smoke DZA (who appears again on this mixtape with Joey Bada$$ in “The Mood”).

Really digging this new The Neighbourhood album. I will continue to put tracks from their album on upcoming mixtapes. Their sound shifts a bunch, so it’s hard to even tell it’s the same artist. See if you can spot it next week!

Shout out to Sean C. for letting me know Roosevelt released some new stuff. Hopefully, that means an album is around the corner!

If you haven’t heard of or heard IDLES before, be prepared. They are raucous. Their live shows are raucous. It’s a rowdy bunch, and their lead singer REALLY gives it his all in live shows, you should just check them out on YouTube if you’re digging what they’re spinning.

Fleet Foxes released their fourth album a week ago!! I have been digesting it constantly. On first blush, it is a really, really good album. It’s not as good as Helplessness Blues, my favorite of theirs, and it probably can’t overtake their debut album, but it’s still a really solid album. Robin Pecknold’s vocals are in the stratosphere, I think he’s such a talent, a dark soul trying to come to some light through his music. Couldn’t imagine any other voice of Fleet Foxes (though spoiler, he lets someone he met from his time at school in Oxford sing the beginning of the first track).

I’ll be putting much more from this album on future mixtapes.

Happy Monday. Go make something of yourself.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 164

It’s Monday. So here’s a mixtape of the rap variety with a dash of the incomparable Glass Animals, who certainly know their way around rhythms.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 73

Oh man, oh man. Kendrick. Let's start off with the fact that he released one of my favorite songs of the year, The Heart Part 4:

A song with three different beats that Kendrick destroys with a confidence and abandon that no other rapper alive could think of doing. This man KNOWS he is the greatest rapper alive. "Don't tell a lie on me, I won't tell the truth bout you," he threatens to all the shit talking rappers with little to back up against Lamar. 

This track was released prior to Lamar's album, DAMN. released on Friday. Because of the quality of The Heart Part 4, I was amazed by its absence on his new album. I thought, "Ruhroh. Either's he gone mad to not include something this good or his new album is so great he doesn't even need this track." 

So yeah, it's the latter. 

DAMN. is the astonishment of everyone hearing this album for the first time. DAMN. is the thought when Lamar announces on the first real track, DNA, aside the bass rattling, "I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA. Cocaine quarter piece, War and Peace inside my DNA." DAMN. is the realization that Lamar is now one of the best rappers of all time. There are too many damns that you almost stop giving a damn. But, really, DAMN!

I'm going to try to do an album review sometime soon of DAMN. because it's an astonishing piece of art. It's already getting crazy love on the interwebs, and as I am typing this, I am counting down the minutes until Kendrick headlines Coachella which can be watched (and almost all of Coachella, for that matter) for free on YouTube (God Bless America)! 

There's so much other great stuff going on in music right now, some of it included on this mixtape. Little Dragon released a pretty great album, Spoon released a quality album (they just don't make bad records - I don't like this one as much as They Want My Soul - probably because it doesn't have a track like Inside Out, but it's still a damn good listed), John Mayer released his best album since Continuum (more on this next week though I've written a ton about most of the songs on the album already since they were released in EPs before the whole album - this is some new gimmick thanks to Spotify and all the other streaming companies), Joey Bada$$ released a damn good sophomore album, and Father John Misty released an album which starts great but quickly falls off a boring ass cliff of regurgitated songs from his last two (great) albums. 

So this is a good one. Enjoy! 

The 2016 version of "1Train" - Really Doe by Danny Brown feat. Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul. and Earl Sweatshirt

2013's "1Train" was a Royal Rumble of the hottest rappers at that time: A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf. Danny Brown, Action Bronson, and Big KRIT. The production by Hit-Boy explodes and never lets go. It was my favorite rap track of the year (looking back at my Top 100 Songs of 2013, I listed Kayne's "On Sight" higher as a rap song which I still stand by because it's one of those Kanye as Radiohead comparisons I tend to make - no one could make that song but Kanye, no one could envision something like that): 

So now it's 2016 and we need another 1Train! This beat is filthy, first off. In comes Danny Brown, the shrill rapper, with a track off his new album, Atrocity Exhibition, with a who's who of the hottest rappers: Kendrick Lamar, TDE label-mate Ab-Soul, and the reclusive Earl Sweatshirt.

No surprise that the best rapper alive, Kendrick Lamar, KILLS the hook and then kicks his verse down the stairwell. Ab-Soul's verse is a bit too Watch the Throne-ish with his Balmain and BAPE talk, but I find it hard to hate on the man, I love his flows. Danny Brown is an acquired taste. 

Then there's Earl Sweatshirt, who finishes in a tie with Kendrick, mainly with the closing line, "Well it's the left-handed shooter / Kyle Lowry the pump / I'm at your house like / "Why you got your couch on my Chucks?"

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 52

As I preluded to on last week’s rant of a writeup, this week’s Monday Mixtape will just consist of rap. If you’re heading to the exits, I would just say to always keep an open mind to all music and try to find something beautiful in what (NO DON’T CLOSE THE DOOR!)…

The mixtape starts with Lushlife, a rapper/producer from Philly. I first heard of him with a track with Killer Mike, “This Ecstatic Cult.” But “Totally Mutual Feeling,” the track that leads this mix is one of my favorite rap songs this year. His other track in the mixtape, “Strawberry Mansion,” has a somewhat (since he’s from Philly) of a surprise cameo from Freeway, the man the myth the legend (sorry, I know he released a lot of albums since) who did such classics (with Jay and Beanie) as this gem in 2003:

The mixtape ends with “Toynbee Suite,” a seven minute track that feels like a play playing out through the acts as the song goes through three parts. Dig it! 

If you haven't watched Mr. Robot, I would highly recommend Season 1 as it was my favorite season of television since True Detective Season 2 (JOKING! Stop swearing. It was a joke. I know you're still mad. It was Season 1). I'm still trying to figure out where Season 2 is going (and these hour and a half episodes are sort of weird considering we haven't really gone anywhere - Game of Thrones anyone? JOKING. Stop swearing.).  

WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY was that the bright spot of Season 2 for me has been Joey Bada$$' amazing character, who over the first few episodes has started watching Seinfeld and can't get enough. It's great comedy for such a dark show as he analyzes Kramer and Constanza, and he's been surprisingly good, one of the better rap/actors I've seen in a while. "Devastated" is one of his best tracks since his earlier days (back when I was screaming about this dude's talent in 2010 on his first and still my favorite Mixtape by him).

Ladies and Gentlemen, Schoolboy Q! I have loved Schoolboy Q since he released “There He Go,” easily one of my most played rap songs in the past few years:

So anyways, Q can be an acquired taste because he’s raw as hell and misogynistic (See: “Big Body,” mostly every lyric, particularly the yelling by Tha Dogg Pound), but if you can see through that stuff (and admit that without the lyrics, Big Body is an AWESOME song and catchy, how good is that chorus??), his new album is one of the best, thoughtful, and insightful (see: “Neva Change”) albums of the year. 

See: the two verses from "Neva CHange":

The sidewalk chalk
The block stay hot
Paranoid, the cop that keep my gear in park
Pull me out the car to give me black thought
But fuck it, this shit's all kinda player
This shit my mama flavor
This that raised by your granny, pistols and Now & Laters
Your pops was way too busy, missin' your mom's labor
Grew up just like your daddy
To baggin' baggies in alleys
To where the streets is your family
Gettin' blurred by the same cop
Go to jail for a year and come home
Two of your n***** dropped
You know how that feelin' feel
What to feel when it's gettin' real
More bullets to go around
Come jump in this water, n****
You still with your mama livin'
30 with no ambition
Your kid got no pot to piss in
You sayin' some n**** fake
You're selfish and sad, n**** you're lame
You hatin' on another man's success
Because the n***** blessed and wouldn't let you finesse
You got the game all twisted
You're leechin' worse than these ladies
Your inner n**** ain't aging
Reason the hood stay shady

And then the last verse:

Still our motive be commas
And still my life isn't promised
Still nervous as drivers
You see them lights get behind us
They pull me out for my priors
Won't let me freeze 'fore they fire
You say that footage a liar
They want my flow in the dryer
I'm at the top aimin' higher
My lawyers stay on retainer
When white folks point the finger
Place my neck on that hanger
Shit, no wonder we riot
N***** still killin' n*****
Child support killin' n*****
Cops enslavin' us n*****
Little girls killin' mothers
They treat their kid like a brotha
Fathers stuck with them lifers
Kept it real with his n*****
But left his kid for the suckas, shit no wonder we bang
Damn shame, mane, some things will never change

Yeah, so his words > my words.

The final track from him was THat Part with Kanye (which I yelled about last week because I think Kanye’s verse here is taking some 2 Chainz flow, but maybe it’s just me). The beat is totally Schoolboy - a hazey whistle walking through an abandoned house of mirrors over a deafening bass. Nobody sounds like this dude. Check the whole album because it’s all really good. 

Albums to look forward to in 2015!

I've scoured the interwebs for a bunch of info on 2015 album releases (thank you Consequence of Sound, Stereogum, Pitchfork, Metacritic, Ranker) and here's an incredibly quick listing of albums that I promise to listen to MANY MANY times which are ranked from somewhat excited to RIDICULOUSLY excited):

Brandon Flowers - TBA
Savages - TBA
The Dodos - Individ (1/27)
Wild Nothing - TBA
Panda Bear (Noah Lennox from Animal Collective) - Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper
Heems (from the now extinct Das Racist) - Eat Pray Thug (3/10)
Jose Gonzalez - Vestiges & Claws (2/17)
Fleetwood Mac - TBA
Chromatics - Dear Tommy
Pusha T - King Push
Freddie Gibbs - Lifestyles of the Insane
James Blake - TBA
DIIV - TBA
Purity Ring
Belle & Sebastian - Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance (1/20)
The Decemberists - What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (1/20)
Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear (2/10)
Death Cab for Cutie - TBA
Chance the Rapper - Surf
Blood Orange - TBA
Joey Bada$$ (finally!) - B4.DA.$$ (1/20)
Band of Horses - TBA
Drake - Views From the 6
Adele - TBA
Modest Mouse - Strangers to Ourselves (3/3)
Beach House - TBA
A$AP Rocky
Grimes - TBA
Run the Jewels - RTJ3
My Morning Jacket - TBA
Kanye West - TBA
Kendrick Lamar - TBA
Radiohead - TBA
Frank Ocean - TBA