Monday Mixtape, Vol. 117

Shame on you! As in: Listen to Shame. These guys fucking rock. The youngsters from England scream and punish their instruments with no apologies. Raw bands have such a refreshing sound. I love this album. It took a little time to come around to the screaming, but this is punk at its best. While “One Rizla” and “Angie” are certainly there two most melodic tracks on the album with the least screaming, it shows their range and talents. I constantly picture Dave Grohl hearing this and just being like, “These guys fuckin’ ROCK!” as he headbangs away.

Speaking of Dave Grohl, if you don’t hear Nirvana’s sound in The Pollies track “You Want It” with Grohl’s thundering snare drum and lightning quick drum rolls, you aren’t hearing the right song.

Is it fair to compare Anderson .Paak to this generation’s Nate Dogg? He’s more talented than Nate Dogg because his albums are better, but it seems like every song with .Paak on it bumps. Anderson .Paak continues to release some good ass vibes, and I can’t wait for his new album which will will feature the head-bopping’ “Tints” with Kendrick.

Speaking of bands that have some awesome vibes, Holy Ghost! is back! Such an underrated band these dudes continually churn out great electro-pop while all sorts of worse wannabes win popularity contests.

SOAK is a young songwriter from Ireland who I’ve written about for a couple years, and this is one of her more accessible yet sad songs. Check her out!

BTW I’m seeing Lord Huron and Tame Impala tonight (it’s Sunday afternoon now not Monday, silly!) at Treasure Island Music Festival (Shame is actually playing here, but my wife is feeling under the weather, but she’s still a trooper and wants to see Tame Impala so we’re going late :) SO PUMPED!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 94

Kendrick Lamar was tasked with creating a soundtrack to the recently released Black Panther, and the results aren't exactly surprising. It's great. It's varied in sounds and production yet stays cohesive, and Kendrick pastes hooks, verses, and his imprint over most of the songs. Featuring appearances by Future, The Weeknd, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, SZA, Schoolboy Q, Khalid, Vince Staples, Anderson .Paak, James Blake, and Travis Scott, it's like rap's All-Star Game. The album is one of my fave soundtracks I've heard in quite some time. Check it out!

I was watching (the movie) Whiplash again, and it prompted me to get on a jazz kick last week. I stumbled upon this track from John Coltrane and Duke Ellington, a beautifully rhythmic song strolling through a wintry evening.

And finally, MGMT released a new album which goes way back to their pop-like ways. I still need to digest it, and I'll get a couple more tracks.  

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 83

What with my new business starting and my wedding coming up, I've been a tad bit busy, so my writing will not be up to snuff for the next month or so. Apologies, but I'll still keep the music coming! 

And please, if you haven't checked out SZA's album, it's a must. This is the best female R&B (if that's the genre it falls into) album I've heard in a long time. Just can't stop listening to it. 

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. 57 (and Local Natives album review)

My most anticipated album of the year was released on Friday: Local Natives' Sunlit Youth. 

There are albums where the first track completely takes hold of you - as LN's opener "Villainy" did for me - and the next track does the same - again as LN's "Past Lives" did - and again and again until I begin to say to myself, "Oh man, this could be a REALLY great album."

If I get through an entire album like that, it's a joyful experience for me hard to replicate in any other form. A couple albums this year have come close to that. I think of Anderson Paak's Malibu and Sturgill Simpson's release. 

SO DID THIS HAPPEN WITH LOCAL NATIVES, you ask, pleadingly. It did and then it didn't. 

As I got through the first four tracks, I was starting to get very excited. "Dark Days," their best song on this album, is track three. "Fountain of Youth," one of their most anthemic songs to date ("WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WAAAAAAAANNNNNTTT!"), a sing-along to experience live I'm sure, is track four. 

But then the albums starts to drift. The album is buoyed a bit by the mysterious and delicate "Jellyfish" - track six - the remainder wades without much direction. "Coins," an almost John Mayer-ish intro, is a weird direction and sounds misplaced on this album.

I'm not really sure what the majority of the lyrics mean either. There are all sorts of first names of different women of which no thread or theme I could deduce. There are vague references which may be specific to them but are lost on me. A few, like "Fountain of Youth," are a bit more straightforward, but overall I've never really understood their lyrics throughout their discography.

"Mother Emanuel" the other highlight on the back half of the album, soars on its catchy hook (which made me realize their singers don't really rely on catchy vocals but instead thrive on multiple vocal harmonies and lots of long "ooooohhhs" and "ahhhhhhs"), but I just haven't been able to find the rest of the album memorable.

Granted, I've only listened to the album all the way through a handful of times. I hope my feelings change on the end of the album, but I wish I got a warmer feeling from start to finish. 

It's a world apart compared (and this just isn't fair, really) to the quality and ingenuity of Tame Impala's third album. But Kevin Parker is the rock genius of this decade, the Thom Yorke of today, what Kanye has been to rap.

So those comparisons just aren't fair. Though I think I make it because I've always placed my love of both Tame Impala and Local Natives at the same heights. Now those heights are changing because Tame Impala is in the stratosphere, cementing what is probably my second favorite band ever behind Radiohead.

I STILL can't get over how amazing Currents is as well as Tame Impala's preceding two albums. It helps that I just saw them live at the beautiful Greek Theatre in Berkeley where they were the best I've ever seen in the four times that I've had the pleasure seeing them. They were light years ahead of their performance a year ago at Outside Lands right when Currents was released. And they were even better, tighter with the perfect mixing/level of sounds, than my previous favorite set of theirs at Austin City Limits back in 2013.

ANYWAYS, there's a ton of other music on this mixtape. If you haven't listened to Isaiah Rashad, whose debut, Cilvia Demo, was a favorite of mine, please see if he's your type. I love him and think his new album is pretty damn great. Though as is par the course, Kendrick absolutely steals the scene in "Wat's Wrong," as he spews,

I told them, the best rappers is 25
Been like that for a while now, I'm 29.
Any n**** that disagrees is a fuckin' liar.
Pardon me see my alter ego was gemini.

Finally, I'll leave you with the great "Leave Your Light On," from the enjoyable new album from Night Moves. Now THAT'S a hook! 

Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino Mashup by Gibberish

I'm a big fanboy of Donald Glover in part to his role on what use to be the hilarious sitcom Community and in part to his rap alter ego, Childish Gambino. The guy's a talent and I wrote about a really great interview with him and Rembert Browne in the now defunct Grantland :(  WHICH * TANGENT ALERT *  was so much greater than Bill Simmons newer iteration, The Ringer, a poorer millennial's version with short (it identifies how long it will take to read for all the too-busy-to-do-one-thing-at-once-like-read-an-article-that's-longer-than-three-minutes-while-checking-your-Snaps-every-minute-while-reading people) reads, slightly click-baity titles, and a larger glut of talent now that the likes of Brown, Zach Lowe, Wesley Morris, etc., are gone.

I think I get it, in Grantland they tried to provide amazing content in a ridiculous array of matters in sports and entertainment with long form articles of substance which was subsequently shut down by the powers that be at ESPN for reasons maybe more political than money-driven. Articles around the interwebs alleged that Grantland was not making that much money for ESPN but many more articles detailed the fractious relationship with Simmons and ESPN.

Who knows why it all happened, but Grantland was the best website I'd ever seen and may ever see. I wrote my obit on them a while back in which I had described the site: 

There were too many amazing articles to list, too many talented writers to mention all of them, but the site warped around an orbit of - gasp - journalism. It was journalism, not click bait, not profits, not sex and skinniness, that provided substance in a universe of trolls and tirades...

The site was created to inspire the young. It was created to breed writers and provide a lens into what driven, brilliant, and hard working people can accomplish.

I don't know if I would have started this blog without Grantland's push. I don't know if I would have started writing like a layman without Simmons' journey from stoner to savant. But I know it helped. 

SO LIKE I WAS SAYING, I'm a big Donald Glover/Childish Gambino fan. Glover has a new series on FX Atlanta debuting September 8 which looks to be very interesting and will be even more so considering Glover had complete control and hails from Atlanta himself. 

Which leads me to this very cool mashup with the beats to Gambino's album Because the Internet with lyrics and flows from Kendrick Lamar. Very, very fun listen. 

The Silent Majority

As with all things, the Internet has helped to flatten hip-hop — more artists and styles are available to more people, obscurity is a relic, subcultural allegiance can quickly become pop fandom.

- Jon Caramanica, "Vince Staples and J. Cole, Outsiders in the Middle of Hip-Hop," New York Times, July 9, 2015.

Years ago, there were severe categorizations of rap that artists rarely overcame - Talib Kweli and Common preached conscious rap, Dilated Peoples' and People Under the Stairs worked the underground, Nas, Biggie, and Jay-Z as the kings of gangsta rap on the East Coast, and Tupac, Dr. Dre, and Snoop sat on their throne out West. No one really veered outside of their lane. But now, Caramanica interestingly argues, the highway of rap has no lanes, and artists take whichever route they want. Drake, for example, is "an omnivore and a chameleon who never met a target demographic he couldn’t appease, or an Instagram post for which a lyric of his wouldn’t make the perfect caption. He’s post-region, post-era, post-ideology, post-genre." It's the post-label era of rap.

In this post-label era, we have a mix of musicians, such as Kendrick Lamar, Vince Staples, and J. Cole, who despite selling a lot of albums "have been largely shut out of hip-hop's celebrity class" because they don't particularly cater to the ostentatious and moneyed. But by creating music their own way, these guys are being rewarded financially and critically for it. "Their staunch commitment to traditionally underground sentiment has turned out to be lucrative," Caramanica writes, "and also necessitates a rethinking of where hip-hop’s current center of power and influence actually resides."

Kendrick Lamar is one of the highest selling artists in rap, selling upwards of 2 million records from his last two albums, yet he has never had a single in the Billboard Top 10. He's come nowhere close to that with any track on his new album. This is a plus for those like me that devalue singles and hits and place more emphasis on the originality and genuineness of an album and artist. Listen to Vince Staples arresting and ominous debut album, Summetime '06, and you will not hear one hit single; instead, you'll hear an album delicately prepared and exquisitely rapped. You'll hear a story and picture life in the eyes of a man expressing himself for himself and not the money or fame.

Although Caramanica's article speaks only of rap, the Internet has helped to flatten all music to provide more artists and styles to more people. Obscurity is a relic across all genres and the underground can become pop within days. The ubiquitous presence of music in our lives is a fortunate byproduct of technology. I can listen to a teenager in Ireland writing somber melodies, an artist from Atlanta creating strange and incomparable rap, a singer/songwriter composing orchestral anomalies, and any other millions of songs, some terrible, some inspiring, all from my couch. If it wasn't for Spotify, I would never have started this blog and certainly could not have listened to 101,976 minutes of music in 2014.

This democratization of music, the ability to hear almost anything in the world with the stroke of a few buttons, has eliminated anonymity. Even more important, the ability to create music is easier than ever. If someone is truly an amazing talent, he or she won't die undiscovered. That's not possible anymore. It's refreshing to know that brilliance will be discovered but also odd that our unknown musical geniuses are fossils buried in plots around the world.

The majority of music is now out there for consumption, silent and undiscovered for hours, days or months, instead of years or lifetimes. Technology, for all its pro and cons, has brought music and artists to our doorstep.

Knock, knock.