Monday Mixtape, Vol. 189

Hello, all! There’s been much great music released in the past few weeks, I can’t fit nearly everything into one mixtape! Two of my favorite rappers, Vince Staples and Isaiah Rashad, released my two favorite rap albums of the year.

John Mayer released a new album. Brittany Howard, lead singer of the great Alabama Shakes, released an album of remixes to her solo album, including remixes by Childish Gambino, Bon Iver, Little Dragon, 9th Wonder, Jungle, to just name a few!

Power duo, Big Red Machine (Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner) released an EP with some other superstars collborators like Fleet Foxes and Taylor Swift. Then Billie Eilish, Clairo, Leon Bridges, and Logic released an album. And don’t forget about Inhaler, a young Irish band who are writing some catchy rock songs.

So this is bordering on a ridiculous amount of music I have to listen to, and all I’ve had on repeat the past few weeks is Vince Staples (on this week’s mitxtape) and Isaiah' Rashad’s new album released on Friday (which will be featured on next week’s mixtape). Rashad hasn’t released an album in five years, and I’ve been loving him since his phenomenal 2014 debut, Cilvia Demo.

But today’s mixtape is more about Vince, a rapper I’ve been writing about for years. He’s one of few introverted rappers, a guy who, album after album, seems unhappy and consumed with rawness of the world before his eyes in his hometown, Long Beach, California.

Each of his six albums, starting with his debut in 2014 (like Rashad), are unusually short (4 of his albums are 21-23 minutes!), which I love, and unusually different, which I love even more!

I’ve been blown away by his latest album, Vince Staples, because he shifted his cadences, his beats, his sound, his whole palate. Many times the mark of a great song is when you say to yourself, “No other artist could have made this song what it is.” Staples does this numerous times, specifically in “ARE YOU WITH THAT” (maybe the most familiar sounding track to his older stuff) “TAKING TRIPS,” “LIL FADE,” “TAKE ME HOME.”

I still have a lot more to study on this album, but he and Rashad are at the top of my albums of the year list so far.

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 102

Happy Monday all! And apologies to all, I haven't posted for at least three weeks, so I'm sorry for my absence because there has been a TON OF MUSIC released in the past month or so. There's been so much music to camp to that I have musical ammo for many weeks :)

Let's start with Shakey Graves. I can't get his new album out of my head, one I keep coming back to. It's atmospheric, it's raw, it's rock, it's its own animal. But it's not for everyone. I'll post a few of my other favorite tracks in the next couple weeks. 

Childish Gambino's "This Is America" is the topic du jour, a piece that's generated a ton of publicity and analysis and misinterpreted by god knows how many people already. The video is one of the best music videos I can remember (cue the Grammy music for Single of the Year and Video of the Year), an intentionally uncomfortable and symbolic video of the representation of Gambino's  America.    

Speaking of lyrically poignant rappers, Wale released his second EP this year, both of which I've thoroughly enjoyed. This recent one's got a more political lean, particularly "Salary Kaep," but Wale's flow has improved dramatically over his (now) long career as evidenced best by "Negotiations."

LOVE the new Leon Bridges album. It's a bit more pop and dancey than his debut album which was too much exactly like the Sam Cooke / Marvin Gaye sound. "Shy" is easily my favorite song on the album.

A few other notes: Janelle Monae has made her best album, Young Fathers continue to get the award for weirdest yet interesting band, and DJ Koze with the feature from one of the dudes from Arrested Development (the band - not the show)!

Enjoy the week. 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 100!

We did it!! 100 Monday Mixtapes! All I can say is I'm happy I got Layers & Sounds to this point. I initially started this blog in the hopes that I could share my musical tastes and potentially become somewhat of a quasi popular music blogger whose range of musical tastes brought all sorts of different people to the fray. I knew that was always a stretch, but I did get a press pass to a My Morning Jacket show and almost got Michael Rapaport to tweet links to my playlists of my Best of Jay-Z and Best of Nas to see which playlist was better. Rapaport couldn’t figure Spotify out at that point so it all fell through :( We’ll always have the laughs  

But I started this blog as Spotify and all the other streaming giants began to really gain steam, and it seemed like humble blogs became irrelevant because Spotify and others would recommend music to listen to (and TBH Discover is a pretty cool playlist!).

Nonetheless, I kept writing and sharing stuff because it helped me keep my creative mind alive while I slaved away at a job that was very stressful and not exactly creative. A few blog posts got a lot of views for some weird reason: An Intervention for...The Weeknd maybe the most so because I wrote about "I Can't Feel My Face" before it became a huge hit so my SEO came up on a lot of people's searches (or something like that.)

Of the hundreds and hundreds of poems I've written, I've shared about five of them since those are the only ones I think are worth a damn. I'm proud of them and glad I was able to find an outlet to say those things.

I wish I wrote more stream of conscious musings on books I’ve read since I ultimately forget so much of what I liked in books. I only have two books on my blog but better than none, I suppose.

I shared photographs and other things, it's all been an adventure and great to look back on as I hit this numerical milestone since Layers & Sounds started three years ago.

(We won’t talk about the fashion blog. A bit misguided but still glad I tried).

Anyways, here's some more music, my 100th Mixtape, god knows if I'll be able to do another 100 of these, but I can promise you the music will always be playing. 

Cheers!