Listen, pal, I’m having a smartly soundtracked existential crisis here
While preparing this piece about Karin Dreijer Andersson of the Knife’s Fever Ray guise, I came across someinterviews where Andersson cites Miami Vice as one of her primary influences for the project. I had what Oprah might call an “aha” moment. The perpetual tension, the melancholy, the sense of impending doom—the songs on the Fever Ray LP do create a feeling akin to Miami Vice’s music video-style sequences: those overly melodramatic moments where Sonny (and sometimes Tubbs) get to look cool while sulking over some mistake (usually someone they were trying to protect getting shot) to the sounds of an emotionally overwrought ’80s power ballad handpicked by music supervisor Jan Hammer. Among them are some of the coolest looking montage scenes ever committed to film, in my opinion. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in March, I took a birthday trip out to LA to visit my baby brother. It was right around the time that New Boyz’s “You’re A Jerk” was first breaking onto Cali radio and, when I got back, I pitched and wrote this story. In the time that’s elapsed, “You’re A Jerk” became a national hit, then went its way. Is this piece still relevant after six months on the backburner? I don’t know. I’m not sure if jerkin’ has legs, but it already has produced one more national radio hit then hyphy did. (Meanwhile, Pink Dollaz , the most talented and intriguing of the jerkin’ acts I’ve come across, are reportedly nearing a deal). And, beyond all expectations, the New Boyz’s Skinny Jeans and A Mic, which dropped last week, is actually somewhat of a treat. Had it been allowed to stand as, say, an eight-song EP (a chunk of inorganic reaches for radio close out the album, as if tacked on last-minute by the label), it might have been a blueprint for harnessing singles-oriented regional sounds into long-form releases.
Originally meant to do these together as a comparative piece, but it worked out for the best. The Jay review has been floating around online for a while and is in this week’s issue; the Rae is a long piece, and only online.
One more thing re: the non-Wu guest appearances on OB4CL2. Busta, Slick Rick and Lyfe Jennings kind of just do what they have to do as role players but let’s have a hand for Beans, Kiss and The Ghost SP. If I could pick a list of MCs to appear on a Cuban Linx sequel, these three would be at or near the top, and they brought it. As I stated in an early, scuttled draft of the review, Beans’s verse on “Have Mercy” is just devastating. His visibility might be a little limited right now, but he has not fallen off.
In light of the other day’s NYC Badmen tribute, I thought I’d put together a list of the most essential tracks blending dancehall vocals with hip-hop beats. Why aren’t there any mixtapes of this nature? Meant for this to be up in time for last weekend’s Labor Day celebration but that would have been too appropriate.
SUPER CAT-”GHETTO RED HOT (HIP-HOP MIX)” (1992)
No one captured the Brooklyn/Kingston culture clash better than Super Cat. This video for “Ghetto Red Hot” was filmed in Brooklyn and Kingston not long after the Wild Apache allegedly shot and killed Nitty Gritty outside a Flatbush record shop, in apparent self-defense. Read the rest of this entry »
The following is a joint post with my homey David Ma’s site, Nerdtorious. He asked me if there were any records I felt like writing about and this one jumped out at me:
I’ve been asked a few times how I “got into” dancehall. It’s pretty simple: I’m from New York. (Anyone asking me this is usually not from here). Jamaican music has been a familiar soundtrack for nearly as long as I can remember. I think it was around 1990, when I was 11, that it first left an impression. New York’s twin Black radio stations WRKS (”KISS FM”) and WBLS were playing records by Shabba Ranks and Mad Cobra. Chaka Demus & Pliers’ “Murder She Wrote” first came out around then, beginning its steady rise to Bar Mitzvah/White Folk Wedding-level ubiquity.
Truthfully, I didn’t like the stuff at first. Not knowing too many Caribbean folk at the time, the lyrics, particularly from gruff deejays like Shabba, were initially tough to decipher. And the rhythms, made more for the dancefloor than passive consumption, didn’t grab me the way hip-hop beats did then. My gateway drug came in the form of Shabba Ranks’ “The Jam,” a collaboration with the reggae-absorbent KRS-ONE, and Bobby Konders and Mikey Jarrett’s “Mack Daddy.” This was dancehall, but with a hip-hop beat, and I was hooked. I’d heard rappers like KRS toss around patois in their own songs, but the sound of Shabba and Jarrett’s full-throttle toasting over the familiar thrust of a hard-hitting breakbeat grabbed me in a way I can’t quite explain so many years later. Read the rest of this entry »
As you may have heard, Gary, Indiana has an opening for musical torchbearer. Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that Freddie Gibbs, who quietly signed an ill-fated Interscope deal a few years back, has emerged in the past few months to become the first rapper from Michael Jackson’s hometown with a national profile. I hadn’t heard of Gibbs myself until he showed up on a remix of Devin the Dude’s “Stray” that made the blog rounds earlier this summer. Intrigued by Gibbs’ no-frills rhyme style and his decision to hop onto an obscure album track from Landing Gear, of all things, I immediately downloaded The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs, the mixtape where the track originated. While Miseducation didn’t quite live up to my expectations, it showed enough flashes of brilliance to keep me open to any new material.
