I don’t want to be saying this. Know that in advance. But it would be irresponsible for me to deny that “Rock The Mic” might be the first big rap banger of 2009. Formal percussion is treated as a necessary evil, flow the all-encompassing lure, sweet nocturnal synths sighing nearby. Ghostwritten? Probably—it’s brain-busting to imagine Jermaine Dupri and Bow Wow sitting in the studio penning these wry mic tosses and asides—but since when has that stopped a track from being hot, right. Also: who even thought of these two as such an inseperable pair that they deserve a posse track of this devotion? Also: Bow Wow is the glassy-eyed antithesis of charisma, and Jay D brought us Da Brat, among others. But: this! The verses are a gorgeous marriage of tempo and spare drum fill, their give and take the sweet cushion until that sublimely silly hook: “Walk just alike / Talk just alike / Same damn swagger when we” (scratch) “rock up on the mic.” JD may be coming to the “big black glasses” game about 18 months late, but the black-lit video exudes the same timeless cool as the track itself. This, in short, is what happens when all of the elements of a pop track are arranged in geometric perfection like stars on a cloudless night. Try not to hold against it that two of those stars are, um, Jermaine Dupri and the star of Like Mike. January down, here’s the one to beat.

:: youtube.com/watch?v=15jIipLKV3U

permanent link ::

For all the depressing stats about this year’s Grammy Awards, there was one bright spot—the voting assembly set a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering ever recorded of gray haired uncles with ponytails. It was a beautiful sight to behold: instead of turning down their hearing aids, they embraced the fact that quietly shuffling, tom-tom heavy drums now sound exactly like Bonham to them. They stopped faking appreciation for Radiohead and accepted that “tension” or “emphasis” in music now makes their Pacemakers quiver, and reminds them a little too intensely about the status of their 401Ks. In an unprecedented move they collectively sold their mint condition copies of Led Zeppelin III because in 2009, even an ancient, rasping Robert Plant is just a little too dramatic and now needs a neutral, slightly twangy female voice to negate his distinctiveness.

While these brave men celebrated after the awards ceremony, the Jonas Brothers sipped sizzurp with Lil’ Wayne while listening to Animal Collective, the four of them working late into the night to develop an airtight phenomenology of cultural relevance for peer-reviewed publication in March’s edition of Blender. But what they forgot to include (it may feature in the footnotes) was the existence of completely different scales of “cred” and relevance. To pot smokin’ Great Uncle Jonas, having Robert Plant sing his own songs at all is like you having known about Cut Copy before all your friends did. To Greezy-Grampa Weezy, the so-obvious-it-might-as-well-be-silence string part actually brings back warmish, nonoffensive memories from back on the farm.

By the time the voting masses finally adjourned they had singlehandedly discovered what makes Old Person Pop Music the cultural force it is: learning to embrace a precise sonic recreation of the deterioration of time. Lyrics are replaced with flaccid “ooohs” and “ahhs.” Musical inspiration is replaced by lazy competence and soulless studio strumming. Originality is replaced by a kind of gauzy, general familiarity that rivals the worst of Girl Talk in its nostalgic pandering, and formerly vibrant artists are trotted out from their mausoleums to mumble something nostalgish about the last letter they’ll ever send. A new milestone for music as a whole—the musical equivalent of Alzheimer’s.

permanent link ::

Contrary to what you might believe after listening to a Beirut album, you’re more likely to get mugged outside of a McDonalds in Nantes than be told to quiet down by busking gypsies. But Zach Condon’s Paul Simon-y country hopping works because he sounds like that guy on a semester abroad who barely shows up to class and mostly drinks absinthe with the toothless guys at the betting parlor, staying up until the morning talking about World War II. He’s not dabbling because of any soberly aesthetic reasons, but because he really believes that he’s Jacques fucking Brel and that if he drinks enough Cotes du Rhone he can tune out our grotesque world of Twitter and “Prom Queen.”

Weirdly, though, the electronic ephemera that has always been on the sidelines of a given Beirut album now seems to be overtaking his increasingly listless horn charts. It’s like he got kicked out of the brass-band club, woke up in the gutter, heard the distant bleating of a Berlin rave, and then started mumbling over it. Still, even when biting cobblestone, he doesn’t do so bad a job. “My Night With The Prostitute from Marseilles,” the leadoff track from the electronic side of March Of The Zapotec/Realpeople Holland, is all precise, simple synth arpeggios reminding us of a slightly more expensive “Scenic World,” with his unintelligible croon wafting over like cigar smoke. It’s no hypermelodic “Postcards” or “Nantes,” but it’s nice in a crashing-in-your-hostel sort of way.

With the double-EP context tamping down expectations, chillout numbers like this are perfectly fine as a victory lap. But hopefully he either wakes up and gets to the rave (as the progression of the album makes it seem he might) or goes back inside where the toothless dudes are ready to gum his ear with more songs about willow trees. Last time he did a stopgap EP it had fucking “Elephant Gun” on it; when you can squeeze out a drunk-ballet instaclassic while waiting at Heathrow, why would you ever stoop to less?

permanent link ::

If nothing else, let it be said that Raekwon is taking this Cuban Linx 2 thing seriously. The pre-release interviews exude a monk-like determination to live up to his debut’s legendary status, something Nas similarly invokes (or at least used to) but with flippancy, like, “Of course my new record’s going to be great. It’ll be better than Illmatic.” And we’re like, seriously, Nas, is it for real gonna, and yawn ostentatiously. But Raekwon seems straight terrified by the prospect of following up Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (1995), which he fucking should be. It’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx.

He has respected our anticipation, which guarantees nothing but endears the man to us. (Likewise endearing was the album-length fire he spit on 8 Diagrams.) Here, though, is something tangible. This “Wu Ooh,” while necessarily not the distillation of the hip-hop mythos into a new formulation entirely (as the original was), certainly seems replete with the baleful fire of that spirit. Apparently the universe still contained within it a few ghostly samples to be filtered ad infinitum over dusty drums: it’s RZA-as-RZA, the type of funk that makes dust-breathing skeletons crawl dirty out the grave and nod skull. Does Raekwon ride the beat low and close to the rail, and when we attempt to move closer to it does the friction flash sparks of slang in our eyes? Yes, that happens. Is Method Man all charisma and libido and quick audible blunt hits? Yes, he is. Does Ghost bounce around hype but vengeful like a drama queen at the end of a coke binge? Verily, with flagrance. Here is one good track; here is to small things and fifteen years later, more Wu, still Wu. Let’s net get in over our heads here.

permanent link ::

A few years ago a good friend of mine announced that he was no longer a fan. “Of what?” we asked. “Of anything,” he replied, and then sold all of his movies, CDs, and books. The money was spent on a pair of functional grey New Balances. This nihilism stunned and saddened many of his friends, particularly those with whom arguments on the nature of art and the auteur were cherished memories. But years later this friend (at least) sorta gets it. It can, after all, be a bit taxing. I find myself sometimes these days edging out of step, yearning to remain up on rap beefs and indie-blog trends but ultimately lacking the passion to do so and hitting shuffle on the iPod again—maybe some Neil Young will come up, maybe I’m getting sick. Maybe Colin will text me if someone drops a good verse.

Still, I have and probably never will set myself completely adrift from the earthly going-on of pop music; it’s too deep within me, like the crash of waves to those raised on the coast. Lil Wayne, however, seems to have done so. These “rock” “songs,” for lack of better terms, are the sort of absolute clusterfucks impossible for any but the most unhinged to imagine. For years he’s rebuked the notion that he listen to or even keeps up on popular hip-hop, because, he would claim, he’s too busy working on his own thing—but then in raps he seemed conversant at least, obsessed at most, with his genre’s gossip and goings-on. There were, likewise, allusions toward this rockist shift, not least of which was the guitar-bandying and apparent Kid Rock fandom. But: “What was the record that you claimed was a huge influence for you growing up, that some people might not expect?” a recent ESPN interviewer asked Wayne, leadingly, and looking to bring up (again) his claim to have loved Nevermind (1991) as a child. Wayne had no idea what to answer: “I dunno, what did I say?” The interviewer told him. “Oh, yeah. That,” Wayne replied, by which “that” he meant “music.” He sounds at last freed from human syntax or relations. He is pure lust, pure anger, without form; he is all void and all substance, void as substance or neither or nether. Before his metaphors oozed with an alien grasp of English syntax and etymology; with these raps/songs/quail calls, whatsoever they might apply as sonically, the very music itself seems like an alien’s grotesque impersonation of human sounds.

He’s really gone fucking insane, guys! “Prom Queen” might be the most immediately egregious, but it’s also probably the “best” (quotes again, sorry), equal parts System of a Down and hypercompressed chug and it also kinda makes sense: it’s about a prom queen, as evidenced by the title, and apparently Lil Wayne has/had a crush on a prom queen. This is straightforward, if awful. Many people have crushes. The triumphant uptempo “Amazing Love” refuses such simple classifications, though, squirrely synth lines and a lyrical slant that seems like it might be about the nature of human sadness were it not delivered in a cascade of autotuned countermelodies, acidically digesting meaning into pitchless vomit. The track deserves merit if for no other reason (which: maybe) than for rendering the autotuner into a device of atonal destruction, which is the exact opposite of the way it was manufactured to be employed. “Hot Revolver,” meanwhile, sounds as if produced by and for the videogame Rock Band. I can’t imagine what anyone involved was thinking, at any point, and so won’t speculate.

Last year when Alan Baban and I were working on our semi-Satanic “Red Album” review we yearned for ways to tie together Weezy and Weezer and their twain ability to turn pop music into a singularly solipsistic experience. It is both sad and great that these “rock” “songs” and the forthcoming Rebirth “rock” “album” seem to be Wayne’s own “Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” a monumental act of artistry and self-indulgence that stands as a sort of inverted monument, like the Phallus of Washington stuffed earthward and fucking itself forever, but, alack, so goes pop music in this millennium, I suppose. This is the sort of musical what-the-fuck too great to be ignored, too awful to be hated, too blinding to be a mistake. My friend forsook art for New Balances and seems, in sum, pretty content with the trade-off. They seem like comfortable shoes. But like Cuomo, Wayne forsook art for himself and seems, skin removed, merely rich with self, lavish, garish, decadent, deplored. I will not define progress. I will not stand in the way of change. I will not stand in the way of change.

permanent link ::

At this point in film and television history, it’s become cliché to expect child stars to end up spending their later teen years becoming less cute and more involved in drugs, cheap sex, and downward career arcs. Way before Macaulay Culkin, there was Song of the South and Peter Pan star Bobby Driscoll, who went from being Disney’s golden boy to a teenager with many pimples and few acting prospects to death at 31 after an unhinged adult life. Driscoll is the subject of Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, the latest release from Benjy Ferree.

“Fear” suggests the paralyzing situation of being a young actor who views his oncoming adolescence as a ticking time bomb. Everything, from the postman to the passage of another day, reminds the protagonist that his career is only as strong as his delayed puberty. Somewhere between glam rock and doo-wop, “Fear” betrays an appropriate theatricality, as though the perpetually stressed child actor has folded his sanity and now can’t help but see life as yet another stage show.

What’s most attractive, and also oddly unsettling about “Fear,” is that Ferree sounds gleeful as he describes the downfall of the protagonist. It’s a kind of absurdist take on reality that I can imagine appearing in the final scene of a biopic about Driscoll directed by a dream team of David Lynch, John Cameron Mitchell, and Todd Haynes, as Driscoll’s ghost celebrates the black comedy of his doomed existence with an elegantly choreographed number. Perhaps Ferree is channeling Driscoll, laughing from beyond the grave at the shit hand he ended up with. At the very least, it’s some dynamite dramatic pop.

permanent link ::

You know the part on “Move” where Tip forsakes funky chaos for morphine-laced brilliance, smoky neon lights oscillating in perfect harmony? Of course you do. It’s my favorite part of Q-Tip’s immensely enjoyable “don’t call it a comeback” record (sorely excluded from our year-end festivities—our bad). Well, direct from the heavens—err, Twitter actually, we have a re-imagining of that morsel of dope, stretched to the margin and rendered in panoramic scope.

The Abstract throws his handful of jewels on the table first, cheshire cat disposition beneath the precise velvety-ness of his cadence, and he quietly narrates his pre-fame endeavors, an amended version of the album track, concluded with poignance: “Get it in ya head / We gon’ rock the dead / Night of the living MCs / The weak ones fled.” Then he graciously passes the mic and plays hypeman to his cohorts, embellishing their bars with gleeful yelps and encouragement. This whole phenomenon is so enjoyable in part because it feels markedly organic, like Tip has this impossibly hot beat from a legend, and he’d like to share it with his venerable peers—not just old contemporaries like Busta and Rae, who sound grizzled and immensely capable here, but the (relatively) new kid on the block, too.

It’s nice to hear Busta Rhymes rattling off a stream of slightly nonsensical, wildlife-related outlandishness laced with a hushed shit-talking. It’s the type of performance that reminds you the guy has anthems like “Woo Ha!” and “Abandon Ship” in his canon, and that Busta is at his grin-inducing pinnacle when he bears his eccentricities and the outlandishness of his wordplay and treats them as strengths. Raekwon’s verse is a rush of syllables and slang in the best possible way, smooth and measured, the more subdued flow Rae has been utilizing the last few years fits perfectly here, navigating blips and snares like a gymnast weaving through a packed intersection. Then Wayne drops: “Ever since I made it up out of middle America / E’ybody wanna be in my genital area,” and everyone reaches for the back button on their clickwheels, brains compelling them like sugared-up four year olds following a slide down the biggest hill in your neighborhood: “again!” And that’s the essence of this: no mythology, no hype, just an epic posse track floated into the bowels of the internet for you and yours.

permanent link ::

You can’t beat a bit of Bhangra. Its foot-stomping medley of dance moves and pomp work like an Eastern flamenco, seducing all but the most rigid of spoilsports. How well that translates to the big screen, though, has always been a bit more subjective in the eyes of the caramel corn crowd. America’s passion for Indian cinema ranged from a tongue-in-cheek Simpsons’ sketch to the cheek-in-cheek Girly Man —until, that is, Slumdog Millionaire hit the festival circuit and went on to snatch all those Academy nominations. It should really have been released as Cashcow Megabucks given the rate it’s swept through the Hollywood money pit, but Danny Boyle’s latest odyssey has well and truly been let off its decorated leash. And while the gunshots and cash registers of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” will no doubt help sell it to the Scarface demographic, original composer A R Rahman cleared the greatest hurdle in funneling the sounds of Dharavi into celluloid.

His themes for Slumdog covered all the necessary bases—slow kiss, turncoat, confession—but it was this closing piece that really lit the dark cinema when I caught it a couple of Saturdays ago. Coming straight after the slowed down Crocodile Dundee of the delicate train station finale, “Jai Ho” finds the film’s cast signing off in an epic Mumbai dance number, weaving round elements of rap and Eurocheese just to make the translators work overtime. It’s got all the drive and vigor you’d expect from a major Tinseltown juggernaut, matched with the frenetic zest and rampant glee of red-hot Bollywood in full flight. As Dev Patel and his co-stars leapt round the screen in excitement and stoked the film’s lasting light warm glow, the music marked one of the few times in my life I’ve seen a film audience stay to the end. The End.

permanent link ::

When I was going through my awkward freak-folk phase Vetiver was like a shining beacon of tight musicianship in a sea of bad beards. Of course, like many a beacon of tight musicianship before them, they did a couple of covers albums and started coasting on their ability to actually play songs they didn’t write. Next thing you know you’re headlining at the Soaring Eagle Casino.

So I was pretty suspicious of Tight Knit, coming off of a prolific, year-long descent into dad rock. What immediately caught my attention was the awesome cover art—a simple, appealing amalgamation of the stars, ocean, forest, etc., into the rough shape of a LP. Tight Knit? Hell yeah. And the album backs it up properly. While “Rolling Sea” might not have the heartbreaking melody or deviously ingratiating pop structure of earlier high points like “Maureen” or “Been So Long,” it has elements of both, tucked into chiming acoustic plucks, and Andy Cabic’s unassuming, decidedly Indie (read: non dad-rock) voice.

There might not be a pop gem tucked inside here, but the hard-earned contentment of the laid-back arrangement grabs the ear anyway. Perhaps Vetiver’s year long excursion into our collective back catalog made them realize some heavy philosophical shit about the unity of consciousness and the symbolism of vinyl. Whatever it is, I want to be on board to find out.

permanent link ::

It’s not exactly complicated. The conceit is simple: a versatile bass line, then a tight beat, some spare note-intensive guitar, and synths over top. But it’s just mixed so damn well, written so perfectly. You could describe “Keep A Secret,” and by extension the rest of the ridiculously consistent Rules, as literally Kings of Convenience with funky beats. But that would ignore the less describable tension and precision that makes the song so natural and propulsive, while simultaneously betraying a practiced interaction that was often missing from the Whitest Boy Alive’s less collaborative debut.

It’s precisely that balance that makes “Keep A Secret” such an unexpected success. Erlend Øye finds a perfect line between the raw inspiration of just making shit up with your friends and the technical work of making it interesting for everyone else. While in Kings of Convenience there was a strange beholdenness to the past in their reverent folk objects, his new funk fixation sounds limitless and pure, looking forward and settling only into grooves that could last forever.

permanent link ::