Before he was on MTV, before he became a meme, Xzibit was a hardcore rapper, which sometimes kind of seems like it’s forgotten. His debut album, featuring production by E-Swift and Muggs among others, is a strong piece of work. Xzibit is a solid rapper, and his storytelling is very good here. It’s not essential, but it’s a good album that seems mostly forgotten at this point.
[Read More]Backed by the Neptunes (Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo) doing all the production, Pusha T and Malice made gangsta rap that always sounded vicious and lean. Their first two records, fueled by those fantastic beats, are pretty outstanding, even if the lyrical content is…let’s go with questionable.
You know, I think Guy Picciotto was more comprehensible with Rites of Spring than he was with Fugazi. I’m not entirely sure how that happens, it’s not like he wasn’t yelling with both bands.
[Read More]Look, they can’t all be winners.
Just the other day, we had a pointless bonus track from the reissue of III. Well, here’s another one.
I should play Down Every Road for the kids. I think they might enjoy it.
I wonder what the longest period of time we’ve gone around here without some kind of noise rock? Not long. I wonder if it’s longer or shorter than the time between ska?
[Read More]Back to those solid playlists.
More stoner rock from High On Fire, this time from Luminiferous, the most recent record from the outfit. Although, frankly, there’s not a ton of variation among their records. You pretty much know what you’re getting with them. I guess I’d point to Surrounded By Theives as the best, due mostly to a bitchin’ title and dude with an axe on the cover.
[Read More]Well, not our best list from recent days.
Another cut from Long Tall Weekend, this is kind of a fun song, although I like the live version on Severe Tire Damage a lot more. You know you listen to a band too much when you have favorite renditions of songs.
Ozomatli made a kids’ album. I bought it, because I was curious. Um, that’s about all I have to say.
[Read More]I sometimes wonder why some bands don’t connect with me. Grandaddy, for instance. Highly regarded by lots of people, so they’re a good band by most measures. They are mining a similar vein as Wilco, who I love. They obviously know what they’re doing. And yet? Nothing. It’s not clear why that is, how the aesthetics of Grandaddy just don’t turn my crank. But there we are.
[Read More]Today’s music. Just missed a Naked City track, a shame.
We’ve talked some about A.C. Newman with respect to The New Pornographers, who we just heard from yesterday. But we haven’t really talked much about Dan Bejar, who writes something like a quarter of the songs for the Pornographers, and is the guy behind Destroyer, his main band. For years and years, Bejar has been writing ornate pop songs, moving from influence to influence, but always with interesting results. There’s something inescapably retro about the sound of Destroyer, whether that touchstone is 70s or 80s pop. This is from Kaputt, an album where Bejar went for even prettier than usual tunes, and isn’t a bad place to enter into Destroyer’s catalog.
[Read More]There’s only so much one can say about a 40 second hardcore song.
From the New Pornographers’ sixth album, Brill Bruisers, this album felt like something of a return to form for the band. I don’t think Challengers or Together were bad, but they didn’t really seem to have quite the same energy as their previous records. This song isn’t a barn burner, but the record overall is quite good.
[Read More]I’m pleased to announce that I managed to post an entry for every day this month. Not bad! I can’t imagine I’ll manage to keep it up for the whole year, but still: solid work, me! Here’s our final entry for January.
It seems like just yesterday I was saying I liked it when electronic music met rap, and this beat here is a fine example of that kind of thing. This is from Detroit rapper Danny Brown’s debut album, The Hybrid. I haven’t had this album long, and damn, there’s some bad shit in these lyrics. Hadn’t noticed that before.
[Read More]From rap’s origins to its future.
It sounds downright primitive today, but this album (Run-D.M.C., their debut) was a massive milestone in the development of rap as a cultural force. Somewhat forgotten now, Run-D.M.C. were the first rap act to have a gold record, proving that this new genre could have significant commercial appeal. They would follow that up with rap’s first platinum album and first multi-platinum album, as their sales and fame kept increasing (they would, alas, peak with that third album, Raising Hell). Run-D.M.C. changed the way rap sounded, the way it was made, and the way it looked. Rap wouldn’t ever be the same.
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