Posting from the road! Are we going to get road trip music? Probably not.
I should listen to more Japanese hip-hop. Anyway, DJ Krush is mostly instrumental, but here we have some rhyming. I’ve got a couple of his releases, and they’re pretty entertaining, if not quite the top of the pile for DJ records. Allmusic tells me this album is actually a mixtape of stuff he did with other artists?
[Read More]At some point, these things are just going to be wholly unrelated to the music. I wonder if I’ll have the good sense to stop? Who knows? MUSIC
As we talked about last time, Freeway’s always had good taste in producers. For The Stimulus Package (great name!), he teamed up with Seattle’s Jake One, and the result was my favorite album of his.
Why yes, I am kind of a Seattle homer, why do you ask?
[Read More]Another repeat today, this time that same Dr. Octagon track. The more I do this, the more I think Amazon’s randomization thing is pretty wonky. Oh well. Today’s tunes!
Speak of the devil! Here’s the Housemartins taking on Luther Ingram’s “I’ll Be Your Shelter”. As with most of their covers, it’s thoroughly enjoyable (as is the original). Basically, soul music rules.
This song appears on both London 0, Hull 4 as well as the rarities/singles roundup Now That’s What I Call Quite Good, which are both outstanding.
[Read More]My first repeat song today. I decided I’m going to skip repeats, because they’d be boring. Here’s your minty fresh songs for today.
This remix was included as a bonus track at the end of Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, at least on the version I bought. Complete with unnecessary Jay-Z verse! Anyway, this album is fantastic, and as I mentioned last time, is part of an unbroken winning streak. I think Lamar is the closest person we have to George Clinton working today.
[Read More]Really happy to get more Neubauten in here, that’s some good working music.
This song, from 1995’s Gash, makes me wonder exactly how you get Sony to distribute a song about killing whity, all set to a grinding slice of noise and a jaunty trumpet line. But thank goodness somebody figured it out! The whole album is very good, by the way.
Just a little interstitial track in the middle of To Whom It May Concern…, over a Delfonics sample. Good record, though.
[Read More]Been a little while since we’ve hit any ska. Fixed that today! PICK IT UP, PICK IT UP, PICK IT UP!
Another New York third-wave band, the Scofflaws were distinguished by…well, let’s be honest, nothing. But, they had solid chops, were amusing without being too smug, and wrote some good songs, so they’re worth a go. This is from Ska In Hi-Fi, their best album, featuring as it does odes to nude beaches and William Shatner.
[Read More]Was camping this weekend with no network access, so I deprived everybody of music. Sorry! It’s a shame there’s no other way to listen to music! Anyway, here’s your relief.
Outkast, at the top of their game, was breathtaking. Up through Stankonia, they were just incredible. At then, 2003 saw them release Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, two solo records just packaged as one release under Outkast. And for the first time, they were really showing some cracks. Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx was outstanding, while Andre 3000’s The Love Below was uneven at best. He delivered the standout hit (“Hey Ya!”), but most of his album is frankly a mess, wandering around too much for me to truly love it. This song, a collaboration with Norah Jones, is a good example - it doesn’t really go anywhere.
[Read More]Sorry about the flakiness in posting over the past week. I’ll try not to make a habit of it. Today’s playlist!
This, from the Kennedys’ final album Bedtime for Democracy, is a pretty atypical track from them. Far from their usual blazing hardcore attack, we’ve instead got something that sounds more like a noir-ish song. Of course, Jello Biafra’s usual sarcasm and unique delivery are still present. The Kennedys were a staple of my high school years, and a lot of their work has held up pretty well over the years, but this is their least essential studio album.
[Read More]At some point, I’m going to do a full writeup of just Amphetamine Reptile Records. I loved that label so much. Here’s today’s music.
Another J-Zone track, and another one that isn’t actually him rhyming. This is the instrumental of one of the better songs from Fish-n-Grits, his most recent hip-hop album. The original is a meditation on what his grandfather considered luxury, and what a Cadillac meant to him, along with Has-Lo contributing a verse on the same subject. Anyway, you can’t hear all that. Sorry!
[Read More]Some serious immortals today! And, um, 17 seconds of silence.
We’re visiting 1967 with this song, with quintessential Motown artist and arguably the soul behind the soul, Smokey Robinson. It would be futile to list all the tremendous songs he’s been involved with, and I couldn’t really do him justice. Just enjoy this song.
This track comes from Strategies Against Architecture II, a roundup of singles, live tracks, and various unreleased music primarily from the late 80s. In a lot of ways, this documents the end of the first phase of their career, as after this album came out, their music trended away from the power tools and more towards ambient pieces and electronics. It’s a great collection, though, and one of the better entry points to Neubauten’s catalog.
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