Musings on music, memories, and madness
2018 was an interesting year for music. It was like a mid-level playoff team – excellent depth throughout but few truly stand-out performers. There were quite a number of good releases to include on a best-of list, most of which I would classify as simply solid, but the few top tier albums were truly outstanding. I don’t like assigning absolute rankings (i.e., #1, #2, etc.), so I broke it down into the following salient categories:
Continue reading “2018 Music Recap”
This week in Showing My Age, I want to pay homage to a lost treasure of my youth: the cassette tape. In the modern world of MP3s and streaming, there are paradoxically both more and fewer ways to interact with music, especially as professionally (and probably simultaneously commercially) curated playlists and the ubiquitous “Shuffle” function come to dominate music consumption. But in my day – cue wagging wrinkled finger and old lady sneer – you had to really want to have that music on demand. And the cassette tape was really the only way to go about it.
For those who are unaware (dear god I am feeling older by the second), cassette tapes were seemingly insubstantial rectangles of plastic containing magical magnetic tape that was able to play back music on fabulous devices variously known as boomboxes, Walkmen, or, less creatively, tape players. In the same way that albums are sold in MP3 format on Amazon or iTunes today, which is itself becoming borderline anachronistic in the age of Spotify and Apple Music, or that CDs were sold a couple decades ago, back in the 80s and early 90s they were packaged for the public on cassette tape. But these were no mere passive devices through which to listen to music – oh no. They were much more than that. Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Ode to the Cassette Tape”
Vince Staples is the master of sharp left turns. His go-to move is to set you up with a line that leads in one particular direction only to deviate quickly into unexpected terrain, as he does with lines like “I need to fight the power but man I need that new Ferrari,” or, “My momma was a Christian, Crip walkin’ on blue waters.” In addition to this knack for startling juxtapositions, his delivery is dirty and deliberate and deadpan, painting distinctive pictures while leaving you unsure as to just how serious he is at any given time. In the lead-up to his last release, Big Fish Theory, he said of the album to LA Weekly, “It’s Afro-futurism. This is my Afro-futurism. There’s no other kind.” He followed that up with an interview with Trevor Noah of The Daily Show in which he completely blew that comment off, stating, “I like saying stuff about black people to white people.” When Noah persisted, asking, “So that doesn’t mean anything?”, Vince responded, “Of course not.” Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Vince Staples – FM! Review”
Open Mike Eagle is an artist whose career I have followed closely. I met him back in 2004 when I was doing research for my undergraduate thesis in Koreatown, Los Angeles, where he was among a group of young MCs recording an album at JUiCE – Justice by Uniting in Creative Energy, a nonprofit, hip hop themed afterschool organization that offered creative tutelage in B-boying, DJing, graffiti art, and MCing. My interaction with him was limited but was enough to recognize the burgeoning talent, and I have watched as he has moved from Project Blowed little brother to Mello Music Group marquee talent, and now even professional wrestler with Mick Foley in his corner. Every time he shows up somewhere like Hannibal Buress’s short-lived Comedy Central show or an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, I geek out and tell everyone how I used to kinda sorta know him. We were chatting many years ago when I was doing more hip hop writing, but at that exact moment my marriage fell apart, I went back to working full time, and my life more generally went to shit so I never got to follow through with the interview we had discussed. C’est la vie, but I still wish I would’ve made it happen.
The point here is that I’ve paid careful attention to his artistic output, and while I have genuinely enjoyed all of it, his newest EP, What Happens When I Try To Relax, has become an instant favorite. It is six tracks of back-to-back bangers, filled with intricate rhymes, dynamic rhythmic cadences, and ethereal boom bap, and it is extremely easy to just let it play on repeat two or even three times in a row. In an age of hit singles and disposable full-lengths, that is saying something. Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Open Mike Eagle – What Happens When I Try To Relax”
Lil Wayne’s career has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. From Cash Money little homey to established solo artist to bonafide superstar, he has occupied every step on the ladder. Most frustratingly, he has been stuck in artistic limbo the last half-decade or so due to conflicts with his label and his former mentor – Cash Money and Baby, respectively – and as a result, we haven’t gotten a proper Lil Wayne album since 2011’s Tha Carter IV. Yeah, he dropped I Am Not A Human Being II and Free Wayne in the interim, but those felt more like side projects and holdovers while we waited for the main course, which was the long-overdue Carter V project we were all craving.
In the years since Tha Carter IV, Wayne has still been active, recording and releasing one-offs with other artists like Drake and 2 Chainz (including what I consider the vastly underrated Collegrove), but Carter V has been supposedly finished and promised to the fans for so long that it was starting to look like it might never see the light of day. That’s why when it finally hit The Interwebs a couple weeks ago it ignited the rap world. We were all dying to see if it could live up to the standards set by its predecessors, or even hopefully exceed the somewhat disappointing Carter IV album. Considering how long this thing had been gestating, it felt like he needed to deliver in a big way. Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Lil Wayne – Tha Carter V Review”
My first real job was at the Wherehouse. Most people today aren’t familiar with this store, but when I was growing up it was the main place where I bought my music. I remember going there on Tuesdays to get the newest albums as soon as they came out. When I needed a job in college, it was close to home and an obvious choice for me given my love for music and the amount of time I spent in the store anyway. I once locked myself out of my apartment, and I decided to wait – all afternoon – at the Wherehouse for my fiancé to get out of class. I must have been asked if I needed help fifteen times before I finally explained the situation and was left alone, albeit amidst some strange looks.
I did my undergraduate studies at UC Santa Barbara, which had at the time (and perhaps still does; I haven’t checked) the whitest and most affluent student body of all the UCs. It was also adjacent to Isla Vista (or “IV” as it was known by those same super hip kids), where the vast majority of students lived and parties were so insane that they literally closed off the city to outsiders on Halloween. Because shit had gotten so out of hand on these major holidays that they simply couldn’t handle any more madness. Continue reading “All Falls Down”
Here are my initial reactions to some new ish:
Lil Wayne – The Carter V: long as fuck
Reason – There You Have It: hard as fuck
Logic – YSIV: the whole Wu Tang Clan?!? as fuck
Lupe Fiasco – DROGAS WAVE – dense as fuck
Wale – Free Lunch: solid as fuck
Eminem – Kamikaze: fuuuuck this shit
More detailed thoughts to follow.
Oh, and that’s what she said.
✌️
I went to the best middle school, like, ever. It was a GATE (gifted and talented education) school named Computech, and all the students there had to be accepted based on academic merit. I suspect there was a cultural/racial component to the admissions process as well, because it was a pretty diverse school located in a predominantly black part of town. This seeming duality – because in America “good school” and “black neighborhood” are not seen as naturally coexisting – gave the school an awesome character and a not-so-awesome reputation.
The perception of the school within the community was abundantly clear when I was asked, on more than one occasion, whether or not I had been “in a drive-by” while on campus. The people who asked this – because they weren’t just kids, either – always professed to have heard some story or other about kids in PE class having to “hit the ground” because of passing gunfire. This was patently ridiculous, as even the security guards who worked at the school were adamant that it was one of the safest in the city, but this impression of the school as a dangerous one persisted nonetheless. Continue reading “Let Me See That Tootsie Roll”
When I die, fuck it, I wanna go to hell
Cuz I’m a piece of shit, it ain’t hard to fuckin tell
– “Suicidal Thoughts,” Notorious B.I.G.
Funerals are dumb. They are typically overly theatrical and overly expensive and overly stressful for the people who are most in need of the emotional support that funerals are supposed to offer. I’m pretty sure that we’re all on the same page about the fact that funerals are for the living rather than the dead, but as a future dead person myself, I would hope that the wishes of the recently departed would have some bearing on the not-so-festivities that take place in their honor.
My family all knows my feelings on this matter. I don’t want to be buried – burn my ass and do what you will with my ashes. Whatever is most meaningful to them works for me, as long as none of me ends up in Boston. Because fuck those racist motherfuckers. Continue reading “Death Around the Corner”
There are different levels of crazy. Everyone in my family is certifiable, but we each occupy different rungs on the ladder of insanity. The top rung in my mind has always been firmly held by my grandfather, my mom’s dad, although in retrospect I recognize that he and his siblings may have an entire tower all to themselves. After all, it’s hard to compete for that top spot when your sister has managed to end up at sea with the Coast Guard after a one night stand with a sailor, forcing them to divert course and drop her off at the nearest port. It’s also hard to beat a brother who didn’t leave his house for twenty years, or the myriad others with substance abuse issues of all sorts, but I still believe my grandpa holds his own nonetheless.
He was from an extremely poor family in rural Arkansas and grew up with eight brothers and sisters. He never forgot growing up hungry or sharing a bed with all those siblings. That feeling of being cramped next to so many people never left him, and he blamed his hatred of crowded areas on this experience. It makes sense, but I doubt that’s the true origin of his phobia, mostly because social anxiety pops up in multiple members of the family. The distaste toward being touched by just about anyone is carried forward in both my mom and me, and god knows I was never forced to cuddle with anyone against my will. Continue reading “Insane in the Brain”
