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Stuff I Like: Open Mike Eagle – What Happens When I Try To Relax

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”

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New Writing Gigs

I had two new articles come out today on Managing Madrid and Lake Show Life:

No Straight Line: Fandom In The Age Of #MeToo
This is undoubtedly a difficult subject, and putting it out there has been tough. A fellow woman writer on the site recently published another great piece on the matter, and she helped me through the process. I wish I could say the responses weren’t largely horrifying, to the point that comment sections had to be shut down and police reports filed. Despite all that nonsense, these are important conversations to have, and I am extremely grateful to the staff at Managing Madrid staff for supporting these types of stories. That is something exceedingly rare, especially in the world of sports writing, and I have honestly been blown away by it. I cannot thank them enough, but I would love it if anyone around these parts has any way to provide positive feedback through Tweets, Facebook shares, or just generally non-reprehensible reactions. I doubt the trolls could ever be outnumbered, but if we could busy them elsewhere it could gum up their whole process. In the meantime, I’m avoiding all that as much as possible. Please, though, do check it out and support it if you can.

Los Angeles Lakers: 5 reasons to look forward to 2018-19 season
This one is more your standard preseason prediction piece with a run-down of exciting narratives for the coming season. Not nearly as heavy, considerably more upbeat, and maybe a little bit of fluff, but hyping up your favorite team who has recently been pretty poor seems like an always useful endeavor. It’s finally basketball time, and I’m excited to see where LeBron takes this group. A nice little fluff piece to balance out the heaviness of that last one.

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Stuff I Like: Lil Wayne – Tha Carter V Review

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”

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Managing Madrid

I know I haven’t been doing much in the way of blogging lately, but there are definitely reasons. I’ve been out of work for four weeks with shingles and trying to keep my sanity while cooped up at home for so long. The down side of this (one of many, I suppose) is that my psychological health has taken a hit, so I haven’t really been able to read or write much. The exception to this is sports, which I’ve watched a lot during my time “off,” and for whatever reason I have still been able to write about that subject.

In that vein, I am contributing some to an awesome website called Managing Madrid. It is a fan site and SB Nation blog dedicated to (surprise, surprise) Real Madrid, and it provides a lot of great content, from tactical analyses to news updates to transfer rumors and all the normal Madrid drama. Continue reading “Managing Madrid”

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All Falls Down

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”

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New Music Friday

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.

✌️

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Stuff I Like: Real Madrid

Author’s note: I was undecided about whether or not to post this one, as it is definitely for a very specific crowd and probably not of interest to the average reader. But then I remembered – I don’t really HAVE readers, and besides, this is my fucking blog. So suck it, imaginary haters.

I have had quite a journey with Real Madrid. I started watching soccer during the 2006 World Cup, when I was pregnant and essentially bedridden with my first kiddo. My brother and sister came to visit me in LA for the summer, and we devoured every game, singing the stupid commercial jingles that aired on repeat all day. (I love Tito’s tacos – you love Tito’s too!)

After being sucked in by the World Cup, I vowed to watch more soccer (forgive me – I’m American) in the coming season, so I signed up for the DirecTV sports package and set my DVR to record every Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A game available. I was pretty good about watching the big games every week in the beginning, but this got kicked into high gear after my daughter was born in October. She was an insanely fussy baby, the kind other people call “colicky” and I call “assholes.” She barely slept at night, and she only napped in the arms of myself or her dad. I was a grad student with only one class left at the time, and he was a high school teacher, so I was home with her 90% of the time. Thus, multiple hours a day would pass with me unable to move while she slept in my arms. Continue reading “Stuff I Like: Real Madrid”