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Still one of my favorite solo Roky tracks. Near-perfect power pop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_1DkJRE-bA
I had the same thought. Blonde and IGOR are kinda two sides of a coin.
That hook on "Earfquake" is gonna be stuck in my head all-summer long.
I had this exact same experience at work. Listened to IGOR then went straight into 'I Am Easy to Find' and it was a seamless transition.
Shouts out to Saddle Creek's UUVVWWZ
It's something him and Trump have in common!
Wow this is a mess.
Is Push calling out Drake for being largely "silent on black issues" and not "standing for anything" a little bit rich? Could just as easily be describing Kanye these days no?
So is getting drawn into something that ends you now known as getting "dupped"?
You mention Lincoln/Booth and weird death harbingers. A few months before Booth shot Lincoln, Booth's brother (Edwin) saved Lincoln's son Robert from getting hit by a train. Also the year before Lincoln's assassination, the Booth brothers appeared in a version of 'Julius Caesar' (which of course is about another assassination of an important political figure). Finally found my window to spit Lincoln knowledge in this comments section. (Also, this article will have me going back and at least giving some of his music a second chance.)
Deservedly 'Summertime' heavy. Slightly surprised "Like It Is" didn't make this list though. If for no other reason than these particular bars: "I been through hell and back, I seen my momma cry Seen my father hit the crack then hit the set to flip a sack I done seen my homies die then went on rides to kill 'em back So how you say you feel me when you never had to get through that?"
Between this and the "Deep Summer" remix, I'm now imagining a full run of Burial "dance" tracks. Or, at least, what he envisions to be dance.
I got to meet Grant Hart when I was in undergrad. He was doing a show in town later that night but showed up on campus before that. He just sat at a random piano in a stray part of campus and played and fielded questions from everyone dying to ask him about Husker and the Replacements and the Minutemen and all of those legends from the first wave of indie rock. He couldn't have been kinder and more generous with his time. And he tore into Greg Ginn from Black Flag which was great.
That's always been my problem too. Not just the "filler" but that none of it really seems to hang together that well as an album. It more often just sounds like a curation of what Kanye was feeling at the time without a consideration for what it would all sound like together. Also, if I never hear "Good Life" again I'll be okay with that.
Also, even Rebecca Black would eat Swift's lunch in a rap battle.
If the song described here was as good as what we actually got, Swift would've righted the ship. Instead we got an intergalactically mediocre follow-up that feels like a B-side to a late-era Sleigh Bells single that never got released.
As a music fan and as just a person, this is uncommonly awful news and just a tremendous bummer. All of the thoughts, prayers and good vibes to his family and his friends and all of his fans. As someone who has had to write obits before, and who has written a lot about mental health issues, I'm disappointed by the use of "committed suicide" directly in the headline or anywhere in the story quite honestly. That's not AP Style but more importantly, it only serves to stigmatize an incredibly sensitive issue. I understand that people have the right to say and write whatever they want but a phrase such as "committed suicide" isn't helpful to the discourse around mental health. Nor is mentioning the manner in which he killed himself directly.
Katie Crutchfield is definitely my favorite indie rocker going and probably my favorite lyricist not named John Darnielle or Kendrick Lamar.
But where would 'Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1' rank?
Some of the same songs for sure but the ordering and the pacing last night was about as good from them as you can get. Where they put the "lull" type songs last night was particularly effective.
I saw their last show in Kansas City at the Sprint Center too (2012) and that one had some great little moments but last night's show blew that one out of the water. They played at least two songs from each album (except for Pablo Honey). Johnny Greenwood laid into some guitar solos (including the one at the end of "Identikit").
I'm genuinely curious Tom, what would a hip hop Top 10 without Kanye look like? Who all jumps in front of him?
Rick Ross is declining, now he's back. Drake was on the downslide after 'Views,' now he's back. Future was on a tear then he fell off now he's back.
That's good you do and I do too. I just can't help but wonder about the racial implications of "us" only really going in on hip hop's toxic problem with homophobia or misogyny.
I get real uncomfortable whenever mostly people start tsk tsking hip hop for homophobia problems as though the culture in general still doesn't have homophobia problems as well.
This isn't that surprising when you consider Toledo started off his commentary about 'Pet Sounds' for Pitchfork's anniversary retrospective like this: "There’s never been a perfect Beach Boys album; Brian Wilson was not that consistent of a writer."
My early impression: Just enjoy the now.
I think I'm going Chromatics if they were somehow competing because I've had other music (Miguel, Blood Orange, Ian Isaiah, Fka twigs, Dawn Richard) be able to fill the Frank Ocean sized hole in my life, there's no one else around that really does what they do. And also, if we could get the Wrens this year and a new Burial album, this year would be perfect.
I mean ultimately, anyone who balked at 'Views' (myself included) sort of has to eat it. Those numbers hold up in the court of commercial opinion and there's still enough there for critics to latch onto ("One Dance," "Controlla," "Too Good.") As for there being a good album in there somewhere, I nerded out a few weeks back and came up with this as possible tracklist. 1. 9 2. U with Me? 3. Feel No Ways 4. Hotline Bling 5. On a Wave 6. Weston Road Flows 7. Summer Sixteen 8. Still Here 9. Controlla 10. One Dance 11. Too Good 12. Redemption 13. Fire & Desire 14. Views 15. These Days Essentially it starts out with Drake in an increasingly fraught relationship which crests early with "Hotline Bling." Then moves into the Drake we best know, quasi-paranoid and filled with some rap-emo regret. He's back in Toronto hitting it hard at clubs, drinking and dancing with whomever. Meets someone in One Dance/Too Good, things start to mildly turn around but are still in question. Album epilogue is "These Days" with him looking back at such relationships and his home in general. Dorky I know, but I'd argue the album makes about as much sense this way as the way Drake released. Also, it gets rid of some of that bloat Chris is talking about.
Nah, it's more like the late 90s. Pokemon is everywhere. Independence Day is a thing again. And as mentioned above, blink had a number one album.
Being a big fan of all things TDE, I feel comfortable saying that the first time through I was disappointed by this album because for some indescribable reason I didn't "get it." The second time through I put it on in my car at night with the windows down and my system up and it made all of the sense in the world. It is dark and weird and seething and sprawling, and absolutely works as a companion piece to Kendrick's TPAB. As for Kendrick and ScHoolboy, I've thought about them in cinematic terms for awhile now. Kendrick is the director, with an eye and sense of storytelling few have. ScHoolboy has always felt more like a documentarian to me. Even if the lines he's spitting didn't happen to him, they feel more lived in than Kendrick's lines.
The beats on this thing are okay. "Overnight" is dark and burbling and something I'd love to hear someone else jump on. It's a huge problem for Desiigner that hands down one of the best tracks on his debut mixtape is a feature with Pusha T that doesn't even have that great of a Pusha T verse (such a half-assed "married to the game" bar). And it's telling that Kanye isn't really anywhere to be found with this. That's like when CyHi would drop mixtapes and 'Ye would be M.I.A.
I only have one listen through, but I'm not totally obsessed with this. It seems to suffer from the same problems as the rest of his 2016 work where there are unimpeachable tracks on an island surrounded by some less than stellar ish.
He also clapped back at those new Sprint "Hi I'm the Verizon Guy" ads. Not that it makes the commercial any better.
Except, it's not something we should have to deal with or settle for. Good writing and good reporting, and just generally solid journalism is supposed to weed out such things. And Stereogum has all of those things.
This allays some of the same concerns I had about this whole reunion tour. I had the chance to see them on their "final tour" and, partially out of my own admitted selfish, I wanted that to be their final tour because it did just seem perfect in an almost cinematic way. But having had the chance to see some of the performances from the tour so far, it doesn't feel like a "we're resting on our laurels" nostalgia act. On a totally different note, Pat Riley and the Showtime Lakers are responsible for the term three-peat. In fact, as far as I know, he copyrighted it through his company and is still making money off of it.
For me, one of the most-minding blow things to read as a fan of music was the production notes on Prince albums because there wouldn't be a phalanx of credits. It would generally say "Produced, composed, arranged and written by Prince." Dude would play the guitar, the bass, the drums, the synth, the piano, so many times whatever went into the song he had a total hand in. If he needed female singers (who he equally employed better than probably anyone from the era) and couldn't find the right person, he would warp his voice. The list of albums he scrapped reads longer than some artist discographies. Sinead O' Connor came into the pop consciousness with a song he penned. He wrote "Manic Monday" and it became the Bangles first hit. It wasn't the least bit hyperbolic to call him an artist of the highest order in life, and it's not in death either.
Can only echo some of the praise seen above. Terrific insight and wonderful reading Michael.
There's definitely a lot to love with this album, but so far nothing makes me as giddy as the chorus to "Jumpman." It's just so damn infectious and simple.