Track by Track with Magna Carta…Holy Grail

Just when you thought I couldn’t possibly get more mainstream and pedestrian in my music taste, I present to you my complete, track-by-track notes on the new Jay-Z album.  I am utterly fascinated by the intersection between rap and celebrity — because celebrity rappers rap about themselves and their relationship with the media and their wealth and their place in the Pantheon of Cultural Legends in a very explicit way that goes way beyond any of the sort of coy approach that rockers and other pop acts have generally taken to addressing their celebrity status (if they address it all).

As far as a music listening experience, I give Magna Carta…Holy Grail a B.  For the record, the only Jay-Z album I would give an A to is The Blueprint, with a provisional A- for Danger Mouse’s mashup project The Grey Album (provisional because can it be called a Jay-Z album if it was made without his consent or knowledge?).  If you think I’m an idiot for not thinking Reasonable Doubt is “the shit” then by all means, the comments section awaits.

But as far as a cultural artifact, Magna Carta is certainly a A+.  In the future when whoever the future version of Gore Vidal turns out to be writes a semi-fictionalized novelistic account of the Obama era, Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Blue Ivy Carter will be some of the most fascinating characters and Magna Carta will serve as excellent source material.

What follows is basically my stream of consciousness reactions to my first all-the-way-through listen to the album.  Kind of a like a live-blog, except I’m posting it all at once after the fact.  I apologize if you don’t like the incomplete thoughts and inconclusive conclusions necessitated by this format, but there was so much to unpack on this record I thought this would be the best way to tackle it without turning out a 10,000 word snooze fest on what is, after all, the Bad Boys II of this summer’s album releases*. I apologize that I pretty much lose the plot and the notes become incoherent around track 6, like I said, it’s not that good of an album so I was starting to get kinda bored and antsy.

Experience of listening to the album via the much-vaunted Samsung Galaxy app:  Pretty horrible.  Crashes constantly (six times while working on this post).  Does not have the option to just play the fucking album straight through, only to play the individual tracks.  Includes the lyrics, which is a plus, but the objectionable lyrics are inexplicably blacked out, even though the download is the explicit version of the album.  Also, what is the reasoning behind censoring the word “cholo?”

Track 1: Holy Grail (featuring Justin Timberlake, produced by J-Roc, The Dream and Timbaland)

The album opens with a long, dramatic sung verse by Justin Timberlake, which sounds more like Journey or Styx or Foreigner than any hip-hop or r&b, except for the omnipresent background ‘hypeman’ vocal echoes — this section ends really strongly with Justin mean-mugging the words “holy grail”, the beat dropping, and Jay’s first verse starting immediately.

Fittingly the very first word Jay speaks on the album is “Blue.”  Despite his exhortations to the media/paparazzi to leave his daughter alone, he makes her one of the central characters in the album (see also in the next  track when Jay tells her to go on an’ lean on that Basquiat, she owns it).

In the second verse, is he talking to himself or to his friend Kanye when he raps “why you mad/take the good with the bad/ don’t throw that baby out with that bath water”?  Either way it is so refreshing to hear one of these guys finally abandon the whole “you don’t know how hard it is to be rich” thing and just admit that his life is fucking amazeballs.

2. Picasso Baby (prod. Adrian Younge, J-Roc & Timbaland)

This beat sounds a little bit like a Clipse track (maybe something from the Black Card Era mixtape) but a little more outerspacey — like Frank Zappa outer space though, not Sun Ra outer space (always define your terms).

I’ts pretty interesting subject matter, Jay is expressing admiration for artists from Pablo Picasso to Jeff Koons to Jean Michel Basquiat.  He and Beyonce’s living room, we are to understand, could easily be mistaken for a wing of the MoMA.  Then he takes it a bit farther and suggests that his body of work belongs together with that of the artists he already named — where, after all, is MoMA’s “Hov” collection?

The last third of the song largely dismisses with art-world talk in order to return to the bigger theme of the album and really Jay’s whole career post-Reasonable Doubt: Hov’s still on top and if you don’t like it — critics, Nas fans — you are more than welcome to shove off.  Despite a couple satisfying puns — he subtly compares the paparazzi that hound him now to gangbangers that hounded him in the old neighborhood by switching out “cannons” for “Canons” — it’s a disposable verse that could be slotted into any song or any guest appearance.  The most interesting thing is that the backing track has switched from the Clipse-like opening to a kind of live band, funky take on “99 Problems,” which I think it is safe to say has been enshrined as the number one Jay song of all time.  Why Jay chooses to call back to it here, other than to highlight the fact that, a decade on, his primary concerns remain more or less the same (except for that baby thing), I don’t know.

3. Tom Ford (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)

Very sparse electro drum beat, eventually joined by some squiggly arcade machine synths.

“Bordeaux and Burgundies/flush outta Riesling”— rappers taste in beverages continues to steadily improve.  Once upon a time it was all designer vodka, of course plenty of brand name cognac, then a parade of demi-sec sparkling wines (Krystal, “ricky” rose), and most recently, Kanye has been heard singing the praises of Riesling, the approachable go-to white of all young sommeliers.  Jay takes it up a notch, calling out to his Bordeaux and Burgundy, saying he is now entering the realm of collectible red wines, kind of continuing the trend on this record of Jay leaving behind the crowded world of the nouveau riche and entering the real echelons of (mostly white) power.

“International bring back the Concorde” — Jay would like to say that his frequent trans-Atlantic flights grow tiresome, and he would welcome a return of the supersonic Concorde flights from his native NYC to Paris and London.

“I don’t pop molly/I rock tom ford” — is that cool?  Not partying hard, just being super rich?  like, Jay goes to the opera while 2Chainz and Wacka Flocka Flame are hosting a twerk-off down at the Landing Strip…who is having more fun?

4. Fuckwithmeyouknowigotit (feat. Rick Ross, prod. Boi-1da, Timbaland and Vinylz)

Opens with a recording of the late Pimp C talking:

A Little over a year ago I was in bondage, and now I’m back out here reaping the blessings and getting the benefits that go along with it.  Everything that’s out here for kings like us.  The reason why we like this this jewelry and this diamonds and stuff, they don’t understand is because we really from Africa, and that’s where all this stuff come from.  And we originated from kings, you know what I’m saying.  So don’t look down on the youngsters because they wanna have shiny things.  It’s in our genes, know what I’m saying, we just don’t all know our history so…

 This is followed by a Rick Ross verse.  In other Rick Ross news, I saw what I thought was a shirtless Rick Ross on Lake Shore Drive this morning but he was in a Chevy Equinox and not a Bugatti so it probably wasn’t him.

A lot was made recently of Jay-Z giving up the word “bitch” now that he has a baby daughter.  The first of three uses of the supposedly verboten word on this album is dropped by Mr. Ross, so I guess Jay isn’t directly implicated.

There are some musical elements that are being picked up here from Chicago Drill Music, in the drum beat,  with the very long pauses between lines and the repeated words at the end of each line, although Jay gets pretty tired of that and breaks away from the paradigm partway through his verse.

Does Beyonce get mad that Jay-z sometimes describes her as if he is describing yet another of his many possessions? I mean, he is also flattering her, for example when he compares her to the Mona Lisa (but better looking) in “Picasso Baby,” but it often feels as if “hottest woman in the world” is just the final piece in “Jay-Z’s Collection of Coolest S**T of All Time”, that he keeps her right next to his Brooklyn Nets shares and his platinum records.

5. Oceans (feat. Frank Ocean, prod. Pharrell Williams & Timbaland)

It seems really goofy to call the song which is obviously written just to feature Frank Ocean “Oceans.”

“I hope my black skin don’t dirt this white tuxedo/Before the Basquiat show” — pretty devastating take by Frank on the toughness of being black at the top of white society.

Includes one of Jay’s most political verses ever, indicting all of American history as a crime “I’m anti-Santa Maria/Only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace/I don’t even like Washingtons in my pocket”.

“I crash through glass ceilings” — didn’t Kanye also misappropriate the glass ceiling metaphor on his album?

“Shepard Fairey the finally gave me some hope/can’t believe they got a nigga to vote/democrat/Nope/I sold dope” This line seems to imply that Jay was not able to vote because of a felony conviction, though as far as my research could turn up he has never been convicted of any crime.  It’s an interesting point, nonetheless, because Jay quite smartly and subtly notes that the rule against convicted felons voting in national elections effectively eliminates 1/4 of black men from the polls, constituting yet another soft form of voting rights infringement, especially when you consider the number of those felony convictions that are drug-related, and that black men are disproportionately subject to stop-and-frisk as well as searches during traffic stops, which land them in jail, whereas white guys walking or driving around with drugs or paraphernalia are relatively safe from harassment even when they do, in fact, have an ‘intent to distribute.’

6. FUTW (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)

“got the strip club feeling like Oxford”

7. somewhereinamerica (prod. Hit-Boy and Mike Dean)

Jay shouts out to his Sonos wireless home entertainment system, proof that Hova has reached middle age.

Most important lyric on the album:  “somewhere in america/Miley Cyrus is still twerkin'”

(Miley being a well documented Jay-Z fan, this was a perfect moment).

one of dozens of promotional stills featuring Jay-Z in this Go Home! sweatshirt included the album’s various supplementary materials

8. Crown (feat. Travis Scott, prod. Travis Scott, Mike Dean & Wondagurl)

Starts with “you in the presence of a king” — kind of a pastiche of a few classic Jay lines, followed by “scratch that, you in the presence of a God,” so he’s definitely charting some Kanye territory here — there are some other thematic and sonic resonances with Yeezus, but Jay is so turned down compared to Kanye it’s hard for me to even imagine how the two of them work together, let alone hang out (if they do in fact hang out…I bet Ye never hangs out with anybody, he just has room like JP’s office where he does nothing but watch silent movies and listen to his own records).

“Uncle said I’ll never sell a million records/I sold a million records like a million times” — the whole million records thing comes up several times on this album, with increasingly specific references to the fact that Jay had Samsung signed up to pay for a million copies of the album on release day.  He is rapping about a record deal on the record that the deal is related to.  It’s so baller and so meta.  It kind of reminds me of Mike Jones, who had a song about how nobody cared about him until he was famous, except that was the song that made him famous.  Only hip-hop can accomplish that weird feeling of hyperreality wherein “if you rap it, they will come.”

If hip-hop is the CNN of the streets, what does it mean when actual CNN’s newscrawl mentions Jay-Z every six minutes?

There is simply too much empty, non-rapping space on this record, without enough of a unified vision on the sonic end to carry it.

9. Heaven (prod. J-Roc, The-Dream and Timbaland)

“conspiracy theoriests screaming Illuminati”

Jay-Z sneaks the entire chorus of R.E.M’s “Losing my Religion” into one of his best verses on the album.  After quoting Stipe, Jay goes on to interweave his obsession with cars and material things into his thoughts on religion:

“getting ghost in the Ghost/Can you see me/ Can you see me/ Have mercy on a Judas / Angel wings on ‘ghini/I’m/Secular tell the hecklers/Seckle down y’all relgion creates division like my Maybach partition”

10. Versus (interlude)

no notes.  it’s an interlude.

photo via US magazine used without permission don’t sue me

11.  Part II (on the run) (feat. Beyonce, prod. J-Roc Timbaland)

“Who wants that perfect love story any way?”

This could possibly be a hit single, the production is satisfyingly huge, really recalling classic Jay Z bangers (Blueprint era) but incorporating current sounds (which are 80s sounds) with a heavy Italo disco influence and those ever-present Phil Collins gated drums.  Maybe too slow moving for radio though, just in terms of the verses being really long, not in terms of tempo.

Part of the whole narrative of Jay and Beyonce is that Jay elevates Beyonce, that somehow his marrying her catapulted her career, but you rarely hear anyone looking at it from the other way around — who is really bigger though, Yon’ce or Jay?  I’d like to see some sales data.

I think this song totally rules by the way.

“without you I got nothing to lose” <—- pretty sweet sentiment; Again, I sort of wish that Jay was saying it to Beyonce, not the other way around.

12.  Beach is Better (prod. Mike Will Made It)

Again, no notes, super short track not really a full song.

13. BBC (feat. Nas, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, prod. Swizz Beats, Pharrell, Timbaland)

“D Boy drug dealer look”

WOW THAT IS A SUPER GOOD VERSE FROM NAS.  That’s right, who would have believed that one day the hottest guest verse on a Jay album would be from Nas?

Part of that is that when Jay does have some ‘battle rap’ type verses elsewhere on Magna Carta, longtime Jay-z fans may just subconsciously assume that they’re directed at Nas, but then you realize they could really be directed at anyone and for the most part the whole Nas/Jay-Z thing existed only because the two best rappers alive must necessarily be foils for each other.  Even back in the very early days of hip hop you had hotly contested rivalries between crews in the Bronx, then we had Biggie and Tupac, we had Nas and Jay.  The Game and 50 Cent had a pretty interesting rivalry wherein they both thought themselves to be the best rapper alive but neither one was really embraced by the public as being that good (Game a little more than 50 but still).  I can’t think of a real Bird/Magic rivalry among current rappers.  Not sure either who would qualify in the “best rapper alive” category**.  Lil’ Wayne probably has the strongest claim to be the current top dog of the rap world; i would love to see a Wayne/Kanye beef except that both of them are just way to inconsistent and while they have their share of perfect lines, they are both close to tipping into “over 50% crap” as far as career stats***.  Rick Ross is really more associated with his lifestyle and his appearance than his rapping skills, and Drake is too much of a pussy for a real rivalry to develop to any satisfaction (also, in my opinion, not a good rapper, but a lot of people seem to disagree on that one).  Eminem erased himself from the face of the earth but he did some pretty good beefing back in the day, with Fred Durst, with his own mom, with his various sub-personas.

This is the best song on the record.  It’s really fun (it sounds a little bit like that Robin Thicke song actually, which makes me think probably Pharrell has a cowbell problem right now).

Jay once again gets around his self-imposed embargo on the word ‘bitch’ by calling out “Britney Bitch” in an equally good rapid fire all-references verse.  From a standpoint of flow definitely the best verse Jay has on the album, getting back to the kind of Das EFX or Spice One delivery that he was originally known for.

14. Jay Z Blue (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)

The obligatory “ohmagawd I love my daughter” song starts with umm….a vocal sample from Mommy Dearest?  At least they didn’t actually use the “no more wire hangers” line.

Jay-Z captures a very particular modern paranoia regarding settling down, a fear that I’m sure plagues every happy family today:  all these other families are falling apart around us, and it seems like it can’t happen to our perfect family, but hey i thought it was impossible that x and y**** would get divorced but they did, so maybe we’re next and we won’t even see it coming!!!

Moreover, in Jay’s case this paranoia is amplified by two factors: the celebrity status of Jay’s nuptials and the accepted short shelf life of celebrity marriages, and the “vicious cycle” factor of Jay having grown up without his own father in the picture.

15. La Familia (prod. J-Roc & Timbaland)

Get it?  like, the mob.  But also, he literally just started a family.

It doesn’t change or go anywhere but this beat is ON FIRE and I sincerely hope I hear it swiped on a dozen mixtapes this summer.

Okay, that time he just straight up said “bitches”…did I make up the thing where he said he was not going to use that word anymore?  Because he sucks pretty bad at not saying bitch.

16. Nickels & Dimes (prod. Mike Dean)

Jay Z has been a successful rapper for SO MUCH LONGER than he was a drug dealer (if he ever was one), it is kind of amazing that he still devotes so much time to propping up his street credentials.   Of course he’d love you to believe that he is still the Tony Montana of the Eastern Seaboard and the FBI is tapping his phones.

Well, turns out they were tapping all of our phones.

*Guaranteed to be successful, guaranteed to include some dynamite moments, not exactly likely to end up on a lot of critic’s year-end lists.

** I think some of the most talented rappers alive are MF DOOM, Freddie Gibbs, Big K.R.I.T., Killer Mike, and both Ninja and Yolandi from Die Antwoord, but I also think the mantle of best rapper alive implies not only some great lyrical skills but a kind of larger-than-life persona and megastar status which none of the above possess.

***This applies only to Kanye’s rapping.  As a producer he’s better than 95% bangers all-time.

****Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, in my case.

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This Week in Jams: Dakota to Decatur edition

Patty Griffin ft. Robert Plant.  “Ohio” from American Kid.  New West, 2013.

Heavily atmospheric Americana built on guitar harmonics, deep drum patterns and buzzsaw bass, this is folk music via Jesus and Mary Chain, bhangra via the Appalachian Trail.  The opening notes of the song flow like the Ohio River of the title, accompanied by clicking rhythms like a chorus of crickets at nightfall.  Patty Griffin’s voice is at once angelic and worn as she evokes a summery scene of star-crossed lovers, faces lit by moonlight and fireflies, half-hidden beneath the branches of an old oak tree.   Maybe the most beautiful new song of the summer.

Lorde.  “Royals” from The Love Club EP.  Universal, 2012.

It’s no wonder that Lorde’s first big US single features the teen songwriter telling us she can “be our ruler/you can call me Queen B”, as her story really does read like a fairytale.  She was signed to Universal on the strength of a high-school talent show video, has toured all over her native New Zealand and Australia, and released an EP that could easily produce four top 40 radio singles –all this and she’s SIXTEEN years old.  The Love Club EP sounds great, wedding some of the youthful energy of Ke$ha with the moody sonic palette of The XX, but the strength is in pop outsider Lorde’s refreshing lyrics, like the arresting chorus of “Royals”:

Gold teeth, grey goose, dripping in the bathroom.  Blood stains, ball gowns, trashing a hotel room.  We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams.  Krystal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece, jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash, we don’t care.  We aren’t caught up in your love affair.

All the tropes of a Ricky Rosé song, turned on their head and turned into an exhortation to get your damn priorities straight.  That’s gangsta.

Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell and T.I..  “Blurred Lines” from

Being seduced by Robin Thicke just sounds so nice.  Even when he’s trying to be a bit dirty, he’s just a little sweetheart — I mean, look at those baby blue eyes!  The video is clutch, just Robin, T.I. and Pharell vamping and being really goofy with a bunch of models, climaxing with a inflatable sculpture informing us that “Robin Thicke has a Big D”.

By the way, when did Robin Thicke infiltrate every aspect of music culture?  It’s like one minute he’s fishing in upper Saskatchewan with Jason Seaver, and the next he’s writing every good pop song of the 00s, singing the chorus on perhaps the greatest Lil’ Wayne track, and guest coaching on The Voice.  #thicke indeed.

 

 

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This Week in Jams: The Higgs-Boson of Fast Rappin’ edition

Chance the Rapper Acid Rain.  Self Released, 2013.  Listen to it here.

In the city that Kanye calls ChIraq, where we buried 512 murder victims last year, two very young rappers have recently risen to prominence:  Chief Keef, who at seventeen years old was happy to declare himself “Finally Rich” and whose impressive resume of heroin trafficking and weapons charges have landed him a spot on Gucci Mane’s 1017 Brick Squad label; and Chance the Rapper, seemingly an elder statesmen at the ripe old age of twenty, an artist whose Save Money Crew represents a kind of positive-energy antidote to Keef and Southside Chicago gang culture.

Chance’s new Acid Rap tape opens with pure gospel sounds courtesy of jazz-hip-hop combo Kids These Days, and it largely maintains that hopeful, clamorous tone throughout.  Standouts include the surf rock inflected “Favorite Song,” which features a typically laugh-out-loud verse from Childish Gambino aka Donglover aka Donald Glover (“you blast this shit in Abercrombie when your work is finished/your mom won’t play it in the car cuz it got curses in it.”); and penultimate anthem “Chain Smoker,” which presents Chance’s most coherent vision of himself as a “Chain smoking, name dropping, good looking, mother-fucking” prankster rap wunderkind.  Strongest of all is “Cocoa Butter Kisses,” wherein Chance teams with fellow superyoung superstar Vic Mensa and the hyperkinetic OG Twista to reflect on growing up too fast, a subject that it’s plain to see Chance knows plenty about.  As he raps about weekends lost in a blur of ecstacy tablets and blunt smoke, Chance reflects that he’s sick already of disappointing his mom and others with his antics, and worries that “we’re all addicted…really though,” even as he sparks another jay.

Some of the tape slogs, however, as certain elements of Chance’s schtick can quickly grow thin.  His unique nasal voice is an asset in a rap landscape where “nowadays all these rappers sound exactly the same,” but it can grow grating, especially when The Rapper insists on incorporating his signature yelp sound effect on just about every beat.  Plenty of the humor is sophomoric, which is no surprise coming from a young talent; but the leap in quality even from his last tape, 10 Day, to this demonstrates that Chance is getting his feet underneath him quickly.  Let’s hope his trajectory remains so steadfastly ascendant.

Quasimoto Yessir, Whatever.  Stones Throw, 2013.

Like Chance the Rapper, Quasimoto, the most prominent one of a dozen alter-egos used by West Coast DJ-producer Madlib, has a distinctive high-toned rapping voice.  Unlike Chance, Lord Quas’ voice is a studio trick — created by slowly speaking lines and then speeding up the recording to match the tempo of the record.  This is important in understanding Madlib/Quasimoto — everything is an illusion.  This album isn’t even properly an album at all, the tracks were recorded over decades and culled from Stones’ Throw Records undoubtedly treasure-filled cutting room floor.  But it sounds as cohesive and fresh as any ‘Lib release, because Madlib has always existed just to the left of this timeline.  He occupies an alternative history of hip-hop, and his career project has basically been to produce hip-hop that theoretically could have been produced using only the technology and archive of samples available to the first generation of hip-hop DJ’s in the Bronx, but which in reality leans more heavily on the evolution of music since then, particularly the innovations of Detroit’s techno scene.

If I have a criticism of this album, it is that, like much of the Stones Throw catalog, it feels very incidental — large chunks of Yessir, Whatever sound too much like they were designed to soundtrack the transitions between late-night cartoon shows; it works brilliantly the head nodding, historically conscious soundtrack to endless Adult Swim re-runs, but once again I find myself wishing that Madlib could deliver the kind of emotional and political weight of his frequent collaborators MF Doom and  the late, great Dilla.

Finally, one thing I noticed on this record was the consistently high quality of the turntable gymnastics on display.  Madlib has described himself as a “DJ first,” and he stills predominantly relies on the world of sound inherent in two turntables.  It seems like  Acid Rap, or Yeezus for that matter, barely incorporate turntables at all.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s worth nothing that hip-hop without turntables is like rock music without electric guitar: technically feasible, frequently laughable, occasionally inspiring, and destined to dominate for the near future.

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This Week in Jams: Hurry Up With My Damn Croissants! edition

Kanye West Yeezus.  Def Jam, 2013.

Did Kanye West deliver the politically charged, racially conscious, sonically radical rap album hinted at by his performances on SNL this spring?

No.

Maybe?

Partially, but it’s wrapped together with another album that’s pretty gross, not as funny as it thinks it is, and, Kanye being Kanye, self-absorbed as hell.

Yeezus is a pretty frustrating listening experience.  It features tons of exciting, deadly production, as on “Black Skinhead”, so devastating in live performance, here stripped down to a Navy Seal night assault of a beat — in, out, maximum devastation, minimum ammunition expended.  It’s rap as programmed by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy.  Not everything is original, though; some of the noise just sounds like second-generation El-P (or third-generation Bomb Squad, if you like).

Sadly even the best of the beats are put in service behind lyrics that are…questionable.  Yes, I think Kanye has moments of inspiration.  He manages to paint vivid pictures in tiny spaces, he lashes out as his natural enemies (the paparazzi, the haters) with taut lines like “ya’ll niggas can’t fuck with Ye/I’ll move my family out the country so you can’t see where I stay” (a reference to his stated desire to raise he and Kim Kardashian’s new daughter out of the watchful eye of the media).  In what may be Yeezus‘ best moment, the first verse of “New Slaves,” he returns to themes from The College Dropout and adds some new commentary on celebrity and wealth, and particularly celebrity and wealth of the black variety:

You see it’s broke nigga racism
That’s that don’t touch anything in the store
And this rich nigga racism
That’s that come in, please buy more
What you want, a Bentley? A fur coat? A diamond chain?
All you blacks want all the same things
Used to be only niggas now everybody playin’
spendin’ everything on Alexander Wang

But the moments clarity, when Ye seems to be a trickster figure unafraid to speak truth and Fight the Power, are quickly overshadowed by the bad jokes (“In a French ass restaurant/Hurry up with my damn croissants!), the limited hate-laced vocabulary, the misappropriated cultural-historical references (“I’m going 300/like the Romans”), and just pure, unnecessary racist-misogynist filth (there are a dozen examples that I see no need to repeat here).  Worst of all, I think, are the uses of important bits of grave cultural iconography (Nina Simone’s version of “Strange Fruit,” Martin Luther King’s “Free at last!” speech) in the service of songs that unapologetically degrade and dehumanize.

Maybe we need this Kanye, though.  He fulfills a role for us as a kind of collective id.  Or a pop culture villain, or an advocate for the devil, or a scapegoat.   He says things that frighten us — frighten us perhaps because they are thoughts we have ourselves.  I think he goes too far, too often, and I do wish he’d develop some kind of filter mechanism (it’s astonishing to me that such a notorious studio perfectionist could be so blasé when it comes to editing some of his downright ignorant lyrics).  But I don’t want him to filter out his rare moments of vulnerability, when ego gives way to honesty: “Got the kids and the wife life, but can’t wake up from the night life.”

***

Quick reviews of new and new-ish tracks:

Wavves, “Demon to Lean On” from Afraid of Heights.  Mom + Pop (Warner Bros.), 2013.

This is one of those songs, for me, where when I heard it the first time I just assumed I had heard it before, because the melody is just so right that OF COURSE I’ve heard it before, who is this by again?  I love this song!  Wavves?  Is that a new band?  No?  They have like four albums out and they’re so popular that they’re on a major label now?  Oh my god, am I old?  IS THIS THE FUTURE?  I guess the kids know how to find this music with their Vevo and their Soundcloud and their American Express commercials or whatever, but I had to wait for good ‘ol terrestrial radio to catch on before I discovered this band.  That’s who I am now, the guy that doesn’t even know what’s popular until the radio countdown tells me.  I feel free.

Tricky, “Valentine” from False Idols. False Idols/K7 2013.

This is kind of an interesting counterpoint to “Blood on the Leaves,” the Yeezus track where Kanye samples “Strange Fruit”. “Blood on the Leaves” takes a big risk with such a charged sample and falls flat on its face when the rest of the lyrics seem to have no connection to the source material (the beat is HOT though with those big Crimson Tide marching band horns).  On “Valentine,” Tricky samples what has to be the second most-famous male jazz vocal of ALL TIME, Chet Baker’s “My Funny Valentine,” which seems like just a goofy, boring choice of a sample, except, Tricky is pretty smart and he makes it work really damned well.  He builds a velvet trip-hop rhythm around the sample and turns it into an insistent, sad refrain to a character driven song about Tricky’s perennial subject, “what it’s like to be British and to live in a city.”  This is where I plug the whole False Idols album, because it does crazy stuff with samples like this all the time and it kinds of sounds like an even better mix of Maxinquaye and I feel like Tricky is a million times edgier than like any big American rappers right now.

The-Dream ft. Fabolous “Slow it Down” from IV Play.  Def Jam, 2013.

I didn’t mean for all my ranting about Ye earlier to make it sound like I don’t like hip-hop music about sex.  Lets’s be clear, guys: I LOVE HIP-HOP MUSIC ABOUT SEX.  I just think Kanye’s version of sex is scary, too violent, and a little racist.  The-Dream, though?  Here’s a guy I can fux with (no homo?).  This is a slow jam about slow jams: “enough with the motherfuckin’ dance songs/you gotta slow it down,”  and although “I know they ain’t gonna play this on top 40 radio,” we will definitely be playing it through my car speakers at a loud enough volume for nearby pedestrians to enjoy as well. Plus: Fabolous, resurgent.

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This Week in Jams: But Everyone Just Calls Me Giorgio Edition

Without question the big news in pop this week has been the release of Daft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories, their first LP in 8 years (excluding the Tron: Legacy score).  A lot of folks I respect seem to agree with Sasha Frere-Jones’ review in the New Yorker.  I definitely think Frere-Jones nailed the key fact about the album: in turning away from largely sample-based compositions in favor of almost all live instrumentation for this record, Daft Punk is engaging in a form of musical archaelogy, reconstructing the very albums which they had been sampling in the first place.  Random Access Memories is a beautiful, abstract disco album, reconfiguring the language of early 80s disco and dance music into a satisfying meditative chug.  I am afraid that many people who got turned onto Daft Punk by their more energetic EDM album Discovery or their blockbuster Alive tour will be turned off by this more ambient album which borrows from such unsexy influences as Phil Collins, Alan Parsons Project, Hall & Oates, and of course early Eurodance producers such as Gary Numan and Giorgio Moroder.

The track that I keep coming back to, and I think the key to understanding the whole album, is the nine minute centerpiece, “Giorgio by Moroder,” which begins with a short narrative by Mr. Giovanni Giorgio himself about how he got his start in the German discotheque scene of the early 70s.  It focuses on the moment when Giorgio combined a click track with a modular synthesizer and somewhat inadvertently introduced one of the two most influential techniques in late-2oth/21st century music — the other being the sampling and record scratching that was being developed around the same time in Jamaica and the Bronx.

From there, the song veers off, first into a long baroque-inspired synthesizer solo, then gradually bringing in more and more elements, including breakbeats, arena-rock guitars, and strings, and eventually reaching a cacophonic crescendo that resembles nothing so much as Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  Although this may actually be the *least* old-school disco song on the whole record, by starting with Giorgio and then sort of telling the story of the development of electronic dance music through the rest of the song, “Giorgio by Moroder” really places Random Access Memories in the context of the Euro/Italo disco tradition, which has lately been championed by such acts as College, Chromatics, Glass Candy and Sally Shapiro.  What is surprising, to everyone, is how well that old ZYX Records sound has aged, and how rich of an artistic palette it has proven to be.  Disco is Dead, Long Live Disco.

Kanye West premiered two songs from his upcoming Yeezus album on this past week’s SNL.  I was very surprised by the songs themselves and especially, aspects of their performance.  Kanye incorporated many elements from noise music, riding some of the sames vibes that Death Grips has been pioneering, and, although Kanye has always been somewhat outspoken about the plight of the poor and black, these two tracks contain his most radicalized lyrics yet.  One strain of criticism of these performances is that Kanye has once again gone too far, letting his own sense of his own genius get in the way of making listenable music.  The performances, featuring projected images of barking dogs and price tags and featuring quite a bit of screaming, were alienating and, for many viewers, pretentious.

I’m not going to go along with the narrative that Kanye has become too arrogant or elitist and he’s just dissing his own fanbase now.  I would rather celebrate the Narrative that ‘Ye has consistently pushed not just rap but popular music further and further, especially in the second half of his highly productive career.  College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation are great albums laden with good beats and tracks that will remain perennial favorites, but all three of those straight-forward studio rap albums are dead-boring compared to the emoting synths on 808s and Heartbreak, the operatic science fiction of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, or the hyper-aggressive punk’n’DUBlic production style of Watch the Throne.

So whether these two tracks are particularly entertaining or popular in their own right (I think “Black Skinhead” has a lot of potential and I look forward to hearing a studio version) is really beside the point for me.  I continue to applaud Kanye for what he’s doing, shining a spotlight on the hypocrisy of wealth and fame even as he acknowledges that he may be the biggest hypocrite of all.  But honey, it aint trickin’ if you got it.

I’m curious to hear from some country radio listeners out there — are Florida Georgia Line as much the poster child for capital “P” Pop Country as Nelly is (or was?) for Pop Rap?  Whatever, I don’t really care if these guys have “cred” or not, this song is super catchy and it got me to listen to their whole album Here’s To The Good Times, which came out back in December but has definitely earned a place near the top of my summer car stereo playlist.  I actually like the Un-Nellified version of the track better, but I’m glad this version is all over the radio to let people know that a hip-hop/country collaboration can work out a lot better than “Accidental Racist.”  Now I’m off to throw a lift-kit on my Kia Soul and find some mud to drive around in.

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This Week in Jams: In the Club or at Home? Edition

Everybody loves everything these days. I think that’s a good thing. Hell, I might even say I LOVE that. Y’know, the positivity is just infectious.

Everyone I know listens to every kind of music and doesn’t really care about being a ‘punk rocker’ or a ‘metalhead’ or a ‘hip-hopper’ or whatever these days. Some folks still say they can’t stand country, which is weird to me because it is just Southern rock with funny lyrics about cheatin’ rednecks. What’s not to like? I even throw classical and jazz into the mix with my various kinds of pop music*. But not every tune is perfect for every occasion. Hence the classic moment in High Fidelity when John Cusack, perpetual maker of Top Five lists, can’t think of anything to say when a columnist asks him for his own All-Time Top Five Records. “In the club? or at home?” he stutters. Because context is everything.

And with that in mind, I present a selection of songs that I’m currently obsessing on and the time of day I’m most likely obsessing about them:

8:15 AM.  “What Ever” by Satanic Surfers.  I really like to put on some energetic pop-punk early in the day while I’m getting ready, because it makes me feel like I’m in the all-the-characters-waking-up-and-going-to-school intro from a teen comedy flick. This Swedish band properly belongs to the same peppy hardcore movement as Ice Age and Fucked Up, and is Guaranteed Better than Coffee.

10:00 AM “Merry Go Round” by Kacey Musgraves.  The mornings are when I try my damnedest to get some work done, so it’s only right that I spend this time with the hardest working folks in pop, the country musicians. Lately that’s mostly meant Kacey Musgraves, whose album Same Trailer Different Park is full of brilliant lyrics like “Momma’s hooked on Mary K/Brother’s hooked on Mary Jane/and Daddy’s hooked on Mary two doors down,” little catfish-nuggets of folksy insight that help keep my own creative juices flowing.

http://www.myspace.com/indigoswingmusic/music/songs/ruby-mae-28586050&#8243

1:00 PM “Ruby Mae” by Indigo Swing. Uggh, time to run some errands. Luckily, even in the worst of Chicago weather, I’m on cloud nine when I put on anything by this third wave swing-revival band. Indigo Swing used to be my JAM back in the 1998-2000 when I was frequently spotted at Odd Fellows Hall hoping to impress older girls with my awesome Jitterbug prowess — too bad all of the cool kids were more into the Lindey Hop — and this record definitely still holds up today.

4:20 PM “Hotboxin’ the Van” by Baby Bash, Paul Wall and Marcus Manchild. This song has an excellent beat. And great bass. My car also has great bass. That is all.

6:45 PM “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake. If Kyle and I are on our way to dinner, or wherever, we are for sure listening to one thing and one thing only, “Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake. I know I wrote about this song like a week ago, but it hasn’t gotten any worse since then. Again, this is a song that benefits from a mad decent car audio system. You are, You are, The love, of my life.

10:30 PM “Movements” by Roots Manuva. Did you know about Roots Manuva? I had no idea. I know that grime happened and I’ll totally jam on The Streets, but really, 99% of the time I forget that they even have rap music in Great Britain, that there was sometimes an actual hip-hop component to the whole “trip-hop” thing. Turns out Roots Manuva, who I had previously believed to be a person who mostly appeared with the word “featuring” before his name on Ninjatunes compilation CDs, actually made at least one great hip-hop album, Brand New Second Hand, on which “Movements” is the blazing first track. Holy Champagne Supernova, Batman, I’m starting to feel a serious 90s Brit-music nostalgiattack coming on. Hide the Pulp records.

*Pro-tip: classical and jazz records are dirt cheap, so it’s a good way to get a lot of really incredible music without spending $25 or $30 a pop on ‘classic’ indie records that originally came out on CD anyway (no, but for real, who are these kids who spend more on an Arcade Fire album than I would pay to go to an Arcade Fire concert?).

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