30.4.03
abs - stop sign
abs starts it off soul-crooner style, backed by shitty fuzz guitar and reverse handclaps or something. then comes the funky breakbeat. then the girls are going "nah nah nah" and the chords are doing that motown thing like where you put your hands near your knees and bring them up with the beat till they're reaching into the air, except abs is probably just pulling that weirdly ott sly grin and watching his lady dancers and not reaching into the air at all, the fuck! the chorus works but it's still perhaps the weakest link. it doesn't matter because after the second one you get this breakdown: abs raps a few lines sounding like wildchild or maybe like whenever there's a rap bit in any new jack swing tune; a catchy-as-fuck ringtone melody comes in (um, why doesn't the song start with the best bit abs, you mentalhead!), the beat disappears, abs strains because, like, he needs you baby, and it sounds completely amazing! there's only fifty seconds after that to bring it home, but i am so won over by the breakdown that these are the greatest fifty seconds of music that will ever be released.
from what i've seen of the video, it features disembodied legs and fly girls doing that digitally enhanced 'hummingbird-ass' dance perenially popular in the best clubs. it looks quite expensive!
abs starts it off soul-crooner style, backed by shitty fuzz guitar and reverse handclaps or something. then comes the funky breakbeat. then the girls are going "nah nah nah" and the chords are doing that motown thing like where you put your hands near your knees and bring them up with the beat till they're reaching into the air, except abs is probably just pulling that weirdly ott sly grin and watching his lady dancers and not reaching into the air at all, the fuck! the chorus works but it's still perhaps the weakest link. it doesn't matter because after the second one you get this breakdown: abs raps a few lines sounding like wildchild or maybe like whenever there's a rap bit in any new jack swing tune; a catchy-as-fuck ringtone melody comes in (um, why doesn't the song start with the best bit abs, you mentalhead!), the beat disappears, abs strains because, like, he needs you baby, and it sounds completely amazing! there's only fifty seconds after that to bring it home, but i am so won over by the breakdown that these are the greatest fifty seconds of music that will ever be released.
from what i've seen of the video, it features disembodied legs and fly girls doing that digitally enhanced 'hummingbird-ass' dance perenially popular in the best clubs. it looks quite expensive!
24.4.03
23.4.03
talib kweli - get by
the new rawkus mix cd is mostly concerned with putting all those mcs who were exciting years ago (mos, talib, skillz, monch) over nearly brand new beats like "in da club" and that neptunes common shit to see how they measure up or to offer a very slightly alternate vision of what could be on the radio instead of 50 (it turns out it would be almost exactly the same! although there is no one on the radio as outrageously annoying as skillz). westwood had the rawkus chairmen types on the other week, they're fucking boring but westwood made an interesting comment: he claimed he wasn't sure in 97/98 if mainstream rap was gonna go the way of jay z or rawkus. i can't remember whether there is any truth to this, i think at the time i was just getting whatever shit that came into (shudder) happy vibes records and had absolutely no quality control or sense of what was bigtime. i do think rawkus has been running with this parallel radio universe thing for a while though, perhaps since it 'lost' to jigga, which at least makes it more ambitious and sometimes fun than umpteen million undie labels.
kweli follows through bringing kanye west on production for "get by" - dude is a fucking genius! for serious, i don't think we even know yet how important the blueprint was by giving kanye and just blaze a good rep; the two of them are sucking up everything that came before and throwing out new beat templates on a weekly basis. blaze is currently on a fast+heavy early-nineties-funk-hop tip with that joe budden song and the new memphis bleek single ("everything's a go" check it out!). kanye is doing all sorts of shit but "get by" is one of those really perfect soul beats where you don't know how he's making everything fit together so nicely. it's like how a live band should sound but never, ever does!
there's also this catchy shout along chorus with backing singers and hand claps and they're going: "this morning, i woke up / feeling brand new and i jumped up / feeling my highs and my lows / in my soul, and my goals / just to stop smoking, and stop drinking". i was really seriously considering giving up smoking recently. i still am trying to cut down, but when i hear "get by" it makes me want to light up just to piss kweli off! that's really my problem though. dude can't help but be positive and preachy. i still sing along! and i still think this is my favourite song at the moment.
the new rawkus mix cd is mostly concerned with putting all those mcs who were exciting years ago (mos, talib, skillz, monch) over nearly brand new beats like "in da club" and that neptunes common shit to see how they measure up or to offer a very slightly alternate vision of what could be on the radio instead of 50 (it turns out it would be almost exactly the same! although there is no one on the radio as outrageously annoying as skillz). westwood had the rawkus chairmen types on the other week, they're fucking boring but westwood made an interesting comment: he claimed he wasn't sure in 97/98 if mainstream rap was gonna go the way of jay z or rawkus. i can't remember whether there is any truth to this, i think at the time i was just getting whatever shit that came into (shudder) happy vibes records and had absolutely no quality control or sense of what was bigtime. i do think rawkus has been running with this parallel radio universe thing for a while though, perhaps since it 'lost' to jigga, which at least makes it more ambitious and sometimes fun than umpteen million undie labels.
kweli follows through bringing kanye west on production for "get by" - dude is a fucking genius! for serious, i don't think we even know yet how important the blueprint was by giving kanye and just blaze a good rep; the two of them are sucking up everything that came before and throwing out new beat templates on a weekly basis. blaze is currently on a fast+heavy early-nineties-funk-hop tip with that joe budden song and the new memphis bleek single ("everything's a go" check it out!). kanye is doing all sorts of shit but "get by" is one of those really perfect soul beats where you don't know how he's making everything fit together so nicely. it's like how a live band should sound but never, ever does!
there's also this catchy shout along chorus with backing singers and hand claps and they're going: "this morning, i woke up / feeling brand new and i jumped up / feeling my highs and my lows / in my soul, and my goals / just to stop smoking, and stop drinking". i was really seriously considering giving up smoking recently. i still am trying to cut down, but when i hear "get by" it makes me want to light up just to piss kweli off! that's really my problem though. dude can't help but be positive and preachy. i still sing along! and i still think this is my favourite song at the moment.
17.4.03
diplomats - dipset anthem
watch how the gangstas do it! i chickened out today and got this on 12 instead of the ridiculous 4lp diplomats 'mixtape' and now i feel dumb cuz i was like, hmm this song is kind of boring and the guardian (!) said only the beats are good so i'll get the 12 with the instrumental. fuck that shit, cam'ron and his cronies are keeping amazing and unbelievably boring rap alive in 03 so it's no good just having the beats - you have to feel the deadness of their go-nowhere verses with it, you have to feel the evil.
i'm trying to work out why i'm so into it but it's tough, i mean they always have these perfect soul and rock loops and their producers will probably one day be recognized as eye-wateringly good (also they appear to be running parallel with those djs like z trip and shred ted who are putting out mixtapes which try to make some sense of the awful rock music they grew up with - its better when kanye west or the heatmakerz condense this stuff down to the choicest loops instead of running a whole journey track over electro beats), but a lot of diplomats affiliated stuff is slow to reveal its purpose: too sluggish to be club tracks, choruses not good enough to get on the radio, into-the-void verses which barely make sense but just have a few lines aggro enough to keep you coming back.
so i'm thinking this is all about grabbing your attention for thirty seconds with this overwhelming digital sludge sound and seeing how long they can keep your head under. i told you it's evil but it's so much fun!
watch how the gangstas do it! i chickened out today and got this on 12 instead of the ridiculous 4lp diplomats 'mixtape' and now i feel dumb cuz i was like, hmm this song is kind of boring and the guardian (!) said only the beats are good so i'll get the 12 with the instrumental. fuck that shit, cam'ron and his cronies are keeping amazing and unbelievably boring rap alive in 03 so it's no good just having the beats - you have to feel the deadness of their go-nowhere verses with it, you have to feel the evil.
i'm trying to work out why i'm so into it but it's tough, i mean they always have these perfect soul and rock loops and their producers will probably one day be recognized as eye-wateringly good (also they appear to be running parallel with those djs like z trip and shred ted who are putting out mixtapes which try to make some sense of the awful rock music they grew up with - its better when kanye west or the heatmakerz condense this stuff down to the choicest loops instead of running a whole journey track over electro beats), but a lot of diplomats affiliated stuff is slow to reveal its purpose: too sluggish to be club tracks, choruses not good enough to get on the radio, into-the-void verses which barely make sense but just have a few lines aggro enough to keep you coming back.
so i'm thinking this is all about grabbing your attention for thirty seconds with this overwhelming digital sludge sound and seeing how long they can keep your head under. i told you it's evil but it's so much fun!
13.4.03
50 cent - in the club
50 has flooded the fucking market, too many mix cds, too many bootleg 12s filling up my local rap shop - there's some good tunes on some of them but i think it might be a dangerous game. this could become the new blueprint for launching any rapper when it used to be like 'put out one official 12 on the downlow and get him on every dj clue mix for six months'. the volume of it all is tiring if you actually care and don't want to miss out on some potential good stuff; i wonder if many people actually have all those mix cds??
50 has flooded the fucking market, too many mix cds, too many bootleg 12s filling up my local rap shop - there's some good tunes on some of them but i think it might be a dangerous game. this could become the new blueprint for launching any rapper when it used to be like 'put out one official 12 on the downlow and get him on every dj clue mix for six months'. the volume of it all is tiring if you actually care and don't want to miss out on some potential good stuff; i wonder if many people actually have all those mix cds??
j-lo ft ll cool j - all i have
ok i am very ashamed to admit that i downloaded this song and listened to it and enjoyed it quite a lot. they make a repulsive couple and yet i was singing it at work last week, ll is especially fun to imitate with his breathy 'hi don't believe's. e crunk is telling me to embrace the ickiness of this song but its hard cos i keep thinking of ll's moustache.
ok i am very ashamed to admit that i downloaded this song and listened to it and enjoyed it quite a lot. they make a repulsive couple and yet i was singing it at work last week, ll is especially fun to imitate with his breathy 'hi don't believe's. e crunk is telling me to embrace the ickiness of this song but its hard cos i keep thinking of ll's moustache.
delta goodrem - i forget
i stopped watching neighbours in 00 but i often regret it, it's just like when billy and anne left i feel the show lost it's heart. i know this is a bit i love 1993 but i would like to point out that the episode where jim and doug take magic mushrooms in the woods has not been forgotten by the nation's youth, it's the kind of thing you can start a conversation about in the pub with anyone! i would also like to mention that lil missy has been obsessed with karl kennedy since forever! i dunno who the fuck delta goodrem is or was in neighbours so fuck her and her so called music!
i stopped watching neighbours in 00 but i often regret it, it's just like when billy and anne left i feel the show lost it's heart. i know this is a bit i love 1993 but i would like to point out that the episode where jim and doug take magic mushrooms in the woods has not been forgotten by the nation's youth, it's the kind of thing you can start a conversation about in the pub with anyone! i would also like to mention that lil missy has been obsessed with karl kennedy since forever! i dunno who the fuck delta goodrem is or was in neighbours so fuck her and her so called music!
westlife - 2nite
oh westlife. how i love you and your ballads and you're sitting on stools and you're tight-but-not-too-tight-jeans and your impassioned, ugly-ass faces and your atomic kitten girlfriends and your reverb-and-crying-guitar-and-punchy-piano production and brian dude who doesn't give a fuck and is actually just like my brother and kian who got beaten up and the effeminate one with black hair and the one who normally sings lead and looks like he has never, ever been sincere about anything in his life and the other one who i dont remember but probably he wears a big coat with a furry collar and is a date-rapist and now i love your bon jovi circa 95 direction!
oh westlife. how i love you and your ballads and you're sitting on stools and you're tight-but-not-too-tight-jeans and your impassioned, ugly-ass faces and your atomic kitten girlfriends and your reverb-and-crying-guitar-and-punchy-piano production and brian dude who doesn't give a fuck and is actually just like my brother and kian who got beaten up and the effeminate one with black hair and the one who normally sings lead and looks like he has never, ever been sincere about anything in his life and the other one who i dont remember but probably he wears a big coat with a furry collar and is a date-rapist and now i love your bon jovi circa 95 direction!
top fifteen um... spizzazzz chart
scooter - the weekend
scooter dude just sounds like a football commentator, shit is wearing thin even if the whole idea is that all the songs are versions on this amazing perfected concept of dreamscape tapes + bizzare historical imagery + weird dudes shouting at you till you give in and buy their single.
if you got a twenty dollar bill put ya hands up!
scooter - the weekend
scooter dude just sounds like a football commentator, shit is wearing thin even if the whole idea is that all the songs are versions on this amazing perfected concept of dreamscape tapes + bizzare historical imagery + weird dudes shouting at you till you give in and buy their single.
if you got a twenty dollar bill put ya hands up!
9.4.03
de la soul ft sean paul - shoomp
i love fluttery widescreen bird noise keyboard washes but when i hear them its normally in the context of some shitty chillout act on annie nightingale. de la or whoever produced this have used them as an atmospheric backdrop for bleep-dancehall drums and doo wop backing vocals (hey, guess what they're singing!) and sean paul doing his quickly-tiring sean paul thing! that almost means de la are cool again!
i never stopped feeling them really, stakes is high was a key record when i was fifteen and the summer was mad hot so all we could do was laze around and listen to de la and beats rhymes & life and 2000 by grand puba and smoke and blah blah. it kind of annoys me now though, teenagehood is meant to be a full-impact emotional rollercoaster and i was listening to all this music by dudes who already sounded tired of everything! i think stakes was de la trying to be angry with the state of hiphop but mostly they just sounded sad, like they wanted hiphop out of their face so they could relax and make cute vs edgy soundclash records like "shoomp". which is what they've done since and that's fair enough!
its still nice to hear their voices even if they're not saying much worth quoting. it's still nice, if not especially productive, to have that de la fug around, but i think it's going to take me putting on eve to actually get up out of this chair and do something.
i love fluttery widescreen bird noise keyboard washes but when i hear them its normally in the context of some shitty chillout act on annie nightingale. de la or whoever produced this have used them as an atmospheric backdrop for bleep-dancehall drums and doo wop backing vocals (hey, guess what they're singing!) and sean paul doing his quickly-tiring sean paul thing! that almost means de la are cool again!
i never stopped feeling them really, stakes is high was a key record when i was fifteen and the summer was mad hot so all we could do was laze around and listen to de la and beats rhymes & life and 2000 by grand puba and smoke and blah blah. it kind of annoys me now though, teenagehood is meant to be a full-impact emotional rollercoaster and i was listening to all this music by dudes who already sounded tired of everything! i think stakes was de la trying to be angry with the state of hiphop but mostly they just sounded sad, like they wanted hiphop out of their face so they could relax and make cute vs edgy soundclash records like "shoomp". which is what they've done since and that's fair enough!
its still nice to hear their voices even if they're not saying much worth quoting. it's still nice, if not especially productive, to have that de la fug around, but i think it's going to take me putting on eve to actually get up out of this chair and do something.
2.4.03
out this week: india.arie - little things
it's all breezy, soulful yet understated grooves and india hates (well ok hate is too strong a word to describe her tepid chicken soup for the soulisms) "glitter and gold" which maybe explains why her music is so dull. it's like 'my favourite things' off the sound of music but with much less cool stuff than raindrops on roses.
it's all breezy, soulful yet understated grooves and india hates (well ok hate is too strong a word to describe her tepid chicken soup for the soulisms) "glitter and gold" which maybe explains why her music is so dull. it's like 'my favourite things' off the sound of music but with much less cool stuff than raindrops on roses.
out this week: eve - satisfaction
this doesn't start out promising - dre's snare/clap/blcha is mad annoying! it's like a few recent dre beats (that one off the eminem show at least) where the beginning seems to take all the funk out of a decent funk sample, or all the forward motion out of all rap ever (more extreme even than when he was pushing that sound on chronic 01) and you're left wondering how the fuck you're going to dance to this. but oh, eve! i could pick almost any part but this is my favourite: "most dudes is okay, half of the rest ain't / talkin bout what they wanna do, reality they can't / ask 'em what they life worth, watch 'em draw a blank / i really ain't got no interest if it don't involve the bank", it's all nasty! but the little pregnant pauses are even more fuck-you-i'm-big-time-and-you're-not attitude, like "i'ma give you what you want, what you waitin' for? / make the music that the people can't ignore ( .... )" <--- *fuckyouface*. then she starts switching between rapping and a creamy singing style which kills me even more!
this doesn't start out promising - dre's snare/clap/blcha is mad annoying! it's like a few recent dre beats (that one off the eminem show at least) where the beginning seems to take all the funk out of a decent funk sample, or all the forward motion out of all rap ever (more extreme even than when he was pushing that sound on chronic 01) and you're left wondering how the fuck you're going to dance to this. but oh, eve! i could pick almost any part but this is my favourite: "most dudes is okay, half of the rest ain't / talkin bout what they wanna do, reality they can't / ask 'em what they life worth, watch 'em draw a blank / i really ain't got no interest if it don't involve the bank", it's all nasty! but the little pregnant pauses are even more fuck-you-i'm-big-time-and-you're-not attitude, like "i'ma give you what you want, what you waitin' for? / make the music that the people can't ignore ( .... )" <--- *fuckyouface*. then she starts switching between rapping and a creamy singing style which kills me even more!
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