Ill-Thought Out Observations From This Year’s Grammy’s

Because Live Blogging is so gauche.

• Occasionally the Grammy Committee’s old fogey sensibility yields huge dividends. See the inclusion of Morris Day and the motherfucking Time. As far as I know, only two people have paid much attention to Morris Day and the Time post “Jerk Out:” the illustrious Alfred Soto and Kevin Smith. This must change. Peep the “Jerk Out” video–I envision heaven as being eerily similar. Also, Morris Day has had as much plastic surgery as Joan Rivers. I’m reasonably certain that the man can no longer raise his eye brows, tragically depriving the world of this expression.

• Okay, I’m as happy as anyone that Jason Bateman has had the greatest career comeback since John Travolta, but couldn’t they have gotten someone more famous to host this year’s Grammy’s? Then again, this may have had something to do with the writer’s strike. On another note, how long is it before David Faustino makes a return to the spotlight? Or Jason Hervey? C’mon network executives, if the 2 Corey’s made it to the screen, you can make this happen.

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Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 13 Comments »

LA Weekly: Vampire Weekend Review

I know, I know. Vampire Weekend, so last week right? But hey, my review for the LA Weekly was filed nearly three weeks ago and besides, I already wrote about them in July. I liked them then, I like them now. Yes, their eponymous debut LP that dropped on XL last week is a good record. Yes, the band are a little annoying and I fully understand the venom unleashed last week by Julianne Shepherd in the Village Voice. Trust, the album triggered my “hater instinct” (located in the hippocampus, I believe) more than a few times. Needless to say anyone who ironically drops the lyric, ‘Lil Jon is always right’ or rhymes “Louis Vuitton with reggaeton,” deserves to be drop-kicked.Yes, this includes Kanye. The review explains more. If you read it, I will buy you a cookie.

LA Weekly: Vampire Weekend Review (Scroll Down)

MP3:Vampire Weekend-”Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
MP3: Vampire Weekend-”I Stand Corrected”

Posted in LA Weekly | 9 Comments »

The Block Is Hot: Hot Chip Take Over Jimmy Kimmel

The Green Room backstage at the Jimmy Kimmel Show is one of the more supremely wonderful places on earth. It’s Xanadu–a place specifically designed to hit all the pleasure receptors of the male mind. No matter how refined or cultured you think you might be, it’s impossible not to get a little jangled when thrown smack dab into world of miniature cheesecake-filled buffets, an open bar, leggy blondes sipping Cabernet in corners , a string of vintage video games like Ms. Pacman and Galaga and walls plastered with big-screen plasma televisions beaming Pau Gasol’s successful attempt to integrate into the framework of the triangle offense.

Of course, you’d expect nothing less from a guy who made his name hosting something called “The Man Show” but still, this is sort of the place where time stops. I mean Tuesday was a pretty big deal and all, but nary a single screen had election returns on. This was just as well because it would’ve been incredibly annoying to have had to deal with a bunch of dudes in fedoras waxing fauxlosophic on the nuances of Obama’s health plan.

Moreover, that’s besides the point of the Kimmel Green Room. It’s escapism at its finest, one of those LA fantasies that you always suspect is going on the entire time right under your nose. Y’know, turn the fake candlestick, the walls spin around and you find yourself face to face with a bevy of beautiful women, a tomato quiche and Alexis Taylor, the lead singer of Hot Chip shooting pool wearing a electric yellow “Where’s the Beef” hat and a pair of argyle MC Hammer pants. Due to programmer Felix Martin’s illness, the band had missed its lone LA gig at the El Rey the night prior but they’d wrangled a replacement for the Kimmel show and the next thing I knew was several drinks deep, hypnotized by this temple of the Id. (Though to be fair, the hypnosis may have been caused by the dazzling combination of argyle and Zubaz .)

Jimmy Kimmel: The Talk Shows he’s created over the years, I don’t really watch them, but the fact that he’s making them, I respect that.

The promotional blitz has to do with Hot Chip’s, Made in the Dark. You’ve probably heard of it, after all, this is a blog. It’s a solid record with some spectacular moments and some middling ones. Truth be told, I stand somewhere between the 7.0 Pitchfork review and LA Weekly editor, Randall Roberts’ break-down of why Hot Chip should be your new favorite band. Made in the Dark is definitely good but as the ‘Fork review points out it lacks anything as poignant as “And I Was a Boy From School” or as buoyant as “Over and Over” (though it comes close several times). Plus, its last two songs are pretty useless with Hot Chip suddenly abandoning song-craft for boring piano-man ballads that suggest Elton John with a fixation for Kraftwerk and Prince.

The live show is a different story altogether. At last year’s Bonnaroo and Coachella, both times Hot Chip blew me away and certainly not through charisma or stage presence. They barely acknowledge the crowd and rarely show emotion. It doesn’t matter. They bring the funk like Redman despite looking more Red Buttons. Songs that float lazily on the record are gutted and re-constituted into anthems. As Randall’s feature pointed out, it’s hard not to dance and this poses massive logistical problems for their heavily Caucasian fan base. The average Hot Chip show can get ugly, think awkward hipsters performing whooping crane-like thrusts that look more suited to an attack strategy from The Karate Kid.

On Kimmel, Hot Chip played just two songs, first single, “Ready for the Floor,” and “Hold On,” the latter a seemingly odd choice considering at nearly six and a half minutes it’s the albums longest track. It’s also its best and I imagine its selection means Hot Chip must be aware of exactly how great it is. It’s the sort of song that actually sounds like what Craig Mack thought “Flavor in Your Ear” sounded like: “some robotic futuristic George Jetson” shit. It’s space disco with bongos sung by a tiny British guy channeling Prince in argyles and a chartreuse hat. And it’s brilliant. Weird, I know. Even more impressive was that “Ready for the Floor,” was the only tune that aired, which means that Hot Chip played “Hold On” strictly for just 100 or so people that swarmed Kimmel’s stage. But the way they played it, you’d have thought they were headlining a festival. It was about the only way to end a very bizarre and very fun endeavor. And how about that Pau Gasol?

Buy Made in the Dark 

MP3: Hot Chip-”Ready for the Floor”
MP3: Hot Chip-”Hold On”

Posted in Beards, Blazers, & Glasses | 4 Comments »

Pause & Rewind-Rhyme & Reason

Filmed before and during that tense six-month window between 2Pac and Big’s deaths, Rhyme and Reason has a eerie, unsettling vibe to it. Everyone in the film casts one eye on the zeros padding their bank accounts and one eye on the leeches, crooks and hustlers vulturing around them. Unfortunately, the built-in drama of this more money, more problems dilemma only plays a tangential role. Unlike The Show, whose filmmakers had the good instinct to hook their film on the 100-watt charisma and rattled wariness of Biggie, Slick Rick, Russell Simmons, et. al, Rhyme and Reason aims to be a broad survey of the genre. Made with Miramax money, it has the feel of a quickie cash-in designed to explain to rap-ignorant white people, what is was that their kids were listening to. That said, my parents never saw Rhyme and Reason. In fact, almost no one saw the $1.5 million grossing film despite its ostensibly fortunate fate of being released the same week that Biggie died. However, 11 years later, it’s a flawed if occasionally very interesting documentary worth looking back on. Plus, its soundtrack is one of the era’s best.

• Watching Meth trying to explain the Wu lexicon to the cameraman is particularly hilarious. “We don’t even use the same slang you think we use,” he sneers, stoned. “If I came up to dude and said, ‘yo, I’m chillin’ the fresh b-boy way,’ motherfuckers would like at me like I was crazy.” In the background, Raekwon sits there and giggles. This might be worth the price of admission alone.

• Every time, KRS-One appears on camera (and he appears a lot), he manages to come off as the most obnoxious person I’ve ever seen, insisting on speaking about hip-hop as though everyone else is a child and he’s the only adult in the room. Sorry, I like Criminal Minded as much as the next man, but Kris Parker is wildly overrated and always has been. I mean listen to his contribution to the film’s soundtrack, “Bring It Back,” a song dedicated to “bringing it back to that New York rap.” Keep in made that this was made in 1996! Where else was “the New York Rap?” Namibia? Granted, the flow is great, but in every verse and in every interview, dude manages to make Kanye West look bashful. It’s just lame.

• Speech from Arrested Development is actually in this movie. Who knew that Speech didn’t tragically die in a freak horse-shoe accidental directly after making the video for “Tennessee?”

Arrested Development: Hip Hop’s Dave Matthews Band 

• The only other person who come soff as arrogantly as KRS is Ice-T. I mean, he actually asked the filmmakers to bill him as being from “The Hollywood Hills.” Though I have to give the guy credit, at least he seems aware that he’s not a very good rapper. At one point, he even declares that he’s more of a gangster than a rapper anyway. Of course, while I respect the man’s ability to become obscenely wealthy despite having no discernible talent, I have to dislike him for allowing Young Jeezy to exist.

• The film’s brief section on freestyling features several different rappers attempting to rhyme on the top of the dome: Craig Mack, Erick Sermon, Doitall from Lords of the Underground and Phife from Tribe. Ice-T kicks a few bars too but is obviously spitting pre-written material. Meanwhile, Fat Lip from the Pharcyde trumps them all. Granted, being a great freestyle rapper doesn’t actually mean you’ll make you’ll make great records (aka, “The Supernatural Effect”) but Fat Lip was capable of both. Watching Rhyme and Reason makes you realize what a shame it was that The Pharcyde broke up after just two albums, both of them excellent.

• Every time the Wu is pictured, they’re standing in the frigid project cold, drinking 40s and smoking blunts in massive parkas and stocking caps. That’s just impressive.

A Dingo Ate My Baby

• Watching Ecstasy from Whodini speak (sans Zorro hat) about the old school when the “majors wouldn’t touch hip-hop” and instead left it to the indies, feels strangely similar to the situation we’re already seeing and will continue to see if hip-hop sales decline further. Personally, I see this as a good thing. For one, it’ll weed out the people in it strictly for the money (CUUURRTIIISSS). Secondly, if you look at hip-hop history, a whole lot of the genre’s greatest albums were put out on indie labels, from Cold Chillin’ to Delicious Vinyl to Tommy Boy to the early years of Def Jam, to the dozens of others. The blame for the shitty hip-hop of the 00s lies as much with the lack of viable independent labels as it does with the lack of artistic innovation (Stones Throw, Def Jux and kinda’ sorta’ Koch excluded.) As rap sales decline and the majors show less interest, it’ll open up room in the market for indies and hopefully put less pressure on non-commercially minded rappers to make feeble club bangers to boost album sales.

• Wyclef gets the bronze for being the third most grating rapper in the film, seemingly only capable of talking in biblical parables that may or may equate him to Jesus. At one point, speaking on his label problems he declares that “everyone welcomes you into Jerusalem, and then they want to crucify you.” No shit, they want to crucify you. They probably heard The Ecleftic.
  

• All the scenes of the “Jack the Rapper” convention in Orlando, Fla. are priceless. From seeing Puffy drunkenly stumbling around the pool in his boxers looking like Cam’ron in those weird You Tube videos from last summer; to Redman kicking a freestyle with Keith Murray and getting the grimey gold medal for bragging about how he still keeps tapes on him to sell despite having sold a million records , to Heavy D choking up when he thinks of all the letters that fans have written him telling him how much he inspires them. Which brings me to the biggest mystery of the entire film: who in their right mind would take the trouble to write Heavy D a letter, let alone be inspired by his music. Did “Now That We’ve Found Love” bring the plus-sized crowd together or something and I’m just only now becoming aware of it?

Download:
MP3: Mack 10 & Tha Dogg Pound-”Nothin’ But the Cavi Hit”
MP3: Eightball & MJG-”Reason For Rhyme”
MP3: Guru, Kai: Bee & Lil Dap-”The Way it Iz”
MP3: Rza-”Tragedy”
MP3: Busta Rhymes & Q-Tip-”Wild Hot”
MP3: Rass Kass, Heltah Skeltah & Canibus-”Uni-4-Orm”

Posted in Pause and Rewind | 7 Comments »

The Video For Ghostface’s “Celebrate”

Am I the only one who’s always found Kid Capri annoying?

Posted in Videos | 3 Comments »

Why I’m Endorsing Hulk Hogan

Take That Chuck Norris.

• As you can see from his “Real American” video above, Hogan has the endorsement of the real JFK, not his younger, drunker brother and rest of the flotsam and jetsam that currently constitute the rest of the Kennedy clan. This displays Hogan’s ability to transcend the realm of the spirit and the flesh. Last time, I checked Barack Obama was only capable of communicating with the living. How is he supposed to bridge generation gaps and the partisan divide if he can’t even communicate with the dead? Pathetic.

• Hogan’s American flag guitar is at least six times more awesome and 14 times more patriotic than the pathetic ax that Mike Huckabee wields in D.C. cover band, Capital Offense. This leads me to believe that Huckabee is soft on terrorism, communism, nihilism, and rockism, and therefore not fit to be president. Who’s the pinko now, Suckabee?

• Hulk Hogan once defeated Andre the Giant and Big John Studd. Granted, John McCain’s six and a half years of torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese must’ve been no picnic, but let’s face facts, McCain is 5′7. The Hulkster is 6′10 and weighs 300 lbs (according to Vince McMahon). Let’s just say for instance that Iran continues to take steps towards a nuclear weapon, and let’s just that say Mahmoud Admadinejad challenges the sitting American president to a Greco-Roman wrestling bout, my money’s on the guy who used to be nicknamed Thunder Lips and who can body-slam 520 lb. Gallic Giants.

Hogan’s Power Is So Great That Everyone He Comes Into Contact With Slowly Starts To Look Like Him

• Hulk Hogan is capable of mystically beaming himself from the Washington Memorial, to the Badlands, to the St. Louis Arch, to a cornfield in Iowa, to the Hollywood sign and Mt. Rushmore, all in a matter of seconds, while continuing to rock the fuck out. All granite-face Mitt Romney can do is look like he belongs on Mount Rushmore. [Or insert Your Own magic underwear joke here.]

• If a potential voter asked Hulk Hogan how he did his hair every morning, he wouldn’t break down on the stump and lapse into a teary schpiel. Instead, he would tousle his platinum-colored locks, flex his 24-inch pythons, tell her to say her prayers and to eat her vitamins. Then he would hop on his “Hulkster” chopper, swallow two dozen raw eggs for the protein and proceed to fight for the rights of every man (and woman.)

• While none of the remaining candidates love Khadafi (I imagine Kucinich may have had a small crush), not one can match the fervor of the Hulkster’s nationalistic fury. How many times have you seen Ron Paul rip up a picture of a jheri-curled Libyan dictator? Perhaps you might note that our problems with the tyrant of Tripoli seem like old news. A good point. But what if our diplomatic relations with the another country sour similarly? Maybe even France. Were that to ever happen, I know who I’d want in the white house: a leader with the necessary strength fortitude to to be willing to shred up a picture of Nicolas Sarkozy in his music video (and possibly shut down America’s lycees).

Not convinced? Watch the video below and try to convince yourself otherwise. If might not contain cameos from Will I Am and Scarlett Johansson but it’s damn effective. Some might even call it propaganda, but I for one call it testament.

Download:

MP3: Brian Eno & David Byrne-”America is Waiting”
MP3: Broadcast-”America’s Boy”

Posted in It Got Weird, Didn't It? | 4 Comments »

You Get It 4 Free

Curious about this one. I didn’t get down much with the Hell Hath No Fury hype but you can’t really deny the first two installments in this series. Possibly a win for unfair beat advantage, possibly the fact that Clipse were already starting to run out of bad coke puns by the time Hell saw release. Plus, some of those beats sounded like they were being banged out by a retarded kid trying out Fruity Loops for the first time. We’ll talk about this one later, in the meantime….

ZIP: The Clipse-We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3 (Left-Click)

Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 3 Comments »

Wale: Actually Worth the Hype

The buzz surrounding the 23-year old Washington DC rapper Wale has grown pretty loud in the last month or two. Everyone from Entertainment Weekly to Rolling Stone and XXL have profiled the guy. Hell, Urb even put him on the cover of their150th issue (Though I’ll admit that when I saw Wale surrounded by the creepy French biker-looking dudes of Justice, I thought that he was the token black member of the Ed Banger crew. Turns out, not so much.) So forgive me if I’m a little late to jump on the bandwagon. To be perfectly forthright, the phrase “Mark Ronson protege” didn’t exactly make me rush to check Wale out. Nothing against Ronson, he’s got a great ear. But as a rule, I don’t take hip-hop recommendations from people in fedoras. It generally works out to my advantage. This is the rare exception.

If you haven’t heard of Wale yet, be prepared to hear a lot more about him in the future, with rumors already swirling about a possible signing with Jimmy Iovine and Interscope. Judging from his excellent mixtape, 2007’s 100 Miles and Running, Wale’s one of those rare rappers capable of transcending the increasingly nebulous boundaries between the worlds of the commercial and the underground. Black Thought is his favorite rapper. He raps over everything from old Camp Lo instrumentals to “D.A.N.C.E,” name-dropping Zack Morris, mocking Soulja Boy and even managing to get Lil Wayne and Evidence to appear on the “Nike Boots remix.”

The Good Doctor Zeus (who you should all be reading by now) compares Wale to a cross between “Lupe Fiasco at his most accessible, Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne and Devin the Dude“ and those camparisons seem pretty dead-on. If you’ve often found yourself wondering where all the talented young rappers are (and yes, this is probably a valid question to ask), download Wale’s free mixtape below. He’s proof-positive that every now and then people who wear fedoras aren’t all bad.

Download:

ZIP: Wale-100 Miles and Running Mixtape (Left-Click)

MP3: Wale ft. Lil Wayne & Evidence-”Nike Boots Remix” (Left-Click)

Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 10 Comments »

Crack is Wack

And here I’d always pegged him as more the Dolly Parton type.

Download:
MP3: Islands-”Dont Call Me Whitney, Baby Bobby”

Posted in News | No Comments »

I Will Not Bow Down to Any Corporate Sponsor

My friend, the advice vixen, Stephanie Frasco, has taken out an ad on the right hand sidebar of this page. She has also started a new blog for her renowned You Tube advice column, Ask Frasco. Though I’m obviously biased, I think you should check it out if you have a spare moment. The girl gives funny, on-point advice and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the finest Mexican restaurants in the city of Los Angeles. Not bad. So click over there, or follow this link to the Ask Frasco blog.

Posted in News | 2 Comments »