November 9th, 2009
Parts of this interview originally appeared in my Pop and Hiss article on Wale. More on Attention Deficit tomorrow, maybe.
So judging from the title of Attention Deficit, its wide-ranging sound, and interviews that you’ve given, it seems like it’s your commentary on the fragmented nature of the Internet world, with a million blogs, twitters, and dozens of mixtapes released daily, How hard is it for an artist to create something that has a life span longer than the next blog post?
I think a lot of the blogs are selfish, they don’t really care. There might be five or six really legit hip-hop blogs, your Rap Radars, your Nah Rights, your 2 Dope Boyz, and others, but some that are very minuscule, if you don’t give them what they want, they’re going to shit on you. I think that their visitors aren’t even 1/1000th of another blog that you’ve already done an interview for and they want one to do one with them too.
Q-Tip one time told me that 15 years ago, all people had to judge you on was your album, one or two interviews, your record for the radio and picture on the album cover. That’s it. The only way you can remain relevant is to give yourself up, unless you’re blessed every once in a while there’s a Drake situation, but that’s not even once in a while, that’s a once thing.
But that’s pretty much a different stuation unto itself. A lot of people watched Degrassi, a lot of girls watched Degrassi.
And now they’re more mature and can hear words like fuck and shit. Look, I’m happy for what happened to dude. But the game is just completely impossible now. You have to give yourself up. That’s why I’m so frequently on Twitter, it’s because I don’t have a big record out right now. I don’t have a lot of things to explain and prepare people for the person they’re about to listen to.
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Posted in Wale, Interviews, LA Times | 21 Comments »
November 3rd, 2009
Neither a 650-word review for a general interest publication, nor a discursive blog post making stale jokes about hippies can adequately describe my Festival 8 weekend. Suffice to say, my neurons currently share the consistency of fried squid and I am subject to embarrassing revelations about my newfound ardor for Phish. It’s the sort of thing that needs a minimum 10-page essay, a video accompaniment, and a haiku about Hacksaw Jim Duggan (see above), who never broke character while wearing his costume all weekend long. At 4 a.m. on Saturday night, he could still be found wandering around the parking lot screaming “Hooooo.”
Posting may be a bit light over the next few days as I struggle to re-acclimate to Los Angeles, daylight savings, a slew of looming deadlines, and the ramifications of last weekend. As a man named Ox once said, “everything’s the same, but different.”My review for the Times is up now. At some point, I imagine I will write about it in more depth–but in brief, Phish pulled it off, which is just about the highest praise I can give to a band with the hubris to book the Empire Polo Club for a weekend without any openers or ancillary live entertainment. Below, Phish’s two best songs for people who don’t like Phish. Don’t question my sanity, regardless of how much fun I had this weekend, I still think “Gotta Jibboo” remains the most insipid song ever recorded.
Download:
MP3: Phish-”Bouncing Round the Room (6/7/09)
MP3: Phish-”Fee” (Live Phish 19)
Posted in Phish, LA Times | 1 Comment »
October 6th, 2009
Considering that Breakestra’s last album was released in that antediluvian pre-Winehouse era known as 2005, people listening to From Dusk Till Dawn might wrongly peg them as carpet-bagging members of the Mark Ronson fan club (comes with free fedora-shaped Mezuzah and a CD-R mix of Le Tigre’s greatest hits via Samantha). After all, retro-soul has become as ubiquitous as rappers in skinny jeans and scarves. But Breakestra were at the forefront of the trend, mining Meters and J.B.’s breaks for inspiration long before they cut one of the first Stones Throw releases in 1999. My interview with Music Man Miles Tackett is up at the Times blog, discussing their excellent new record out on Strut, the memory of DJ Dusk (no, the title isn’t a dedication to the Sex Machine), and his all-time favorite breaks.
If you’re in LA, their show tonight at the El Rey comes highly recommended if you’re into both kinds of music: rhythm and blues.
Amazon: Breakestra-From Dusk Till Dawn
Download:
MP3: Breakestra-”Need a Little Love”
MP3: Breakestra-”Lowdown Stank”
Posted in LA Times | 5 Comments »
September 24th, 2009
The intent was to transcribe and post the entirety of my Q&A with BBC Radio One DJ, Mary Anne Hobbs. Unfortunately, it’s 1:00 a.m, I’m exhausted and as much as I like you guys, I enjoy sleep that much more. So, a link to my Times piece, the promise that I’ll do it sooner than later, and a few MP3’s from her debut compilation, Warrior Dubz.
Download:
MP3: Burial-”Versus”
MP3: Benga-”Music Box”
Posted in LA Times | No Comments »
September 17th, 2009
Under no circumstances should Skinny Jeans and a Mic be better than Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon. After all, Cudi has the co-signs (Kanye, Common, the uh, Black Eyed Peas) the would-be indie icons brought in for Aoki-crowd mustache cred (MGMT, Crookers, Ratatat) and the back-story: at age 11 loses father to cancer, makes the Bright Lights, Big City trek to New York, gets a job at the Bape store selling hoodies the color of skinned angel fish, etc. The New Boyz had one classic single, guest spots from a third-tier Young Money yokel and Brandy’s sex-tape making brother, and less than a month to record a quick cash-in album.
Somehow, things got mixed up faster than you can say Billy Ray Valentine. While Cudi decided to sink his putatively huge recording budget into warbling off-key experimental electronic ephemera, The New Boyz had neither time to contemplate nor the self-awareness to even attempt something that ambitious. Sometimes, the tinkering in the lab approach can yield you a Loveless or a Revolver and other times, it finds a young artist running up against the predictable pitfalls: pretentiousness, over-thinking, letting Lady Gaga infect their album. It’s unwise to bet against Cudi–he has the substantial fanbase in place to ensure that he’ll continue to receive label backing, his gestures towards the avant-garde seem sincere (even if he doesn’t really seem sure what the term means), and there are moments on Man On the Moon that justify the outlandish expectations placed upon him.
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Posted in Jerkin, LA Times | 5 Comments »
September 16th, 2009
A link to my review at Pop and Hiss. No more Cuban Linx talk until year-end list time. More content coming later today.
And while we’re on topic…
Download:
MP3: Raekwon-”Can’t Hide It” (Left-Click)
MP3: Raekwon ft. Ghostface-”Criminology’09″
Posted in LA Times | 3 Comments »
September 15th, 2009
On the Nile. Great cover or greatest cover? Granted, my review of Old School Fest at the Greek should only appeal to the scant but savvy readership who may or may not have sported a buoffant during the mid-80s. I myself once used Murray’s pomade for a two year-stretch, but I don’t think that counts. Mainly, I am using this post as the context to post these songs, which I’m sure the majority of you have, but some of you might not. Were I not to post them, it would be worse than drinking Jobu’s rum. It would be very bad.
Download:
MP3: Egyptian Lover-”Egypt Egypt”
MP3: Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force-”Planet Rock”
MP3: Kraftwerk-”Trans-Europe Express”
MP3: Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5-”White Lines (”Don’t Do It)”
MP3: Liquid Liquid-”Cavern”
MP3: Kurtis Blow-”The Breaks” (Left-Click)
Posted in Egyptian Lover, Old School, LA Times | No Comments »
September 2nd, 2009
Today is hirsute white person day at the Passion of the Weiss. Clearly, it’s a corollary to yesterday’s revelation that I secretly hate hip-hop, especially the dromedary-looking fellow who sampled Orphan Annie. Concluding this bearded extravaganza is Division Day, a local band that has recently and deservedly received high praise from both the LA Weekly and Buzz Bands.
If you wrote them off as an over-hyped blog band following 2006’s Beartrap Island, the Dangerbird-released Visitation will likely surprise you. It’s one of the best LA indie rock records of the year, a genre which I hear is now a movement. In advance of their show tonight at Spaceland, I spoke with Division Day guitarist Ryan Wilson for Pop and Hiss. There are rumors that Sean Carter and B and Bleek will be there. If so, I will buy him an ice cold Budweiser (he gets a commission for that, I believe) and ask him about his favorite Coldplay, Kings of Leon, and Alphaville B-Sides.
Download:
MP3: Division Day-”Chalklines”
Posted in LA Times | No Comments »
September 2nd, 2009
Akron/Family performing “Ed is a Portal” at the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar/Dead Oceans showcase was my favorite moment of this year’s SXSW. The Rza isn’t the only one who is a hip-hop hippie. Of course, watching a secondhand YouTube clip can only do so much for you. Kief-coated Bong rips may help–if you’re into that sort of thing.
The perils of Dead-derived music–and really any experimental outfit–is that off nights are to be expected. Sometimes, you don’t have your best fastball, your curve lacks bite, and your spitball flies into the wind. It happens. That said, I’ll take the erratic Akron over nearly any other working band. My full review of their show at the El Rey is at the Times site–if you’re into that sort of thing.
LA Times: The Innovative Experimentation of Akron/Family
Download:
MP3: Akron/Family-”River”
MP3: Akron/Family-”Ed is a Portal” (Left-Click)
MP3: Akron/Family-”Birth/ Or Bodies” (Left-Click)
MP3: Akron/Family-”Running Returning”
Posted in LA Times | 2 Comments »
September 1st, 2009
Yesterday, in the midst of the commotion regarding the leak of Blueprint 3, my editors at the Times requested that I do a first-listen live-blog review. The result is up now, with roughly half the best jokes and three quarters of the venom siphoned out. It’s probably for the best. Had my original draft ran, I imagine I would be taken off the Roc Nation Christmas list and wouldn’t get my free Mr. Hudson stocking stuffers. How could I live without a Yuletide fruitcake featuring Mr. Hudson’s face? Roc-A-Fella, y’all.
It’s difficult to have a more visceral disdain for a Jay-Z record. Kingdom Come was probably worse, but it’s chief crime was absolute boredom. There’s something deeply disturbing about Blueprint 3–not only does it feature some of the worst moments of Sean Carter’s career, it’s arrogant but lacks swagger, it’s cocky but not confident, it seems to regard white kids in Williamsburg as the apotheosis of cool. I’m all for Jay-Z seeing a Grizzly Bear show–after all, who am I to talk? But this feels like an effort from an old man who picked up a two years-old copy of The Fader, studied the Style section, and relied on Kanye and Timbaland to tell him what THE FUTURE sounds like.
It’s simultaneously over-cooked and half-baked, it’s needlessly self-congratulatory, it’s totally contrived. Blueprint’s 3 sole conceit is to usher in some weird new progressive era that Jay can only speak about with vague platitudes. It’s hard to hate Jay-Z. He’s been one of my favorite rappers since I heard “Brooklyn’s Finest” on a badly dubbed tape in my friend’s falling-apart Ford Aspire in 1996, but this is just pathetic. Though I suppose some congrats are in store. 50 years from now when we’re listening to music through chips in our brains, we’ll also remember Blueprint 3 for “Young Forever,” which established a visionary new sub-genre: Bar-Mitzvah montage rap.
LA Times: First Listen–Jay-Z’s-”Blueprint 3″
Posted in LA Times | 27 Comments »
