Do not adjust your browser, while Jeff’s taking a week off to chill at the Yacht Club with Rick and possibly Diana Ross, I’ve begun phase one in a hostile takeover of the Passion. Expect angry comments from disgruntled trap-rap bloggers, passionate appraisals of rare Jamaican/Brazilian/Nigerian records and a secret pro-Canadian agenda. Also, if Douglas Martin passes through, a pro Secretly Canadian agenda. In other words, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Like free lunches, Sach O holds it down like steel.
The first record I ever played out at the ripe old age of 3 was an Alvin and the Chipmunks cover of “Beat it”. I eventually moved on to the OG versions of “Billie Jean”, “PYT” and “Smooth Criminal” but that was pretty much the beginning and the end of my Michael Jackson phase. Don’t be surprised, I was born a year and some change after Thriller dropped so by the time I hit my teens, MJ was already a punch line and the musical climate was decidedly against his brand of universal megastardom. Throw in my emerging anti-pop teenage cynicism and its safe to say that MJ wasn’t exactly rocking my world…except maybe on 2001’s “Rock My World” which I actually couldn’t deny.
So call it ignorance, call it bias, call it what you want but I didn’t expect much when I bought the Jackson 5’s “Maybe Tomorrow” for a college project about possibilities of sampling. I’d decided to contrast Ghostface Killah’s “All that I got is You” with its sample source and intended to highlight the difference between Ghost’s emotional rollercoaster ride with Michael’s bubblegum funk. The only problem is “Maybe Tomorrow” was just as emotional and nuanced as Ghost’s flip. I didn’t see that one coming.
Sach O rain fire pon chichi hipster soundbwoy bullshit. Seen.
Irony: go fuck yourself. Irony protects the ridiculous and shelters stupidity from scorn and criticism. Major Lazer is a self-consciously ironic project highlighting that for every successful intermingling of global musical trends, there’s a project so offensively presumptuous and musically incompetent that it’s a testament to our cultural failings that no one involved will get punched in the face for it.
The jist: Major Lazer is a dancehall compilation featuring A-list Jamaican deejays and production by Switch and Diplo, the beatmakers behind M.I.A and Santigold. Sounds good right? It’s also a sorta-concept album about a zombie fighting Jamaican commando who rides a rocket-powered skateboard. One assumes he wears a neon hoodie by whatever street wear company got involved in this mess. Do not buy their clothing.
Sach O doesn’t think you should be impressed by the use of the word marvelous.
The year is 1999: Cash Money has just knocked Master P out the box and Def Jam is ruling the airwaves with blockbuster releases by Ja Rule, Jay-Z and DMX. The underground rap scene is tentatively moving from the 12’’ single format to full on album releases while Stones Throw and Def Jux, labels that would revolutionize the indie scene during the next decade are dropping their first projects. Though the Hip-Hop landscape is increasingly fragmented, every set has its heroes and for the Rawkus/Okayplayer contingent no emcee shines brighter at the end of the millennium than the Mighty Mos Def. Dropping the acclaimed Black on Both Sides, Mos embodies the promise of the post-Tribe era combining Q-Tip’s vocal style and topical reach with a harder edged flow and an aggressive BK attitude. The album becomes one of Rawkus’ greatest successes, going gold and setting the stage for Mos to become one of the decade’s most prominent emcees.
Fuck a cliché–Marseillais rapper, Shurik’n’s 1998 solo release, “Ou Je Vis” (Translation: Where I live), is poetic autobiography. While that’s like describing rap as “the hood CNN”, Shu’s rhymes about French rap’s second city actually fulfil their aspirations. Marrying an investigative scope to vivid descriptions of personal struggle and a metaphorical exploration of eastern culture, “Ou Je Vis” stands as one of the most uncompromising albums ever recorded.
As a member of the country’s single greatest rap crew IAM, Shurik’n grew from the group’s Phife into an emcee rivaling group leader Akhenaton, playing a major role in the group’s ascent to mega-stardom with 1997’s “L’Ecole du Micro D’Argent”, an album still regarded as the most successful in French history. However, when his solo debut was released the following year, few were ready for the stark collection of pessimistic musings delivered over minimalistic self production. “Ou Je Vis” wasn’t the expected follow up to a blockbuster, rather it was 32 years of frustration put on wax; a personal album preserving man’s struggle and society’s failings for posterity.
My favorite High Fidelity moment is Rob Fleming’s (patron saint of music nerds) soliloquy describing the art of the mixtape. The rules: Stick to a theme, no mixing black music and white music, no two songs by the same artist on the same side (unless you’re doing doubles) etc. While the advice is rote (and ultimately ignorable) the spiel is one of the great elegies to the mix as a conveyor of emotion.
For a generation that fetishizes cassette tapes while barely remembering the discman, Rob’s passion for self-expression through song selection is a reminder of a simple pleasure that’s increasingly obsolete in the era of filesharing. After all, how awkward is it to give a girl that mp3 CD when her Macbook Air can’t even read the damn thing? A Z-Share just ain’t the same.
In this high speed, ADD afflicted world, to get people’s attention you gotta hit em from every angle like Meth in 93. In addition to taking over blogging one post at a time here at the Passion, I’ve been taking Diggin in the Digital Crates live to the stage, cutting out the media-filter to bring my message live to the masses. Last week in Saigon, a city positively booming with creative energy, but still under the radar when it comes to international attention, I co-hosted a night with local veteran DJ Trung. DITDC’s Funk-Soul Fry Up brought a mix of Afro-beat, Tropicalia, R&B, Hip-Hop and (yes) Electro-Pop to local institution the Eden Bar. Though there were too many peaks to name, the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the Soul, mixing new revivalist hits with classics from Stax and beyond, presenting a style of music still rare in Ho Chi Minh City.
Sach O would rather be listening to Smif N Wessun or Scarface. Come back next week for much better records.
Two big-budget major label rap albums are dropping this week. One is by a slightly geeky frat boy whose hit single is an ode to keggers, and whose attempt at a “lyrical track” (ahem) involves the words “Go Kart”. The other is by a portly Haitian guy who’s been beefing with 50 Cent, and whose album revolves exclusively around cocaine and the objects/women that are available if one successfully distributes cocaine.
One of these records is funny, can you guess which one?
You’d be forgiven for assuming Asher Roth’s, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, would be good for a chuckle. Everything from the album cover, to the novelty single, to the 4:20 release date, promises light-hearted fun and good times. Full disclosure: I’d heard exactly 2 Roth songs prior to his album leak, so I’m out of the loop in terms of the blogosphere’s love/hate relationship with the guy, and nothing on Asleep in the Bread Aisle has managed to convince me to pick a side. Rather, all it’s done is left me wondering how Frat Rap’s wunderkind could be so…dull.
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The received wisdom is that Dub is first and foremost a technological and chemical achievement. Years before professional remixing and electronic music, Jamaican producers took crude equipment and created a revolution out of reverb, bass and collie weed, setting the stage for the idea of musical recordings as source material rather than final product. Roots music meanwhile, was the thinking man’s Reggae: ideological, idealistic and full of ideas. Black Uhuru and Burning Spear had something to say, Sly & Robbie were a studio rats experimenting with effects.
Granted, with so many versions being producer-only affairs and so many tracks concerned solely with satisfying the sound systems, it’s not unfair to think of dub as music for the body. What’s often forgotten though is that for millions of reggae fans, dub is Jamaica’s own psychedelia: mind expanding music in the vein of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. So it’s one of music’s great ironies that Jamaica’s psych revolution was often shepherded by England’s punks: a group little enthused by wandering hippie grooves.
Daniel Dumile albums aren’t supposed to be comforting; they’re supposed to be disturbing, awkward, and a mindfuck to all but the most dedicated, blunt-smoking, mind-warped, boom-bap rap fans. Maybe it was the corny Adult Swim tie in (we forgive you DOOM), maybe it was the undeniably classic Madlib collabo, maybe it was familiarity, but at some point in the past few years the man formerly known as Metal Face became more teddy bear than grizzly, less super villain than super emcee.
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