Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Evangelicals (the good kind)



Don't know too much about these guys, but I know I like 'em. Thought it was a chick singing at first but their Myspace reveals a strict dudefest. And the video is the good kind of low-budget; a B-movie horror throwback that fits the music quite nicely. If you listen to the video without watching it, the screams only heighten the song's intense mood.

The stuff of nightmares


Imagine seeing this dude pull up next to you at the intersection of Mack and Valley Hi. You glance back and the driver looks completely normal again. My friend Mike saw a half-man/half-lion driving when he was about 12 and we still crack up about it. You know, to hide the terror.

New Nas video: Wow.


More of a short film, really, soundtracked by "Y'all My Niggas" from his new untitled album, which I've yet to hear in its entirety. Nasir riffs on the ramifications of that infamous word he almost titled the album before sampling Master of missing the point Bill O'Reilly and closing things out with a screed expanding the boundaries of oppression.
This underlines how frustrating it can be to be a Nas fan: He'll drop something amazing like this, but his output is so uneven after a Shakespeare-level debut at age 20. I've been listening to his second album It Was Written in the car lately and the lyrics are still there, but outside of a few bangers, the production leaves you flat. Bangers i.e. the Lauryn Hill-assisted "If I Ruled the World":

Nasty is flirting with the Puff Daddy Times Squarification of hip-hop in the video, which became insufferable but was pretty fresh in 1996, and his lyrics, while touching on materialism (like you wouldn't have some jet skis if you ran the world), got a discussion of prison abolition on mainstream radio, just as he'll hopefully do now with an honest dialogue on race and class. Thanks Nas. (Thanks also to Sound Verite')

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Lil' Wayne is for the children



This is a great piece of writing by David Ramsey in the Oxford American about his experience as a middle- and high school teacher in post-Katrina New Orleans and how it all comes back to Weezy F.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Friday Jamzz

It's Friday, man, you ain't got no (real) job; you ain't got shit to do; you two microbrews deep at 2 PM; you finna bust out a bike cruise in the mildly ghetto neighborhood you grew up in and then tear it up in some b-ball later, but peep some fresh jams first, son.


Monday, September 8, 2008

Adek Dark's: Rap Français Trés Fresh

When I was in Paris this past winter, the friend I was staying with took me to an informal reunion of people she went to middle-school with, held at a neighborhood hookah bar/tea room in the suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine. It was a potentially awkward situation, considering that I don't speak French and most of them spoke only very basic English, but some of the friends were really friendly and made the effort to engage me in conversation. I talked at length with un mec named Marc, mostly about hip-hop. We exchanged emails and he said he'd send me some French hip-hop tracks, but never mentioned that he himself did music.
When he emailed me, I was surprised that the mp3 attached was by him. And even more surprising it was really good! I have basically no idea what he's saying (one line I did understand imagines "Obesity in Sudan, famine in America"), but he sounds awesome saying it. Dark's (I don't get the apostrophe either) mentioned his admiration of Jay-Z and Kanye West, and "Alchimiste," with production by the Soulchildren, sounds like it could be from a French version of The Blueprint.
He's supposed to send me some more stuff, which I'll be sure to share, but for now check out "Alchimiste" and a well-recorded live YouTube video from 2005 with a dude called Barbak le Demoniak.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Eugene Mirman: Who is Sarah Palin?

She'll show those moose who's boss, that's for sure!

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Fare 'n' balunst

This is wonderful. If you hadn't heard, anyone who dares to criticize Sarah Palin is a sexist! Just ask such noted feminists and beacons for equal rights as Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove.

Obama is going on The O'Reilly Factor tonight, and while it will surely be an unproductive affair that only legitimizes the blowhard as some sort of actual journalist, you can bet I'll tune in, probably at the gym where I can make my rage at the teevee into something productive.
In related news, the night of her speech was the first time I realized that her name is pronounced "pale in," which renders the puns "Palindromes" and "Just Palin Around" technically incorrect, but no less funny. Quick, someone start one called "Palin Comparison"!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Mediocrity's greatest hits


There are actually a couple decent individual songs on this Ultimate Alt Rawk Comp, but can you imagine paying money for it? Why not just set your time machine for 2003 and listen to any buttrock radio station in the country?
Making it through the commercial was hard enough; I can only imagine the discs themselves are on heavy rotation at Guantanamo.