No Trivia

The Weeknd, you done it again! I think that Thursday remains my personal favorite but this is right up there with House Of Balloons in terms of it being weird but fairly accessible too. And man, the Clams Casino beat on here is crazy. Between “The Fall,” that Big K.R.I.T. remix, and yes, Mac Miller’s “My Team” (and that “Wizard” track we all slept-on), Clams is proving himself to be pretty diverse. Don’t love this one as much as this guy though.

Neither as relentlessly hooky as March’s House of Balloons nor as noisy and hatefuck-filled as August’s Thursday, the third 2011 mixtape from Internet-driven phenom Abel Tesfaye nonetheless continues his mastery of the druggy/lovey/loathing Weeknd thing. So isn’t it about time we just declare this guy a straight R&B act? He’s on Drake’s Take Care; devotees of Trey Songz are listening to him, too. The hipster accusations just don’t hold. And this is his most straightforward take on radio R&B yet.

Echoes of Silence begins with a goofy, gutsy remake of Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana,” mysteriously titled “D.D” so as to not spoil that first-listen, “Oh-no-he-didn’t-just-cover-MJ” moment. Replacing the original’s heavy-metal signifying with mournful Requiem for a Dream strings is both inspired and predictable. And by singing the song straight, Tesfaye doesn’t hedge his bets. Instead, he and producer Illangelo boldly stick themselves into a tradition of icky, cruel R&B, taking on Michael Jackson’s most misogynistic song — underlying message: I hate the sort of woman who’d want to sleep with me — and, in the process, basically summing up the entire Weeknd project…

50 Best Songs Of 2011
50 songs. A little more than 3 and a half hours. One big Mp3. Sorry. I could’ve made this into a Spotify playlist or something–though way too many of my favorites weren’t on there–but that’s no fun. I’m not so hot on ranking these songs either, so they’ve been organized into what I’d like to think is a pretty enjoyable mix. I’m going to reveal the tracklist throughout the month, five songs at a time, with some musings on why I think each song is awesome. Gimmicks! But really, I think this should be fun. Enjoy. Feel free to tell me what I missed or just what you liked this year in the comments section. Remember comments sections?! Those used to be pretty fun, right?

• G-Mane, “Think” off All Nite Smoke Session: Florence, Alabama’s version of Bun B (the morally serious, deep voiced version that would never co-sign Drake) and friend to G-Side (he steals “Pictures” with his lack of propriety) tosses out dozens-like disses while he drops knowledge: “You got a new whip man, that’s tight, go and pick up your son”.
• Ponytail, “Honey Touches” off Do Whatever You Want All The Time: Fuck dude, do you realize just how intensely sad this song is? Maybe not, because it’s the normal sugar-rush, prog-noise racket and Molly Siegel (now going by Willy) is singing about disappointment like she’s chuckling into the void. “I know it’s not that fun.”
• G-Side ft. S.L.A.S.H., “Came Up” off The One…Cohesive: Those somber strings do it and the Southern gothic video helps too, but as usual, it’s G-Side’s sincerity, coupled with their understanding that somewhere in there the thing’s gotta knock, that sells this one. This is their single. The one that could/should be on the radio, you know?
• SBTRKT ft. Sampha, “Something Goes Right” off SBTRKT: SBTRKT is a self-assured producer and Sampha’s one of those “he could sing the phonebook…” types. And so, rather than twist his soulful dubstep into a canny pop structure, Sampha just locates a pocket to croon in and out of and call it a day. Joker, hope you’re taking notes.
• Todd Terje, “Snooze 4 Love (Original Mix)” off Ragysh: Internet king of the extended dance edit builds a bleary Balearic banger out of blips, bleeps, and bloops and subtle shifts in volume. Apparently, there is a Drive sequel coming out soon? If it also gets turned into a movie, please include this on the OST. Plan an ornate robbery to this.
• Munchi, “Hope” off Blow Your Head Vol. 2: Dave Nada Presents Moombahton: Not really from this year, but it was on that Mad Decent comp. Plus, this thing’s just gorgeous and aching. If you heard it last year, try DJ Ayres’ Wayne Wonder blend. Problem is, if you heard this song last year, you heard that remix too. Moombahton will eat itself!
• Skinny Friedman, “Who Da Neighbors Remix” off Trap Rave: More Moombahton. Sorry! Get over yourself. This remix of Juicy J’s retarded, great, catchy mixtape hit shuffles along, sprawls out, gets drilled into your head, breaks down, builds back up, squeaks, and squonks for an epic 7 minutes and 9 seconds.
• J. Rocc, “Party” off Some Cold Rock Stuf: Who knew J. Rocc had this Armand Van Helden-y jam in him? Taking the Bollywood soundtrack obsession of the Stones Throw crew and turning it into something big loud and fun–instead of kitschy, played-out and obvious. And nerds need their own party rocker’s anthem.
• Blaqstarr, “Coming Home” off Blaqstarr: The Mixtape: This mixtape track from the Baltimore Club weirdo puts that Last Train To Paris slow jam into a blender, turning Diddy’s pensive soul-searching song into a rambling monologue. This feels like it was knocked out in 5 minutes, which is exactly why it sounds so good.
• Rashad & Gant-Man, “Heaven Sent” off Bang & Works Vol. 2: Again, from an Other Music-friendly compilation and possibly not from this year. But man, the Atari twinkling, up-up-up energy, and all-over-the-place drums let this one rise above its utilitarian dance-your-ass-off origins. Also on that all-around excellent Ghetto Teknitianz EP.
• AraabMuzik, “Underground Stream” off Electronic Dream: If the cast of Jersey Shore came back as zombies and they had knives in their hands when they fist-pumped and they were stabbing you in the ears. This is a barely touched refix of DJ Nosferatu. Samples of samples of samples is the future of weird dance and I feel fine about that.
• Lil Internet, “DMXICO”: Been reading Ioan Grillo’s El Narco, but this song rattles around in my head, making it hard to concentrate. Maybe that’s good, though? Pondering the devastating effects of the American “war on drugs” is pretty maddening. Then again, so is this song. Swiped from Julianne Escobedo Shepherd’s EVR show Universópolis.
• Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris, “We Found Love” off Talk That Talk: The one was made to listen while rolling on a chintzy e-pill made in a dirty bathtub somewhere. There’s a like, hopeless intensity to the thing, but there’s something genuinely cathartic about this song too. “We found love in a hopeless place.” I mean shit man, that’s what it’s all about right?
• Uncle Jesse, “Samson”: Dance punk drums, “Percolator”-like drip synths bouncing all around, and a ghostly horn sample that runs between both of your ears, adding some headphone fuckery to a party track that totally doesn’t need such a thing, but is all the better for it.
• Ultra Naté, “Turn It Up”: Legendary disco house diva out-Gagas Gaga on this Rihanna-for-the-over-30-crowd club single. Disco strings, that thump every song’s got these days, and a polite touch of auto-tune makes this a commercial track with no commercial viability because it’s just a little too well-done?
• Patrick Stump, “Spotlight (Oh Nostalgia)” off Truant Wave EP: Goofily charming slow build fist-pump pop that is nevertheless, the antithesis of Katy Perry’s “Firework.” Same cloying message but done just a whole bunch better. Gotta love that overreaching post-emo “depression is a little bit like happy hour” lyrical conceit.
• Tabi Bonney, “Now’s The Time” off Postcard From Abroad: “We made it”/”we gon’ make it” speak-it-and-it-shall-be-so aspirational raps from this quasi-#BASED DC MC over a beat from Devo Springsteen, who co-produced “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” and according to Wikipedia, did MTV and Sunkist ads–which makes a lot of sense.
• Soulja Boy, “Zan With That Lean” off Juice: Souljer swagger-jacks YC’s “Racks” into a much better song, so who’s complaining exactly? JUICE! Potentially heart-stopping combinations of drugs have never sounded so fun. JUICE! Makes me wanna do that Curly from The Three Stooges, lay on the ground and spin around dance. JUICE!
• Nicki Minaj, “Super Bass” off Pink Friday: And with this, “Old Nicki” ought to be buried for good. An unholy fusion of pop and rappity-rap that’s a sly love song to her quiet confidante SB. Makes her verse on Drake’s “Make Me Proud” sound like she’s trying too hard and new single “Roman In Moscow” feel limp and forced. She’s “shtick”-less here.
• Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx, “I’ll Take Care Of You” off We’re New Here: So, the best song on Take Care isn’t even a Drake song. And those OVO fools cut off the best part: That Eddy Grant’s “Time Warp” on downers dance coda that ends this intensely aching song (and in a way, Scott-Heron’s career) on a damn near positive note.
• Clams Casino, “Numb” off Instrumentals: G-Side rolled this one up into their widescreen sound for “Pictures” and ASAP Rocky boringly rapped over top of it on “Demons,” but it’s better without any of that. Those live-sounding drums rattle all around better and the melody–LOOK, I’VE RUN OUT OF ADJECTIVES FOR THIS GUY.
• Nguzunguzu, “Timesup” off Timesup EP: Mysterioso percussion stackers even find a place for a sample of Baltimore club producer DJ Pierre (how has The Fader not grabbed onto him yet?) in here. And when they throw a baby coo-ing into the mix, they’ve almost earned the right to pay homage to Timbaland’s “Are You That Somebody” beat.
• Burial + Four Tet + Thom Yorke, “Ego” off Ego/Mirror: Rarely ever do these dream collaborations work and even when they do, they barely ever sound um, good? But this is pretty much exactly what it should sound like if these three get in a room together: Yorke’s lost moans plus Four Tet’s patient house plus the hauntological scrape of Burial.
• Oneohtrix Point Never, “Replica” off Replica: Pairing Guaraldi-like piano with hypnagogic drones and moans is pretty inspired and that Organisation/Kraftwerk “Tone Float” soaring flute thingy proves the texture-filled, jazz-fusion stuff Lopatin’s always repping has comfortably wormed its way into his work.
• Main Attrakionz, “Chuch” off 808s & Dark Grapes 2: Sad-rapping over Gigi Masin’s “Clouds” at 45RPMs unveils the whole brotherly, anti-street code that’s central to Main, once the cloudy vibes subside. Seeing them play this for like 25 people at 3AM (one of those people being How To Dress Well) at 285 Kent during CMJ was something special.
• The Field, “Then It’s White” off Looping State Of Mind: Axel Wilner has a few tricks up his sleeve, but who knew that being on some like modern classical shit was one of them? Kinda wish this song went on for 20 more minutes. Not a Clams Casino instrumental. But it could what @ClammyClams makes in 10 years if he can keep it up.
• Big K.R.I.T., “The Vent” off Return Of 4Eva: K.R.I.T. finally came into his own this year by losing his feigned Pimp C snarl and just playing “painfully sincere.” Here, he imagines talking to Kurt Cobain, gets emo (in the self-pitying, well-intentioned misogynist sense), and says the right thing to a mom confronted with the unthinkable.
• DJ Khaled ft. Drake, Rick Ross, & Lil Wayne, “I’m On One” off We The Best Forever: You got Drake, who at least makes his cynicism interesting here, and Wayne, who sounds too weeded-out to care. Rick Ross obliviously rumbles along, whooping and rapping about banging girls on money stacks. Three different definitions of being “on one.”
• Curren$y, “She Don’t Want A Man” off Weekend At Burnie’s: An emotionally intelligent understanding that a woman’s needs don’t have to be so different from a man’s needs. Cloud rap meets Slick Rick storytelling meets film noir. Spitta’s best song, if only because it’s so well-wrought and something’s actually at-stake.
• Jay-Z & Kanye West, “New Day” off Watch The Throne: Over melted Nina Simone, the Throne get real, imagining their lives with a little runt running around. Notice how dread-laden it is, with Jay not ruling out the possibility of divorce or worse, and Kanye pretty much telling Ye’ Jr. everything’s fucked. Future Anthology Of Rap pt. 2, look out.
• Stalley ft. Rashad, “Slapp” off Lincoln Way Nights: People groaned over his mixtape’s smug subtitle (“intelligent trunk music”) but Stalley’s low-stakes, mythmaking rhymes and producer and hook man Rashad queasy chillwave trunk-rattler totally earn that obnoxious, apt parenthetical. The sneaky, “The New Style” Beasties sample is a bonus.
• Real Estate, “It’s Real” off Days: Single of the year. Maybe video of the year too. Top five at least. Sad and happy and simple. Confident, catchy, chilled-out pop that wasn’t afraid to get existential. We all wander kinda aimlessly, emotions are hard to express, and leaves decompose. At least the guitars jangle just right.
• Cities Aviv, “Coastin” off Coastin’: An enormous sunbaked Shirley Bassey sample, some nods to LL Cool J and Nas, and rapping that’s in-the-pocket and traditionalist but twisted enough to sound invigorating and of this New Weird Underground. It’s like Cities is drunkenly rapping all this right into your ear. Available as a 7-inch!
• KING, “The Story” off The Story EP: Big-upped by Phonte and ?uestlove, sampled by Kendrick Lamar (“Hey”), KING should’ve been over-hyped instead of slept-on. This highlight from their three-song EP pretty much does the same Los Angeles, haze & B as Ariel Pink or Nite Jewel, but with some actual soul thrown in there.
• Ken Seeno, “Spirit Of 77″ off Open Window: What happens when you combine Terry Riley’s “Rainbow In Curved Air” with Giorgio Moroder’s “Swamps Of Sadness” from The Never Ending Story soundtrack? THIS! Cassette-only, dollar store komische. R.I.P. Ponytail. Long live Ponytail…in weird side-project form, at least.
• Nite Jewel, “It Goes Through Your Head” off It Goes Through Your Head: Last of the chillwave bangers. No really, things got super diffuse real quick, huh? This one’s got a guitar solo (a crunchy Mike & the Mechanics one at that), a catchy melody, and Gonzalez sings like Joan Baez on “Rejoice In The Sun.”
• Pictureplane, “Post Physical” off Thee Physical: A steampunk stitching together of noise, minimal techno, and hard house yearning that feels truly trangressive and queer-friendly, which hey, are key components of cool, hip dance music missing from a lot of it right now. Lady Gaga should cover this!
• Danny Brown, “Scrap Or Die” off XXX: When I spoke to Danny, he explained how the second half of the album was intended to be these like folky, storytelling tales about people he knew. This one is about his uncle. So, the second half of XXX is pretty much the rap version of Lee Hazelwood’s Trouble Is A Lonesome Town?
• Matic, “Hustle Hard Remix”: Baltimore club producer climbs inside of the cockpit of Luger’s rickety, stomping Voltron robot beat-making machine and mans the controls. It’s not like you can make a Luger beat rowdier or even weirder really, you just gotta match the destructive creativity and twist it up enough. Matic does that.
• Prurient, “Time’s Arrow” off Time’s Arrow: Remember when Dominick Fernow grew bored with noise and turned 2011 into the year he tried to approximate the theme song to The Terminator? Even love the entry-level alt-goth topic of this song: the Black Dahlia. You can buy this on cassette, and you should.
• Lil Wayne ft. Drake, “She Will” off Tha Carter IV: Sorry about this one guys, it’s just too good. The hook is gross, Drake sounds icky, and Lil Wayne’s on auto-pilot and Danny Brown’s squirmy sex rap “I Will” shames this, but the whirring, grinding beat from T-Minus and the fact that it sounds great and weird on the radio is enough.
• Cam’ron & Vado, “American Greed” off Gunz N’ Butta: Secret is, these hardheads made one of the more political rap albums of the year. That album title, and this song’s hook (“American greed turn you into the worst type, you get more dirty when your collar and shirt white”) sorta says it all. Less Maybach Music and more Madoff Music please.
• DJ Drama ft. Gucci Mane, “Me & My Money” off Third Power: A baroque Drumma Boy beat that Wikipedia tells you Mike Dean co-produced, which isn’t true. The casual ornate-ness of it would make you believe he was, though. A Jaws theme rumble and desperate strings soundtracking Gucci’s co-dependent ode to his money? Very Kanye + Dean.
• Starlito & Don Trip, “Life” off Step Brothers: Lil Lody! More of these, less Lex Luger rip-offs. Starlito and Don Trip, just keep doing exactly this. Thrillingly sad street rap with enough swagger and an overdose of honesty. Love Lito but he wisely just gets out of the way at a certain point on this one and lets Don Trip go off.
• Fiend, “Ghost Town” off Cool Is In Session: Listen man, this is a song in which Fiend (who along with German techno producer Robag Wruhme secretly had the best year of anybody and didn’t get enough love) inexplicably raps over a second wave Ska classic really, really well. What more do you want?
• Miguel, “Sure Thing” off All I Want Is You: Every bit as blissed-out as the Weeknd, which means Miguel’s on some other shit and the Weeknd could and probably should be on the radio. Almost makes up for the existence of “Quickie.” Technically from last year, which I’m just now realizing…
• Chris Brown ft. Benny Benassi, “Beautiful People” off F.A.M.E.: Wasn’t gonna include this, but it’s just too good to ignore, even if it is from a shit bag, man-baby, women-beating idiot. For what it’s worth, “We Found Love,” Rihanna’s Euro-dance response musically chokes this Breezy song out and gives it a black eye.
• Holy Ghost!, “Jam For Jerry” off Holy Ghost!: I’ve written a lot about this song this year. But here’s the best way to say it. My best friend Mike shot himself about 5 years ago and though that’s a different tragedy than falling down an elevator shaft, no songs nails grief and guilt better than this one. And you can dance to it!
• Future Islands, “Balance” off On The Water: Reminding the hopeless that things will get better, worldly-wise vocalist Sam Herring intones, “it just takes time,” like he’s a close friend giving you advice over several beers. Could also be called “We Found Love.” Also kinda knocks in the same bittersweet way. Also also has a really misty-eyed video.
• Phonte, “The Good Fight” off Charity Starts At Home: Tigallo plays your hard-assed dad, smacking some sense into you while empathizing with your situation, but mostly just being all, “yo, deal with it like everybody else.” The first verse lay-off story’s a fucking tearjerker. Little Brother’s “Speed” retrofitted for the recession.

image stolen from Keenan Marshall Keller

• Baltimore City Paper: I did some blurbs for film (Drive and Midnight In Paris), music (Jay-Z & Kanye, Frank Ocean, Beyonce), and local music (DJ Pierre, DDm, E Major).
• Pitchfork: I’m sure you already read the thing, but I did some writing for the Pitchfork year-end extravaganza. Holy Ghost!’s “Jam For Jerry” in the “The Top 100 Tracks,” Gil-Scott Heron & Jamie xx’s We’re New Here for “Albums Of The Year: Honorable Mention,” and Danny Brown’s XXX for “The Top 50 Albums.”
• SPIN: I helped with the “40 Best Rap Albums of 2011” list and wrote the blurbs for J. Rocc, J. Cole, Kristmas, Clams Casino, and Mouse On Tha Track. I think it’s a pretty unimpeachable list. And there’s also SPIN’s “50 Best Albums Of 2011″. I wrote about SBTRKT and Bon Iver, two really great albums that I didn’t get the chance to comment on much this year.
  

The Best Rap Songs of the Second Half of the Year.

To follow-up this SPIN post from July, here are my favorite rap songs from the second half of 2011. I’m about to give you a bunch of write-ups for my “50 Best Songs Of 2011,” so not gonna give you pithy song descriptions for these, just a mix, which you can download above.

And yeah, there’s some crossover between this list and my 50 songs of 2011 one, and in some cases, I’ve picked different songs from artists represented on that list, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to you all I’m sure, but in my head, what makes a great song and a great rap song isn’t necessarily the same thing.

• Phonte, “The Good Fight”
• G-Side, “Rabbits”
• Nacho Picasso, “Marvel”
• Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, “Thuggin”
• The Roots ft. Phonte & Dice Raw, “One Time”
• Young Jeezy, “Shake Life”
• G-Mane, “Think”
• Fiend “Ghost Town”
• Drake, “Look What You’ve Done”
• DDm, “Last On Ur Dial”
• Cities Aviv & Royal T, “Araw”
• Lil Wayne, “Nightmares Of The Bottom”
• Starlito & Don Trip, “Life”
• XV, “Wichita”
• Main Attrakionz & Shady Blaze, “Change”
• Jay-Z & Kanye West, “Who Gon’ Stop Me”
• B L A C K I E, “Warchild”
• Danny Brown, “Lie4″