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Archive for July, 2010

Village Voice, Sound of the City: “So Just How Homophobic Is Rap In 2010?”

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Things I couldn’t find a place for in this article….Z-Ro’s “no discrimination” verse from “T.H.U.G” that mentions “lesbians and gay men.” The last verse of Pimp C’s “Shattered Dreams” where he tells gay people, “do your thing, because can’t no man tell you what’s wrong or right.” Also that Lil Wayne, like Tupac before him, dresses in a kind of “drag-king” style clearly swiped from the working-class lesbians of his city (incidentally, Tupac’s from Baltimore, the home of out Club vocalist Miss Tony). The write-up’s stronger for not having those tangents, but they’re worth mentioning I think. Not to play a “name your favorite anti-homophobia reference in rap” game but to totally play, “name your favorite anti-homophobia reference in rap,” what are yours? I’ve long had the idea to do a “gay week” on this blog that really break down the many direct and sideways contributions the gay community’s provided for hip-hop. May still do it one day. Yeah, the article’s below as usual:

The familiar conceit of this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine article “Sissy Bounce: New Orleans’s Gender-Bending Rap,” goes something like this: There are some gay rappers in New Orleans. Rap’s usually really homophobic. That’s crazy, huh? Contrasting the apparently enlightened attitude of New Orleans bounce with mainstream hip-hop’s homophobia in order to wrap a chin-scratching, Times-friendly thesis around a rowdy, obscene style of Southern dance music is probably good for the genre’s visibility. And the assertion that rap is gay-unfriendly is so well proven by now that the piece’s writer, Jonathan Dee, doesn’t even deign to provide any examples to support it. Fair enough: hip-hop’s track record, when it comes to addressing homosexuality, is abysmal. But do we really know for a fact that rap remains completely unenlightened, circa 2010?

In the eighties, hip-hop was venomous toward gays: think Big Daddy Kane’s “anti-faggot” law from “Pimpin Ain’t Easy”, or Public Enemy’s “The parts don’t fit/Aww, shit” aside from “Meet The G That Killed Me.” In the nineties, rap’s signature was the hard-ass “faggot”-filled vitriol of groups like Wu-Tang and the Lox. Along with today’s lunkheaded leftovers from those two decades, there are still songs like “MC Hammer” off Rick Ross’ Teflon Don, wherein the Boss tells listeners “credit card scams [are] for the faggots.”

Written by Brandon

July 29th, 2010 at 2:50 pm

Posted in Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Village Voice

Independent Weekly: “To Not Be Afraid”

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Picture swiped from Phonte’s Twitter. Genuine blog content coming soon, I assure you. For now though, check out this week’s Independent Weekly because I’ve got a big cover story on Yahzarah’s The Ballad Of Purple St. James, featuring Phonte, and Nicolay from The Foreign Exchange as well. Really, these guys are making some of my favorite music right now and I can’t say it enough. Click below to read it:

The soul singer Yahzarah lounges comfortably near the window of the Beyú Caffé in downtown Durham, her poise protected from the sweltering mid-July afternoon outside. Her head is shaved, and she dons bright red heels and a short, tasteful animal print dress. In person, she presents the same singular mix of traditionalism and outré cool that defines her new LP, the excitable and often devastating Ballad of Purple St. James.

The Ballad of Purple St. James is a weird record. Not Lady Gaga Fame Monster weird or even Janelle Monae The Archandroid weird, but weird because it’s a sprawling, rarefied expression of a uniquely talented artist with a willingness to speak and sing—wonderfully—on very personal and intimate things. It’s the sort of willfully individual R&B record you don’t hear anymore.

Yahzarah smiles when she remembers handing Phonte Coleman—the Little Brother emcee who had been her frequent collaborator and friend for more than a decade—a draft of what would become her third album, The Ballad of Purple St. James. At that point, she’d been working on it for nearly three years. “He told me, ‘Nicolay and I can make you a better record,’” she recalls, surprisingly bemused. Coleman was referring to Nicolay Rook, the other half of his forward-thinking, grown-up soul group The Foreign Exchange. A record produced by these Grammy-nominated critical darlings might have afforded Yahzarah instant legitimacy and attention.

Written by Brandon

July 28th, 2010 at 10:32 pm

Posted in Independent Weekly, Little Brother, soul

Independent Weekly: “Rick Ross’ Sluggish Crawl Toward Maturity”

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Like everybody else on the internet, I pontificated about Rick Ross and how he’s sorta awesome right now but also really, really retarded? I was able to sneak in some mini-history lessons on “Freeway” Ricky Ross and the whole C.I.A/crack conspiracy too, which was cool. This was interesting because I wrote my piece last week, along with all the other people writing their thinkpieces and it’s fun to see where pieces intersect and where they go off in some weird, other direction. Click below to read it:

“Looking at him [in 1979], one would not have imagined the slender, slightly pop-eyed teenager to be a successor to anything but a hard row to hoe. A sometime thief, sometime student, he was clinging to a tattered dream of becoming a professional tennis player.”

So wrote Gary Webb in his 1999 book, Dark Alliance, offering a description of “Freeway” Ricky Ross, the LA crack kingpin and CIA/ contra/ crack conspiracy fall guy—and the dude from whom William Leonard Roberts II, better known as the rapper Rick Ross, swiped his name. Neither slender nor pop-eyed, Ross is bearded and bloated and raps in an abyssal growl, mostly about how he’s a superhero cocaine dealer. His debut single, “Hustlin’,” from 2006’s Port of Miami, housed absurd boasts like “I know Pablo, Noriega—the real Noriega” over a booming loop of organ, synth, and wordless, spaghetti western vocals.

The Miami rapper appeared at the height of the last decade’s wave of weirdly clever, gleefully nihilistic crack rap—Clipse, Dipset, Young Jeezy—and reduced it to absurdity. Some rappers dismantled their boasts with an ugly aside or tinge of regret, but Ross had no time for novelistic detail or insight. It was all epic, coke-rap fibs. One day, a picture of the rapper in a correctional officer’s uniform appeared on the Internet. Though Ross initially claimed the photo was doctored, he eventually confessed: He’d been a C.O. for about 18 months, from December 1995 to mid-1997. Strangely, the street cred-destroying revelation didn’t signficantly affect the success of 2008’s follow-up, Trilla. No one took him seriously in the first place…

I’d also like to focus on a few other pieces on Ross for a moment. Joey of Straight Bangin’s excellent piece, “The Best Bawse That We’ve Heard This Far”, which begrudgingly accepts the rapper from a distance, Zach Baron’s “Who Does Rick Ross Think He Is?” which applies logic and reason to Ross’ delusional persona (killer line: “Because make no mistake: Ross’s targets aren’t random.”), and Jon Caramanica’s bizarrely naive review of Teflon Don, in which the Times writer somehow buys into every nod to “consciousness” and seriousness that Rawwss throws out there.

Written by Brandon

July 22nd, 2010 at 2:48 am

Posted in Independent Weekly, Rick Ross

Splice Today: Your Guide to Blaqstarr’s Contributions to /\/\/\Y/\

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Until recently, Blaqstarr’s been pretty quiet–save for “Choke Hold” and “Temperature’s Rising”, two dusted kinda-Club tracks that only popped up on YouTube (one has since been removed) and the only interesting thing on Talib Kweli’s tight-pants rap attempt, Idle Warship. Then this Spring, now signed to M.I.A’s NEET label (also home to Baltimore’s Rye Rye), Blaqstarr released “Oh My Darling”, a strange, brooding dance song with Club music informing it rather than acting as its be-all and end-all.

And for those worried he’d gone relatively “pop”, they should be reminded that there wasn’t even necessarily a father to his Club sound—along with Say Wut, he completely shifted the style of Baltimore Club—but still, he also dropped a brilliant “raw version” of “Oh My Darling” that sends Frank Ski’s “Doo Doo Brown” through distorted guitar and grabs liberally from Scottie B’s classic “Niggaz Fightin” before it becomes a fog of echoing vocals and shuffling drums. It was par for the course for Blaqstarr, taking a weird R & B record and turning it into a stuttering Club epic—the only difference was, the weird R & B record was his too.

And he produced the best songs on the new M.I.A record. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest Blaq’s influence on /\/\/\Y/\ goes beyond the songs he had a clear hand in. The whole record sounds like Blaqstarr’s weird insular dance music–I think it’s why some people say the record’s “half-baked” or whatever.

Perhaps, the only genuinely lasting byproduct of the early to mid-2000s out-of-town embrace of Baltimore Club music is Blaqstarr’s slow-growing success outside his city. Though it’s not the leap from local hero to the next Timbaland so many Club producers seem to seek—it’s not even DJ Class’ temporarily raised profile with last year’s “I’m the Shit”–Blaqstarr is the best example of Baltimore Club producer leaving the city and doing something. I took a look at his contributions to the new M.I.A over at Splice Today:

On M.I.A’s last album Kala, Baltimore’s Blaqstarr produced “The Turn” and allowed producer Switch to turn Club classic “Hands Up Thumbs Down” into “World Town”. Now, Blaqstarr’s behind the two best tracks on /\/\/\Y/\ (“XXXO” and “It Iz What It Iz”) as well as every bonus track on the “deluxe edition.” While the 1000th think piece on M.I.A’s latest shows up in your RSS feed, I thought I’d narrow the focus a bit and look at the contributions of a Baltimore Club game-changer.

Written by Brandon

July 15th, 2010 at 8:52 pm

Posted in Baltimore Club, Blaq Starr, M.I.A, Splice Today

The End Of Rap Blogs or Rap Blogging Ain’t Dead It Just Moved to Tumblr

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This isn’t the big statement the title might’ve lead you to think it would be. It’s really just a moderately clever way to hide the fact that this post is just sending you over to another site to read a review I wrote: This time, it’s for Jim O’Rourke’s All Kinds Of People ~ love Burt Bacharach which is maybe my favorite album released this year. See? Not even rap-related. Sorry.

But yeah, something’s going on with all this rap blog nonsense we all love and occasionally hate and it’s neither good or bad, it just is. Namely, discussion isn’t all that important, not that it ever was, but even less so now, and well, you’re seeing less writing because of it. Not gonna name names or speculate, but I think this is the same feeling that many rap bloggers have as of late.

At this point it’s like, do I want to work on a bloggy thinkpiece after a long-ass day of work only to see little to no interest in it, or do I want to just like hang out and play Super Mario Bros. Wii or do I want to write something that’s pretty damned close to what I’d say on my blog, for someone who’ll pay me? The second two options look a lot more appealing these days. And right now, the Baltimore-based Splice Today allows me to basically say whatever the hell I want for 500 words, twice a week, which is cool, and a good way/reason for me to touch on new releases and stuff I usually avoid because everyone else is talking about.

I’ve always linked my off-blog writing here because to me, it’s all part of the same thing, and as of late, it’s probably a bit obnoxious because it’s all you’re seeing, but I hope to use these reviews as discussion points on this blog, and then, get back into a real schedule with actual content here right along with it. So yeah, my review of Jim O’Rourke’s All Kinds Of People ~ love Burt Bacharach:

Jim O’Rourke’s All Kinds Of People Love Burt Bacharach is pretty much impossible to get a proper handle on, but that’s fine by me. It’s a collection of Bacharach hits and obscurities, performed by O’Rourke and friends—like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Wilco’s Glen Kotche—and crooned, more often than not, in broken English, by his Japanese noisenik buddies. Musically, it floats around in some weird, nerd headspace that’s part junk playing in a small town Chinese/Sushi buffet, and part timeless, baroque pop. It’s absolutely brilliant.

“Close To You” is the opener here and O’Rourke’s version features The Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono on vocals and switches the lyrics to make it a big, teasing, ego-trip: “On the day that I was born, the angels got together, and decided to create a dream come true.” Musically though, it’s less revisionist—as he does on most of the album, O’Rourke pays polite homage to these unimpeachable Bacharach classics, while gently placing his own from-20-different-angles musical perspective into the mix.

Written by Brandon

July 14th, 2010 at 2:53 am

Posted in Uncategorized

Splice Today: Wavves’ King of the Beach

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Reviewed the “new” Wavves album and well, I’m still parsing this one out. It’s not a masterpiece or a big seachange for the band and it isn’t a sign of maturation or sophistication. But it’s not a poor album or a sell-out record either. It’s just as decent Wavves album that’s super fun to listen to, but full of the same tricks as his other releases–and indeed, if you want relatively clean-sounding poppy Wavves, go find those TNDRNSS demos–and way less interesting. Additionally, I was trying to reject this absurd notion suggested by Pitchfork and that New York Observer piece that this is Nathan Williams’ statement record–that he is “king of the beach”, king of the sun-baked garage rockers and chillwavers–because yo, that’s super low-stakes and well, he made a record as poppy and light as Beach Fossils or whoever. Lastly, comparing Williams to a rapper and gasp, close-reading his lyrics was something I did back when the only hype about the guy was, “Why is there hype about this guy?!”. Check out my indecisive review below.

This is a review of the new Wavves album, but it’s also review of Wavves the person/dude/persona too, because, how couldn’t it be? Wavves mastermind Nathan Williams spent the time between last year’s noisy, sad-sack, surf punk opus Wavvves, and King of the Beach, his new, relatively clean-sounding, self-loathing, pop punk opus, overloading his music with context…

Written by Brandon

July 8th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

Posted in Splice Today, Wavves

Splice Today: Mullyman’s Harder Than Baltimore

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So yeah, more off-site content…but I was really happy to get to rant about the new Mullyman album somewhere other than this blog anyways, because Harder Than Baltimore really deserves some praise. It might be my rap album of the year–at least the best thing since Starlito’s Renaissance Gangster–and I think I touched on Mully’s weirder qualities, which are pretty much always overlooked.

Also, Harder Than Baltimore really functions as a kind of meta-commentary on the major label rap album–something I don’t mention in the review because I’m tired of rap reviews that just straw-man the industry/scene to big-up one rapper–as it’s basically all over the place, but never compromised. The dance songs are Baltimore Club-informed (and produced by DJ Booman no less), so they aren’t cheap dance tracks, they’re talking to a dance genre that’s as hard as hip-hop.

Both the title track and the last track, “Deal Or No Deal”, do that thing where you steal a really famous rapper’s voice for your hook, but here, they’re almost commentaries on those rappers. If Jay-Z can brag he “go[es] harder than Baltimore” on a song, well Mullyman’s from the city, you know? If Drake, a former child actor with apparent industry connections is going to fucking brag “Everybody got a deal, I did it without one”, well Mully can actually say that–he started Major League Unlimited right when majors were courting him. The song’s a quiet affront to big-shot self-loathing, self-mythologizers like Aubrey. Mostly though, this is just a really brave, fun, and impeccably put-together album.

Mullyman is a hard-assed, occasionally sensitive rhyme obsessive, who shines on street tracks but possesses the rarefied talent to make pop and dance raps that are just as sharp. Like Baltimore’s version of T.I., he’s versatile but consistent, and keeps his content relatively simple—mostly bragging and stories of growing up in Baltimore—while exhibiting a wider and weirder frame of reference than is really necessary…

Written by Brandon

July 6th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

Posted in Baltimore, Baltimore Club, DJ Booman, Mullyman