blatant ineptitude

THE JJ ABRAMS-ICATION OF MUSIC ON THE WEB

2011-03-21T15:29:00.010-05:00

This is about story telling and the future of music marketing. It’s about using the codes of deep mystery to stand out in the most crowded music environment possible: the Internet. But most importantly it’s about being a fan, and re-kindling that feeling of being part of the underground that could have disappeared long ago but will live on thanks to the mechanisms and tools of platforms like Tumblr.

There is a swath of the youngest members of Gen Y that love Tumblr. They’re extremely creative and have trouble seeing the difference between traditional disciplines like graphic design, photography, film, or music, in their own prolific creations or in that of others. Their love of the reblog and the like button is powering a new wave of artists with the same DIY, cross-discipline and cross-genre ethos.

The Internet is the world’s most crowded record store; it’s impossible to stand out. We’re on computers so profusely that it isn’t a big leap of the imagination to combine any two existing genres, and in fact this is almost cost of entry nowadays. Even a dubstep RnB singer may not stand out much longer. To reach these kids, you need to be a constant source of your own multi-platform narrative. There is no better forum for this than tumblr. Producing content is key, and the ability to tie a narrative together over video, music, and visuals will help your story get passed around by eager future art students.

But being merely proficient at CS3 and Final Cut Pro and taking influences from multiple sources will not get your free MP3 album on every blog in the universe. It takes a special sauce: mystery. A cryptic mythos. Secrets. Layers.

It started to become clear to me that this would be a key tool in the future of music marketing storytelling when MIA began seeding animated GIFs to promote her album and then went so far as to wrap her whole follow-up in Wikileaks-inspired symbology. Then came James Blake, who was an extremely obscure source of outsider-y electronic explorations until he came out of his shell and decided he wanted to be a pop star. Odd Future, of course, is the biggest and most successful example of leveraging a Tumblr shtick into a phenomenon. They simply will not tell anyone where Earl Sweatshirt, their best rapper, is, and the longer they wait the more irresistible the question becomes.

Enter the crypto-RnB group The Weeknd. No one knows who they are. All we know is they make pointedly stylish content across all the hippest digital channels and have an impeccably curated presence. Oh, and they make music so perfect for the Tumblr moment I almost think it was designed in a lab. Or in the office of a very savvy new media marketing agency.

But really it was just on some kid’s MacBook.

The Weeknd is a Master’s course in building an engaging presence for the cool kids. They created their own language, like Odd Future, both visual and verbal. The use of “XO” appears everywhere, but kinda means nothing. It’s just a symbol. A symbol for The Weeknd that can be used across platforms, across posts, across media. Next is the visual signs that whisper, "You’re seeing something created by The Weeknd": always black and white, women with faces obscured and a lot of balloons. These clues signal the band and its seeping out of Tumblr and into other platforms across the Web.

This is the language the band’s story is told in, and it’s crucial that every piece of the narrative unfold using this language or it will exist outside the universe they are creating for themselves, one with great mystery and therefore great appeal to jump in. Forget about the fact that the music is grounded in RnB but brilliantly blends elements of electronic music, ambient, dubstep, hip hop and indie rock. A lot of genius music goes unnoticed (and I may be leaning toward that descriptor for these guys soon). It's almost too good, like if pop mastermind The-Dream were a devious little hipster with the CD collection of the most discerning bespectacled music critic. The power here is in the grip these kids have on the complex, labyrinthine inner workings of the vast networks of the music scene online.

Kids like The Weeknd are creating multi-layered stories that make you want to jump in and stake your claim to (reblog, repost, like, love, download). One of the best parts of being in on the ground floor of the Odd Future story was that race to make your digital mark as soon as possible so you can brag to your friends later on that you were into them before they got big. This is why the impulse of “being underground”, the original bug that lead to the every music subculture since jazz, will not die on the Internet. Kids who get it better than you will always tear down everything that’s come before and create the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. Until the next Tumblr comes around.

antisocial rap and waka flocka flame

2010-09-08T16:19:00.003-05:00

Before he said 'fuck dis industry' Waka forced the antisocial rap movement to its noisiest conclusion. Even looking past the continuous references to being by himself, having no need for close friends, the consistent theme of eliminating opponents of all types for all reasons and the extreme misanthropy, this song is made for bad people doing (or thinking about) bad things; the production by Tay Beatz is like having your ears stuck in an American-made car radio from the 90s with the first 5 seconds of a Korn cd skipping infinitely. There's almost nothing you can do in a social situation with this music playing besides fuck each other up.

"This rap's booming like this shit a trap."

That's the mission statement: Waka treats his music like (I'd imagine) he'd guard his stash house. Music to push you away, keep you out, keep you on edge, make you want to be alone. Come by yourself, get what you need, and leave...but come back often. There's no room to buck the guardrails in his music; he literally leaves no room for misunderstanding, perfectly mirroring his grim world view. It's such an incredibly solitary and purposefully alienating song that it's a miracle he can find other people like Tay Beatz who can manage to be on the same wavelength. I kinda want to imagine Waka eventually morphing into some sound experiment, bedroom artist like Burzum or something.

me X Odd Future

2010-08-30T14:57:00.013-05:00

OFWGKTA met blatant ineptitude a.k.a. @gardnerz last week in front of Supreme on Fairfax in Los Fucking Angeles.

Tyler, Julian and Taco were all mad cool. Fucking Awesome.

I took some pics and some video.

Click on them because they came out pretty good but blogger sucks and I don't feel like tinkering around with any html right now.

25 70s prog rock and fusion album covers that kanye ripped off for power

2010-07-01T09:10:00.021-05:00

[UPDATE] Yes, Cymande is not prog, but I tried to think of them as fusion in the msot conventional sense of the term. Neither is Badfinger, but I figured maybe in 1970 (January 9, 1970, to be exact, also stretching the parameters) any ambitious British album rock might have been called "progressive". Besides, the original reason I stretched this to include fusion was so I could put in this band, whose most obvious choice for this list I then passed on for some reason:
[UPDATE cont.] That brings me to one i clearly missed, since I was looking for floating blue skies, hand-drawn geomotric shapes, and the floating/flying setting, I missed the more obvious instances of kings, warriors, swords, power, fantasy, etc, that crop up in scenes from Return to Forever (who I kinda worshiped in high school) to Gentle Giant. Thank you to notrivia for pointing it out:
Back to the original list.

edit: + 1 Salsa album, via Harry Roman

the problem with art in the relatability age, part 1: the identifying rapper

2010-06-23T16:21:00.007-05:00

There is an interesting argument among intellectuals and critics about whether games can be art. Roger Ebert argued that they cannot. A bunch of gamers got mad and said, of course they can. But, which ever side you fall on, there is an undeniable validity to Ebert's argument: art may never have been meant to be an experience to be identified with on behalf of the viewer. Maybe it was supposed to be a passive moment of spectatorship, the moment of feeling someone else's joy or pain and allowing our minds to play over that moment. Video games on the other hand are only appreciated when the user identifies the experience as some secondary life of their own. I bring this up because this question of "relatibility" permeates all of our art today, as the editors of the n+1 journal argued in their latest issue; if the main character isn't relatable, the narrative won't sell in 2010.

I will not post his music here, but this brings me to Mike Posner. My friend Zack gave this concise definition of the concept of Mike Posner in an email to me:

As you know, rap/rnb music is going in two very divergent directions, street v college. Gutter v. pop. He is an inheritor of the college/pop direction -very mainstream - lead by BOB, lupe, drake, J. Cole, and Asher. But he is a singer, not a rapper. He graduated from Duke. Hes a little pussy who makes little pussy pop rnb music. Girls flock to his shows. His big song "Cooler than Me" which came out over a year ago, is just now seeing serious chart action. Other college rap-pop artists who are in the same vein are Chiddy Bang, Hoodie Allen, some white pussy from boston who's name i forget, and this other pussy named Jared Evan. There will be many more artists like this.

But most importantly, Posner adds a huge injection of perfectly pitched zeitgeist into nearly every lyric, frame, costume and tweet. His first relative hit "Cooler Than Me" is an angsty, insecure and falsely-humble love song and an innocent party anthem wrapped into one.

So what does this sound like in 2010, when the pop landscape has already cannibalized itself to the point of blurring R'n'B, dance, hip-hop, country and rock into a big mush? Well, it pretty much sounds like a whiny, breathy, White Akon, with as much post-production pitch correction and bass are needed to get college kids to throw their hands in the air. Posner's only been singing for a couple years, and you can tell he grew up in the AutoTune era. He has the vocal mannerisms of Akon and the same middle-of-the-road pop sensibilities that turned Akon into a superstar from a felon. This is basically Facebook status updates dressed up in all the tropes of 21st Century Frankenstein pop music: hip-hop's arrogance, formulaic Euro-dance production, the club-appropriate setting of Timbaland and Timberlake monster anthems, and a level of self-awareness and the belief that any feeling is worth sharing that only a millennial could possess. The success of Posner as an artist and his popularity prove that this moment will truly raise the bar for self-absorption; not only do we listen to the most mundane and impotent of emotional expressions as art, but we now yearn for our own half-baked feelings to be reflected in the music and culture we experience. We have reached a moment in musical appreciation where we must relate on the most naked levels for anything to really be a hit.

M.I.A. and music's newest marketing frontier: the guerilla Web itself

2010-05-18T12:02:00.018-05:00

There is an ever-growing cohort of faceless, nameless, constantly-irreverant and ultra-referential users of the Web that is the source of all the weirdest, coolest most quickly spreading shit on the Internet. This isn't a group about mashing anything up. This isn't a group about memes. We are way beyond that. This is the young, front edge of the Internet where everything in history is chopped and spit back out in an unrecognizable jumble of pixels and symbols that have formed a new logic for the most adventurous and most acute consumers of our new popular culture. The Web itself is not only canvas but source material for a movement of content creation that has reached so far past postmodernism that no one even has the time or mental bandwith to parse through the signs and symbols they're regurgitating into a new and beautiful trash heap. We can only continue to scroll, "like" something or re-post it ourselves to place it in our own collage of jarbled references and pretty pictures. The new brush strokes are screen shots, the new pen and pad is a digital camera, and the gallery is a network of other likeminded brain splatter. Messages and ideas spread like wildfire because the network is enthusiastic beyond all comprehension. This community (it's really an art movement) has many codes, its own complex language, and a very distinct personality that defies a single-style approach by incorparting all the styles its individual members have ever been exposed to. M.I.A., the artist, may be one of these people or she may not be, but either way, she is grasping at a space that has not been exploited yet by any brand on its own terms, only by force in the hands of the members themselves.

Most are aware of MIA's new video for "Born Free" where red headed people geet rounded up, executed and exploded. Big thing on the internet. The accompanying marketing campaign by Interscope to promote her album, which is called /\/\/\Y/\ (it's supposed to spell her name, Maya), also garnered some press when a blimp flew over Coachella announcing the album's release date.

But, more importantly and much more interestingly, MIA has taken the culture of the Internet's most creative, subversive and zealous hipsters to market herself and wrap her whole brand. In her typically cocky and abrasive way, MIA is using the hipster Web community's language, codes, trends and irreverent hacker-y clubhouse vibe to spread some weird and interesting stuff to promote herself. First was her Pitchfork Twitter takeover day, during which she manned their account and basically went nuts and freaked a lot of people out; then she put up billboards in London of chopped up collages of screenshots from youtube's very familiar video player control bar; and, I think, she's the first artist to use animated GIFs as a promotional tool. And like the most navel-gazing and camera-happy laptop warriors out there, she even took a picture of her laptop screen frozen on Google's search bar with her name and "pitchfork" typed in to show the suggested results, demonstrating the popularity of her Pitchfork/twitter experiment, and then Twitpic'ed it.

What seems like a quirky personality is really a co-opting of one of the Web's most vibrant communities, one that just so happens to be the target audience for any indie band or artist, in this case one whose genre-raping and erratic attitude perfectly mirrors that of the Tumblr/Flickr/GPOYW crowd.

M.I.A. isn't merely reflecting a set of habits that may be popular among a certain crowd: she's using them to spread her brand. Like I said earlier, she is merely grasping. She may not even realize, though I believe she is much too savvy to stumble upon something by mistake, but she is not only using the language of these ultra-hip Tumblr-ites to associate herself with a young, vibrant culture but also to thread her brand through a community of the very people who spread ALL the best messages on the Internet far and wide. And by the time you see it on buzzfeed or whatever site your co-worker links you to, they've already forgotten 15 other cool things. nM.I.A. clearly isn't having a problem keeping up.

tea party for fucked ups

2010-03-25T14:48:00.006-05:00

It's hard to make an anthemic punk record about the shared anxiety and frustration of this moment. Young urban 20-somethings (h-words) in 2010 have no Springsteen, yet we have exponentially more stimuli to be pissed off about than any generation before us. How do you properly sum up the dread and confusion of being a disconnected young person in the most connected moment in history? What do you do if you feel alienated, even with ALL of the ways we have made ourselves the most socially connected humans ever? How do you feel disaffected when you're more embraced by the powers that be than ever before? Also, what the fuck is going on?!?

Much has been made recently of this record's raucous chants, Civil War themes, Springsteen references and sea shanty-inspired singalongs. And there have been bands that have done it very recently, as well (Fucked Up could have done it better but didn't). But this record, which is a quasi-concept album about a 20-something transplant in Boston from New Jersey, is a snapshot of a very real, very authentic angst that, unlike that of Springsteen or punk, has a completely amorphous adversary. "The enemy is everywhere," is one of the most visceral hooks. The opposition forces are so vast, so bewildering, that it's just too hard to wrap it up elegantly. There's just too much information, too many flashing lights, too many people to compare yourself to (on facebook, on reality TV), too many disparate and constantly changing cultural movements to keep up with, that sometimes the only way to break through it is to just strum the shit out of your guitar and scream something very old and very familiar at the top of your lungs. This feels like the underside of all the whimsical, detached reconnection to American cultural roots that we see in everything from fashion to tumblr-blogs that glorify anything khaki or wooden; it feels like a real working American man's despair in 2010, filled with nostalgia for stuff he doesn't know and smothered by more stimuli and "art" and relationships than any man should have to filter in one lifetime.

Also, another testament to the healing power of alcohol.

Titus Andronicus, "Four Score And Seven" by gardnerz

people are freaky then you die

2010-03-15T13:08:00.008-05:00

[UPDATE]THIS POST HAS BEEN FIXED.

Dead Luke is a kid from Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to college. He makes music by himself and has it released on cassettes by the Night People label. This tape sounds like it's the only thing left after a doomsday scenario and some of the magnetism is fried but still enough is left untorched for Dead Luke to inspire a mystic cult of followers. I really wish I had known this kid.

01 People Are Freaky Then You Die by blatanti

From, in my opinion, one of the two or three best music blogs, this band has an awful, pretentious, unpronounceable name that actually kinda suggests their sound quite well; it's amorphous, muffled, and sounds like it is packed with gauze. Like the part in a movie when someone gets hit in the head really hard and everything slows down, it both throbs and drones. This particular song recalls both the super slowed down "chopped and screwed" drug music of Houston's DJ Screw and the gentle psychedelic bludgeoning of Spacemen 3.

oOoOO, "No Shore" by blatanti

From a blog I've been checking out with equal frustration and curiosity, this is funny name, weird music. One long phrase on a short walk that picks up harmonious friends and strangers along the way, some dropping out before they come back in with more steam and stamina. It's like staring into a tunnel made of reverb. He's in a band called Emeralds and releases a lot of music on his own. This is just him with a guitar making ambient drone music that sounds very pretty.

Mark McGuire, "Postcard" by blatanti

"Jonas describes his technique as 'a spirited conversation between man, machines, and the ecstatic truth of the chaotic unknown." I'm so feeling the California electric-analog beard hippie vibe. This is some dude from California who makes Krautrock and cosmic music (like Cluster and Tangerine Dream)-inspired analog synth music. Berlin meets the Pacific Coast Highway.

Jonas Reinhardt, "How To Adjust People" by blatanti

dance on em killa!

2010-01-16T18:27:00.001-06:00

Why the Web should adopt the subscription model (or how you started worrying and stopped loving unoriginal shit like Dr. Strangelove references)

2009-09-23T23:06:00.015-05:00

If I had to pay a quarter for every twitter account I followed, every facebook "friend" whose bullshit showed up on my feed, and every rss I subscribed to, how would my mind be different?

If I were interviewed in Monocle (get at me Tyler), the inevitable question "What is your media diet like?" would most likely cause me and the interviewer to gag as I conjured a living, caloric metaphor of the slop that I shove down my brain throat. The answer would bring to mind the daily feeding habits of the most gluttonous, high fructose-stuffed obese red stater crossed with a food critic forced to judge every cooking reality show on cable: both trash and high-brow, but, most importantly, entirely excessive. Why is this?

It's because people share way too much, way too boring, way too often. This thing right here is a gift the likes of which intelligent human beings have never been given in history. The birth of many-to-many was a revolution in communication on par with the printing press and the TV blah blah blah, everyone knows this. But the problem is that the lowered barriers have placed this immense tool in everyone's hands, especially the least discerning among us. Some people kind of ruin it.

Yes, it is partly my fault for paying attention and "subscribing". But as a curious, focused, determined consumer of media I can't unplug from the overwired digital lobotomy junkyard lest I miss that sweet piece someone tosses out. If I were to even attempt to get rid of every abuser of internet from my screen I would be left with barely anything to read and this would take the fun out of it. The fun part is that we're all shootin the shit here, crackin jokes, sharing mind-blowing stories and even creating innovative, consciousness-expanding ART. As a price for this, should I be forced to click thousands of little buttons to turn off all the boring thoughts I've been coaxed into receiving? I didn't realize when I clicked your button six months ago or two years ago that I'd be subject to inane mind spittle. Fuck that, you should have to convince me FIRST that what you have to say deserves mine and everyone else's attention!! I would subscribe to that.

Convergence is a detriment in one huge way; articles from the New York Times can show up on feeds (on your phone, on your social network, on twitter, on your RSS) next to the dumbest, most pointless information in an infinite continuum of inexplicable digital stuff. This model is broken. It is the saturated fat and second hand smoke and greenhouse gases of our intellectual world that has yet to be regulated. And it is running rampant!!!

Stop starting blogs that suck. Stop sending out spam PR with utterly pointless content (video interviews or really 90% of anything video). Stop starting tumblrs for kooky memes three minutes after they are spawned. Stop sharing your lunch. Stop refreshing your drug of choice page and start exploring those other tabs on your browser to bring something dope to the conversation. Because really, we're all trying to have a conversation here and you keep interrupting!!

Treat every tweet like it's a haiku, because it is. Your facebook status updates are more important than your haircut, the crew you ran with in high school and your favorite band t shirt combined because 10 times more people will see it than any of that shit. So why do you treat it like it's the margin of your diary and you're scribbling text doodles? I'm not even going to go into detail and post screenshots, links or anything like that because, honestly, I have no idea where to start.

If you bring the goods you get my internet high five from now on. We all live on this internet so treat it with respect! I like it here and don't think I can survive cold turkey after being plugged into the electric information tsunami for so long. We've realized that the Web was visually designed like shit so we redesigned most of it. It's time to realize that the Web is being used wrong; stuffing it all down one pipe has caused a big fucking clog. Let's separate the pipes. A pipe for bullshit and another for useful, inspiring, CREATIVE information sharing. Let's try it!!!!!

I'm gonna do my part. Everything I add will have slap in it and I will give out slaps to that which does not. This is a SLAP-ONLY guarantee. From now on, when someone asks me what my media diet is, what I'm riding to, you will know my answer.

big mothership glidin

2009-08-25T09:29:00.010-05:00

I haven't written anything in a while for a few reasons. I've been pretty busy, but also I've been completely bored with the one thing that used to make me want to write here. Not only is the turnaround for new songs, mixtapes and albums so fast that one forgets by Friday what was good on Monday, but the quality is pretty questionable. This is why every time Jay-Z's team of professional PR-minded leakers sends an email the world goes nuts. There's nothing to be excited about. It's like 24-hour news; we probably shouldn't have a countdown leading up to a "beer summit" on CNN like we probably shouldn't see 10,000 blog posts on the "leak" of the BACK COVER of a new album. That being said, this new culture can work sometimes. Years ago you probably never could hear regional stuff without youtube, mixtape sites, and, yes, blogs. We will never figure out how to collectively use the internet to create a tasteful, discerning current of media and art so just stick your head out and try to grab what you can as it flies in your face.

i love you no matter what you think of me

2009-07-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

work

2009-06-15T19:57:00.005-05:00

I posted about Alc's first single from his upcoming album Chemical Warfare earlier and I am going to emphasize again here how excited I am for it. "That'll Work" brings Juicy J and DJ Paul together with Juve (still one of the hardest rappers in the South) over what's become Alchemist's signature horror flick future crunk. I am absolutely loving DJ Paul's newfound artistic renaissance and return to the dark, druggy tone of Three 6's 90s heyday. The more drugs, dead bodies, and shotguns in my rap the better. These guys sound like they almost wish they didn't have their millions right now so they could throw on a ski mask, hop in a dangerously fast American muscle car and blow some people away. It's like my favorite movie that's never been made come to life in song.

Is there some sort of trend toward the macabre in rap lately?

HOPEFULLY

neck kinda freezin boy believe me

2009-05-06T11:52:00.006-05:00

Boosie is finally coming back to prominence. After Trill Ent. had a brief run as the rap crew du jour back in 2007, Boosie dropped his excellent Da Beginning mixtape, which I wrote about back then. Webbie followed up his hit "Independent" with his totally underrated and dope second album Savage Life 2 and it looked like Trill Ent. was coming into its own and may start putting out hit club tracks and great rap albums on a regular basis. But its most charismatic member, who stole the show on both of their biggest hits and is often wrongly assumed as being the artist and not the feature (these being Foxx's "Wipe Me Down" and "Independent"), let some serious buzz go by without releasing his album. In the meantime, Lil Wayne became a superstar and Gucci Mane became the South's unanimous underground and mixtape champion. It can't be too late for someone as great as Boosie, though. His music is consistently interesting, heartfelt, soulful, musical, and always getting better. He's the most sympathetic rapper even when he's unflinchingly chauvinistic or materialistic or violent.

Today the ostensible first single from his next album, apparently called Superbad, was released to the internet and features Webbie and Young Jeezy. It's a fantastic tribute to making it as a rap star, both a chance for ceaseless bragging and also reflection on the incredible odds against from three dudes who constantly rap their asses off on anything you put them on. Go grab that The Return of Mr. Wipe Me Down mixtape form earlier this year.

my weekend and a monday

2009-04-27T12:03:00.011-05:00

Ah, the depths I've plumbed, the heights I've scaled and I can't feel the difference! I'll decide on a path, one to the bar and the word processor the other back to the moving sidewalk of humiliation. I'll probably just stare at my laptop instead of either.

Today I chased down Pinky from TVCarnage in the middle of the street, he was on his bike and a throng of uniformed kids on a class field trip was passing between us. I said, "Hey man, I'm Matt, sorry to do this but I'm having the worst day of my life, just got turned down from two jobs this morning, I can't catch a break, What should I do with my life?"

He rocked back and forth on his bmx, in the middle of the intersection of Graham Ave and Grand Street in 85 degree sun, sighed. "Send me an email, I'll see what I can do."

Then I went into a bar around the corner from my apartment to get a $1 pitcher of beer and started talking to a couple kids. One of them started talking about Southern California and how great it is, I asked him what he's doing in town and he said he's on tour. I asked what band he's in, turns out he is Wavves. The other kid is also in a band. Had a pretty boring conversation with them, though they were nice guys. Then their friend Matt came by and joined the table, ordered a pitcher, and I asked him the name of his band. He said Blank Dogs. He asked me what I do. I said I live in the apartment behind the backyard of this bar and tried to pretend like I'm a writer. They asked me what I'm writing.

KB goblinz

2009-04-10T15:19:00.007-05:00

Home of The Infamous Kooter Brown, dunnny

Rated 5 out of 5 P's

walking, a pale toxic shell

2009-04-05T14:58:00.006-05:00

The above is a poster for a Melvins show.

I've been listening to The Idiot album by Iggy Pop almost non-stop over the past week (sometimes Lust For Life if I'm in a good mood) and UGK, whose last album ever came out this week. It's put me in a very odd, contemplative mood and I've prepared a lot of notes for a future journal I intend to write inspired by listening to the album on a never-ending loop and wandering aimlessly around the West Village. I'm convinced that it is the greatest album in recorded history but that's not something I have any business writing about. I'm thinking about starting a band based around a couple friends of ours that look like rock stars. I haven't played guitar seriously since high school and every time I pick one up it sounds like a jam band, a problem that I would need to resolve if this were to ever actually happen.

how to be a boss - a message board review of Jim Jones' new album Pray IV Reign by yours truly

2009-03-21T17:30:00.004-05:00

im goin in

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Intro" ft. Starr

So the intro sets the tone of the album pretty much right away, if not sonically then thematically. This album is about Jim Jones and the fact (read: made up bs) that he is a Gangster and a Hustler with both a capital G and H and especially one of the Harlem-specific variety. The name Nicky Barnes comes up within a matter of seconds into this song. Like I said, the beat is gorgeous, 70s soul guitar, wailing horns, live percussion (prob sampled). The cool thing about this song is that throughout the whole thing there's always a bunch of other voices going on beside Jimmy, there's a guy with a dope falsetto singing about being a hustler and a chick kind of just moaning throughout. Also dude's constantly having a conversation with his own raps in the background. No idea who the fuck Starr is but he might be this dude who Jimmy kind of like has a convo with on this song in between verses about rappers being fake and not hustling as hard as Jim Jones etc etc etc. Bu really the big thing here is the No I.D. beat, honestly nothing on American Gangster sounded as good as this. Jimmy raps about fiends, Lexuses, mentions the Roc, really no story just floss.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Pulling Me back" ft. Chink Santana

Sirens. Clinking, Dramatic piano. Uh Oh here comes a serious one. Then Chink comes in with a weak hook about coming so far, having a nice house and big cars (LOLLLL) but how some other people are always trying to take it away from him. This dude sucks by the way. The beat is big and clunky, huge bass drum in a kind of "We Will Rock You" pattern with hand claps and little clinky piano notes. I think Jimmy is trying to tell a story about his life (he says in he watched his Mom cook base) but it's barely coherent because literally 25 secs later he claims he can make the coke spin on its back like Krush Groove and talks about being in a dealership. It's pretty much "a gangster finally made it" if there is in fact a point to this song. Not one of the better ones on the album. Too much drama and not enough meat to it.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

two dope beats are enough for me to dl this at least

― 14 karat gold steen computer wizard (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Let It Out"

Ok this one's kinda dope. Everything builds up in a way that suggests someone actually Produced this album (not just sprayed adlibs over a CDR). Interesting beat that starts with an acoustic guitar and then adds some almost military drums all while Jimmy actually says some interesting shit even though I'm pretty sure the first thing he says is "See, they actin like us comin up so dormented" which is not a even word. But he goes on to say that to the media we look like savages and that it started with sneakers, then went much deeper and that money is an infection and as he's talking it slowly turns into a verse as the beat congeals into a pretty nice groove with a cool synth line, the type of synth that might be on a Yes record from the 80s. Then some chicks come in with a Chorus and dudes in the background going EyyyyyyAyyy! So this song was about money and kinda of a soulful confessional but the second verse is less comprehensible. The streets can call Jimmy back into The Life and he's all wrapped up in it yadda yadda yadda. Basically an almost wasted chance to get a little gospelly o here as he's known to do frequently if anyone's ever listened to his other albums. At the end he shouts out two guys named Hot Dog and Wacko and gives harlem a nice big pat on the back. I think this guy likes to talk WAYYYYY more than he likes to rap.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"How To Be A Boss" ft. NOE and Ludacris

Aright here we go this song is kind of a monster. Ron Browz behind the boards, big fucking thumbs up to him for this one, sounds like something LOX or DMX might have torn to pieces in 2000. I love the beat, it's got a sort of nervous sound that gets broken up every 8 measures (this could be wrong fuck it) by some really Major string that come in and just swoop the whole thing up into a big smile. The drums are like big as fuck like "Money Cash Hoes" which kind of gets alluded right off the bat - "Murder, Cash, Cars, Hoes, Fast life as usual is all that we know" is the first sounds you hear with pounding drums beneath em. The drums are crazy, besides the huge bass under everything there are some real subtle fills and the sounds are very live and not Trackmasters cheap and thin. So Jimmy's first and kind of brings some heat. The good thing about this song is that the subject matter actually doesn't detract cuz this is that song where you talk about money and bitches and your chain. His adlibs are unbelievable ("Where's my lawyer!?"). I like a bunch of the lines he dropped on this track but you'll all listen to it cuz Luda is on it so not gona repeat. NOE. What is there to say about NOE besides the fact that HE SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE JAY-Z AND JIM JONES ARE YOU FUCING DEAF OR RETARDED. But his hook is kinda really fresh on this track I love it. Like for real, his hook is dope right here. Then Luda raps and he's Luda and I love him. NOE gets a third verse and doesn't ruin this song despite the fact that he says is girl had to pee pee. Might be the best song on the album.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Medicine" ft. NOE and Chink Santana

Ughhhh. Every album Jim has new goonies that he puts on 45% of the songs, last time it was Max B and now it's CHink Sanatana I guess, I honestly don't even know who the fuck dude is. He produced this song and it's woozy and spacey and a little unnerving, kind of a throwback to like Timbo/Missy style stuttering drums but not in a good way. This song is about pussy and there's a big metaphor going on in which pussy is medicine. Chink raps in a really annoying accent and draws out all his lines and he's fucking annoying. This song is kinda bad but it's intersting soncially, like if it comes on and you're not paying attention and it's on low volume it will sound cool as long as you don't hear the Jim Jones hook that's really fucking vulgar and brings up images of that man doing sexual things which is disgusting. I think NOE is actually kind of a good rapper but no one will ever know because he sounds exactly like Jay-Z did I mention that.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 4:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thanking you.

― there's a big metaphor going on in which pussy is medicine (a hoy hoy), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Frenemies"

OK this is a big important song on this album and I don't really think it merits a word for word analysis because it's pretty fucking clear what's going on here and if you're interested in this little corner of rap (let's call it XXL-hop) then you will listen to it. It is a song about Cam'ron. Period the end. It's also kind of lame.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Precious" ft. Ryan Leslie

I've been repping for this song on here for months perhaps and I really think it's a great song. it sounds out of place here though, right after "Frenemies" is such a stupid place for this song. I guess Ryan Leslie produced it, he cooked something really dope for this, the verses are sticky and dark and head-bobbing and, like, rap music for rap fans, and then the hook comes in and everything changes to this lilting grand piano swoon and romantic vibe. I think Ryan Leslie might be the first person to ever really figure out how to make a great Jim Jones song, literally giving him his verses and takin the chorus for himself and turning both into two different sonic landscapes. Ryan gets a little mini verse that takes the static-y synths out of the verse part but leaves the fantastic guitar muted electric guitar and shakers that have been there al along but you never noticed, and he just totally evaporates this track in a few seconds. This guy is a talented motherfucker I will listen to more of him. Jim actually has a pretty engaging thing going on for this song, flow is better than usual, adlibs are A+, cute little anecdotes about chicks texting and he says "smh lol with a smiley face" which makes the whole album worth it. he does say "every Obama needs a Michelle" though. this is just two dudes talkin about broads, i'm in.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Blow The Bank" ft. Oshy and Starr

"Talkin about that Splash Life" is the thematic tone here. Here's Oshy! Yayyyyy who the fuck are you welcome to the album dude. This song has that Miami sound that Jimmy kind of thrives in (see "Summer With Miami" which remains his greatest contribution to recorded music). It's basically about spending money on women, a big topic for '09. The drums are weirdly pounding which kinda doesn't mesh well with the summery synths and major chords and splashy singing that's going on by two people named Oshy and Starr one is female and one is male and I don't now which is which.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"This is For My Bitches" ft. Oshy

I guess Oshy is the dude in which case I should make an editorial note that in my "Intro" post I wrongly identified Starr as the dude that Jimmy was conversing with when in fact she is the chick singing in the background. Whatever who gives a shit. This song is literally the same exact thing as "Blow The Bank" and could there ever be a more hilarious "song for the ladies" track title. More synths but this time they're kinda vamping and Oshy is crooning all over the place about how sexy women are those sexy things and then calls them bitches and tells them to put their hands up high. Jimmy lives quite a life like Las vegas and cars and certain designer stores he could buy you some shit from them if you hop in his car, I imagine, I'm not really even listening to what he's saying right now.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Girlfriend" ft. Juelz Santana and Oshy

Whoa, first thing I think of here is old Dipset sound with these sinister strings-preset synth stabs. Jimmy sees thick girls in the room that he's in and then another Jimmy responds to that with "Ray Charles can see that" and this is before the song even starts. Literally we got multiple Jimmys talking to each other and ordering models from a waitress. Ok beat starts and the Dipset vibe is out with a stuttering sparse percussive production with just a hint of a synth accent during the verses. This is a club track apparently, couldn't really tell until Jimmy's first verse is over and Oshy (what's up dude!) comes in with some yodelling (not kidding) and Jimmy has a little shake yer booty hook. Man Juelz sounds like he took 3 xanax bars on every verse he's dropped since "Nothin On Me". QUite literally a forgettable verse from my boy here, I have nothing to say about it. This song is not going to be getting your local discotheque into a frenzy any time soon.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:24 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"This is the Life" ft. Starr

Most people dream of it, this is what we lvie for, they want to take it from us, etc etc. Rick Ross called and said you kinda suck at this and also it's almost Lights Out time. Starr is so useless she sounds those female voices that don't usually get credited with a feature but obviously Jimmy has big plans for this one or something. Steel drum-ish synth notes in a kinda dreamy gentle pattern and boring strings behind them. this song is fuckin wack.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:29 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"My My My" ft. Rowanna

What. The. Fuck. Didn't I just listen to this. Who the fuck is Rowanna. This beat is making my head hurt and Jimmy has literally said the same exact thing for a while now and is this a joke this girl sounds exactly like the last one. "I hope there's a Harlem in heaven." <-------- this song in a nutshell. Crying, you smell me?

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:32 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Pop Off" ft. NOE and Mel Matrix

Ok glad we're done with that little excursion into romance (four songs) and remorse (two songs) cuz this what we come to Jim Jones albums for, fuckin rap about killing people and robbing people and shit like that. The beat is unremarkable but this is kind of good because believe it or not some people like myself wanna hear what Mel Matrix can do (Byrdgang). This is the type of track that makes you realize what Stack Bundles meant to Jimmy and his plan for Byrdgang cuz dude would have bodied this and it would be fun (if you've never heard Stack Bundles go dl a mixtape he was a good rapper). Anyway, Mel Matrix is competent in a NYC gun talk context, good addition here and his chorus is sufficiently violent and angry and he def. killed this track. This is goon music in the original Byrdgang sense not in your stupid Plies-ironic way. Byrdgang doesn't really come off like a rap force to reckoned with from this track though. They aren't. Jim Jones is better at talking shit than rapping which is a fact that was made famously and unquestionable tryue for all ages in Cam'ron's classic "Hate Me Now" Nas diss track and he talks some shit here too.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:41 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Pop Champagne" ft. Ron Browz and Juelz Santana

What is there to say about this that hasn't been said. A masterpiece of minimal autotune club music that was pilfered by Jim Jones in a most blatant way. I still can't believe that people let this go down but alas "Pop Champagne" will go down in the history books as a Jim Jones song. If he hadn't jacked it we wouldn't have been blessed with the bizarelly laconic yet engaging and weirdly awesome Juelz mini-verse. The whole club knows those first few words of his verse and when the beat drops out then comes back in with him shit gets picked up another level every time. Juelz definitely found his flow for this one and even though he says absolutely nothing (it actually sounds like it was produced by a Juelz machine with the "Club Song" switch turned on") he just sounds so right on this. It's mostly his voice but I think he's one of those rappers who, even though he's never had a huge hit or even a crossover, is sort of club signifier. Like when people hear Juelz voice on a good club song they dig it. I can't explain it, there are other rappers like this but I think it might stem from "Run It," anyway he sounds totally in the pocket on this song. If you don't love this song you probably play World of Warcraft.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:50 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Rain" ft. Rell, NOE and Starr

Ugh we're back to this remorseful gangsterizing. I guess there's some genuine emotional stuff in this song but really, who gives a shit. We get it. That's jsut me, I don't know, if you need your spiritual moments provided by Byrdgang you are totally failing. Rell has been on every fucking Jim Jones and post-DI 2 Dipset release and no one knows who the fuck he is. Ron Browz is a GREAT producer, this track is gorgeous, huge and full and almost Tricky Stewart style snaps and "eyys" and really tasteful synths that sound like they might actually be from a synthesizer and not from a Casio in someone's bedroom. Unfortunately it's like totally shitted all over by Jimmy's molasses-thick melodrama. It's worth hearing fro Ron Browz' production, though.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 5:56 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Na Na NaNa Na Na" ft. Bree-Beauty

LOL. this whole thing is just so hilarious. First of all, the hook is an un-ironic schoolyard taunt thing about haters and money and whatever. Second, Bree-Beauty. hahahhhh. wtf is up with this guy Jim Jones and his ridiculous stable of talent. Also she was paid and received credit for singing the words, "Na nana na na lookin at my ass wish you had a camera." Wow. Third, it's produced by and entity known as "ILLFONICS." I remember when I first heard this song I was in a cab and me two other kids we're really wasted and it was probably 11 pm and we had made the driver put on Hot 97 a few mins before that and the dj (Mr. C?? idk) was like NEW JIM JONES and we just fucking lost it. First, the song bumps pretty hard and is kinda dope in that perfect on the way to the club way, not for the stupid hook but just cuz it's big and pumped up and booming. So one of us reached over and turned dude's radio all the way up and this was before the hook even happened. then we heard the hook and it got really silly in that cab. This song is the ostensible follow-up to "Ballin" except it does not do what it is intended to, mostly ecause of the totally misguided hail mary of a hook. It should be a very big lightning rod for Jim Jones hate, rightfully so.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 6:08 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Swagga From Us" ft. NOE, Twista and Lil Wayne

old blog leftovers, bonus track. i honestly don't understand anything about this song. It's a diss to Jay-Z but Lil Wayne is on both songs? Twista is a good rapper and he's on it so that's a plus. And we learn that Chink Santana can actually make a pretty good beat.

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 6:12 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

not as good as Hustler's POME, doesn't really show that much growth as an artist although there are some good choices on it, really boring in the middle and definitely not fulfilling Dame Dash's dreams

― preview& potmXII& chinchillas& surfboar (surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally), Saturday, March 21, 2009 6:17 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

the darth vader prescription taker

2009-03-19T12:58:00.014-05:00

CATCH UP

the fruits of my labor as a one-night PA on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

2009-03-04T21:48:00.002-06:00

that's me in the freeze frame on NBC's embeddable video player!

the most obviously fraudulent real rap star of all time

2009-02-24T12:21:00.009-06:00

Remember rappers? Like, Rap Stars? They were cool because they rapped real well and released albums that were filled with these really good rap songs. Now they stage lame beefs or experiment with corny effects/act mad fruity or act just corny in general or are Lil Wayne.

Rick Ross is the most curious case of rap stardom in the 00's by far. He is not a great rapper (though this certainly hasn't stopped a number of dudes from crossing over) and his subject matter has pretty much never wavered from the ridiculously hyperbolic persona of a drug kingpin, a stance that got a little prickly when it was revealed that the guy who goes by "Rick Ross" (a name borrowed from a real Miami drug kingpin) was actually at one point a corrections officer. So it seems the cards were stacked against him. What does he do? Release only dope albums and kind of pretend like he has no idea what everyone's talking about (ignorance was bliss until he bit for Curtis' beef, a slight mistake in an otherwise flawless stretch). Rick Ross albums are lush, thumping, bass-rattling hymns to drug dealing, living lavishly in a way that should be well beyond any normal person's wildest dreams, women, and cars. Consistent and listenable, while maybe not mind-blowing or technically great, Ross has proven himself to be an album rapper, something that would have been unfathomable in 2005 when he broke out with "Hustlin." But dude is poised to come out with his third good album of the decade, the same number as Jay-Z in the 00's.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that this guy doesn't really know Noriega (the real Noriega) and doesn't roll around with 10 black Maybachs back to back in a lane. A lot of rappers make really questionable claims, but perhaps no other rapper in recent memory has been so wholly doubtful than Rick Ross. So how did he do it? He raps and makes jams. Period. Take a lesson Curtis.

The first track to come out off of Ross' upcoming Deeper Than Rap was shocking to many internet Ross haters, mostly because it was so raw that they couldn't deny it. Ross is a disciple of the organ and drum-fill synth-pillow sound, a school of beatmaking that gives his hoarse baritone a suitably luxurious atmosphere in which to wax leisurely. The dude plays the melodramatic kingpin as well as Vince Curatola (OHhhh!). Slow and heavy is his M.O. and making choices like this, to not fall for the typical traps that concerned studio gangster rappers usually do (again save for the 50 beef), is why he can't be dismissed as just a laughable caricature.

Two more off Deeper Than Rap, "Cigar Music" and "Shittin On Em" ft. Birdman and Busta, are equally dope. In a world where rap beefs are carried out on Youtube it's nice to just ignore the bullshit and let a rapper do what he does best, even if it is wildly questionable. Now let's step away from the RSS feed and open up some champagne and possibly dive off a bridge into the ocean.

(DUDE JUMPED OFF A FUCKING BRIDGE IN HIS VIDEO. BOSS!)

posterboy

2009-01-31T19:42:00.002-06:00

This is very sad news to me. Posterboy has made some of the most subversive and impressive subway platform fuckery I've ever seen. Dude's technique is so skilled and patient it's incredible. I've tried this type of thing, but it's usually when I'm durnk waiting for the L scratching at an ad with my keys, doesn't come out quite as well. Apparently he got arrested. They still care about shit like this?

Some of my favorite posterboy moments:

surfboard dudes get confused, totally

2009-01-19T16:24:00.006-06:00

Juelz Santana, "Let's Cruise"

When a new Juelz Santana track popped up in my google reader among the never-ending deluge of inanity and utter banal garbage that is the rap-blog internet I clicked and listened (rare for me). I, as some people may know, love Juelz. I don't have to explain this, just know it. Anyway, I had no idea what to expect. The last year for Juelz has been incredibly slow. All we've really had to work with was a Skull Gang Takeover mixtape, which was actually pretty good but short on the man himself and stayed pretty close to the standard post-Dipset Harlem rap sound, ie: dudes crooning slightly off tune (somehow Max B became the most influential dude in the neighborhood) and oddly toned-down, sample based beats. It also had autotune, an unhealthy usage of the term "swag" (often followed by the word "SPLASH!") and Skull Gang (they kinda suck). Not a good combo. From there we had the Bad Santa thing, which basically can be described with the exact same words above but replace "Skull" with "Byrd." Neither are huge fails but they're not exactly something I will be returning to any time in the near future. Then there were the two very high profile guest verses. One of them is a throwaway run-of-the-mill club verse that should never have even made it out of the studio and the other is one of the best verses on the highest selling album of 2008.

There was also this thing that no one talked about because it was totally half-assed and people were just not feeling the Swag Splash movement. But it had one Juelz/Jimmy collab on it that went under the radar, "Stack Money," which is genuinely engaging and original, possibly because of the bugged out from the future beat:

So when zshare was almost done fucking annoying the hell out of me and I was ready to listen to "Let's Cruise" I was truly curious to find out what it was gonna sound like. Was I gonna hear some boring skull gang-boosting promo for another mixtape? Was it gonna be some trend-hopping bullshit like autotune, hipster samples, heavy use of the words swag and/or aggy, an "A Millie" copycat beat? Nope. None of that shit from human crack. Instead, he got gifted a woozy pillow of a beat and decided to write his version of an ode to sex and cars and the tenuous relationship between the two. The shit turned out to be one of the strangest, silliest, most hilariously and beautifully unselfconscious raps I've heard in a minute. The metaphors make very little sense, so little that I think he must have either been a) completely stoned when he wrote this, b) lost his mind/gone a little soft in the head from drugs or c) has decided to just run with this new absurdist, giddy style and just fuck with us cuz he knows (thinks) he birthed this whole swag thing. It actually had me wondering for a minute if he's much smarter than everyone thinks and some people may not be in on the joke. What I love about this song is the childish and just ignorant approach he took to actually writing the lyrics. He wanders off the subject like he was alternating between xbox, family guy and online porn while he wrote it. It's supposed to be a song about sex and driving but the dude can barely even stay on the subject. And the beat matches the half-asleep, half-baked lyrics and flow perfectly. It's unintentional genius.

A few of my favorite moments from "Let's Cruise":

"you gotta be a good dicklicker"
"let me tongue-kiss your breast, yeah baby I'm a mess"
"I'm so cold I could make a groundhog come out of his hole, I'm out of control"
"I'm so bold you would think I was full of cereal, but that's a no-no. cheerio!"
"I'm so beyond freaky, baby I'm kinky"
"the floyd mayweather of sex, now show me some respect"
"I don't salad toss 'em I salad turn 'em"

i wish I could live in this clip forever

2008-12-27T00:01:00.001-06:00

new british anti-cocaine spots

2008-12-10T11:06:00.003-06:00

apparently the Brits are going with an uncomfortable satiric humor approach to getting kids to stop doing coke. Talking mascots include a tiny, fluffy dog that they claim is being used as a mule (couldn't really hold much innit?), a bag of coke and a dude's nostrils. Seeing this fake stuffed dog with a hole in its stomach is totally weird and will probably make a lot of people uncomfortable. but I think that's the point.

this one has the talking baggie, which is reminiscent of the Oprah's minge episode of South Park. This one in particular makes me cringe, mostly just because I hate this guy's stupid accent and the unfunny jokes. also, it's apparently a Scottish bag.

then there's this one with the nostrils. uninspired comedy and predictable premise, outside of those two things the message is delivered like a brochure in a high school guidance counselor's office.

so these ads are lame and will (like pretty much every single anti-drug campaign) simply give fodder to those who already use. But, in 2009 (yup), the success of campaigns is pretty much measured in one way, and you're seeing it right here. Word-of-mouth is all that matters, and these spots seem like they were made with the youtube/blog world explicitly in mind. Like the new Burger King "Whopper Virgins" campaign, this already has people talking. So if the responsible parties were trying to get people commenting on threads about how much they hate these ads, then they may have already succeeded. But getting kids to stop buying coke? Try introducing some American rap mixtapes into lesson plans and curriculums. This will teach them just how despicable it is to be a "fiend." They will look down on "customers." Sure, you'll have a generation of kids who aspire to be drug dealers, but it hasn't really failed here in the States, plus, if everyone's dealing then no one's using! Young Jeezy will work well, I'm sure. I mean, it's probably better than showing them a bag of coke for over a minute and a girl blowing a line off a toilet seat and a "disco" kid dancing in a club.

bill murray

2008-12-08T10:34:00.004-06:00

Bill Murray is my personal patron saint. I feel like I know him because I've grown up with him. He raised me. Not only is he my favorite actor of all time, he's easily one of the figures who has made the most significant mark on my sensibilities and humor. From movies like, first, Ghostbusters (which was pretty much the only thing I cared about when I was like 5 years old), then Groundhog Day and Scrooged, then Caddyshack, and then Rushmore and to a lesser extent Lost In Translation. The only other movies that had as big of an influence besides Bill Murray movies were probably Tim Burton and Wayne's World.

But the idea that he walks around nowadays like some sort of wandering trickster/Socrates type is really interesting to me. Apparently the man is into social experimenting and people's reactions to strangers doing strange things to them and pretty much just fucks with people.

There’s an urban legend that’s gone around until no one is sure who it happened to, or if it happened at all. It was late one night, a few years ago, when a young man was walking through Union Square Park. He suddenly felt someone behind him, their hands over his eyes. When he turned in surprise, there was Bill Murray, his creased face leaning in close. Bill whispered, “No one is ever going to believe you,” and then just walked away.

— From an article in this week’s Page Six Magazine (not yet online), which looks at Murray’s recent forays into Brooklyn house parties and wonders aloud if he is going through a mid-life crisis.

I also read a comment on Gawker that someone wrote in which they described a moment in a bar when Bill Murray suddenly made eye contact with them and then ran up and started tickling them. This is important work this man is doing.

And then there's this. lolbrooklyn

I Watched as the Light Changed Over the Water - FICTION

2008-12-04T10:31:00.001-06:00

I followed Adam out of the drug store and stumbled back onto State. St. People quickly crossed my blurred vision, all busy in their routines. No one saw me behind my sunglasses except for my friend, the only other person on the street who knew what to do with the tin foil and baking soda he just bought from Walgreen’s.

It's never been clear whether Adam is serious. He's an ambiguous caricature of himself, crafted through hundreds of half-sarcastic quips and asides that began as funny in-jokes among our friends but now seem more and more real. So it never really fazed me when he joked about crack, something he had done countless times since I met him.
I had seen him do some pretty crazy things, but crack is just too silly. People who smoke crack live in trailer parks, not in Statesider. It carries such an intense stigma that it seems like a universal line that no one can cross, even the most adventurous. I never thought he was serious.

Giggling, he clutched his plastic shopping bag like it was a new puppy and I tried to keep up with him as we rushed through the pedestrian traffic. I had begun to figure out what this field trip was really about.
“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” I yelled, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. With a menthol cigarette dangling from his mouth, holding his pants up with one had and squeezing the shopping bag to his chest with the other, he stared blankly at me. I was now shouting loudly on the sidewalk in front of his building, normal people enjoying the summer weather and the sun beating down on us.

Adam shook me off and ran up the stairs to his apartment, slammed the door and locked it. He had just moved in so it was empty except for a few boxes, a stereo and an overflowing ashtray. It now seemed like an ideal environment for deviant behavior.

He had been hanging on by a thread for the past couple years, barely maintaining sanity. The day’s activity did not seem like a positive development for him and I did my best to voice my disapproval. But as he prepared, his excitement filled the room. It was like watching a child unwrap presents at his birthday party.

He laughed and excitedly bounced around his tiny kitchen building some sort of deranged contraption. He explained every detail as he followed the directions he had found by Googling the words “making crack.”
I felt depraved and twisted knowing that I was in a room that would shortly become a crack house, but I was having a hard time containing my laughter. I stared with rapt attention and my hand covering my open mouth, the way I would probably gawk at a freak show. This felt more like rubbernecking after a bad accident on the highway, though.

When Adam finally lowered the torch lighter over the foil, I stopped pacing and pulling at my hair to peer over his shoulder. The bubbling powder spilled over the sides of the measuring cup. That’s when I knew we both had finally lost it.

rap rotation

2008-12-01T14:19:00.012-06:00

I think I'm gonna do this more often. here's my current late-08 rotation

OJ Da Juiceman "Culinary Art School"
ridiculously ignorant drug rap of the highest order. Post-Gucci Mane mush-mouthed South flow with one of the most unique Ad Lib games in recent history. maybe this is like the new Trap Or Die.

I'm convinced that Gucci is not only one of the most entertaining rappers around but he's also not actually a human living in the USA in 2008. dude is definitely something else...He doesn't speak English, his mouth doesn't really make the same types of sounds, and he looks really fucking scary.

get the fuck off my blog if you don't like scarface

Classic. Probably my favorite and most listened-to cd/mix/whatever of the past 6 months. PRGz should be the new Beatles.

G-SIDE "Starshipz and Rocketz"
more Alabama. killing it. like a mix of Organized Noise circa ATLiens and G Space Age Pimpin 8Ball & MJG...this is a filthy good country rap album.

I don't how the someone who can barely be qualified as sane can even make three albums in a little over a year PLUS go to jail, but Prodigy has made three DOPE albums in a row. it's fun to listen to his ridiculous, delusional paranoia and crack stories.

this goes in just for The Greatest Mixtape Cover of All Time.

lose your life

2008-11-18T13:43:00.004-06:00

Al-al-al-al-chemist.

Not taking yourself too seriously + animation + gore + zombie gangsters who rise from the grave to go George Romero on a hipster = GOLD

someone at a magazine has infiltrated my brain

2008-11-11T15:39:00.006-06:00

these are three consecutive pages from the current issue of Antenna (or at least they're consecutive images on their Web version of the current issue):

FUCKING WEIRD

"We're joined now, via hologram, by Will.i.am." - Anderson Cooper

2008-11-05T09:51:00.004-06:00

you get the Trill.i.am moniker back for now, buddy. I can't top the hologram live in the Situation Room Hi-Def Fortress of Solitude/Stable of 70 Pundits. Will, you, sir, are at election 2012-level humanlike rendering and we'll all just spend the next four years thinking about that. Future.

dan aykroyd, crystal skulls, and Newfoundland vodka (wtf informercial)

2008-10-07T12:35:00.005-05:00

ok, I don't know what the fuck is going on here but this is one of the weirdest things I've ever watched. When I was a really little kid, there was nothing in the world that I loved more than Ghostbusters. The movie, the toys, merchandise. I watched it a million times. Now Dan Aykroyd is apparently really into ghosts and UFOs ancient legends about mystical skulls. So into it, in fact, that he's decided to launch a line of premium vodka that is contained in replica crystal skulls. The skulls are, according to Aykroyd, A REALLY BIG DEAL!!! And so is the vodka!!! This video is really weird. I don't know if it's a joke or not, but just please make it to the Canadian distiller named Phil cuz it's funny.

swag songz

2008-09-25T14:31:00.005-05:00

this is seriously dope in a beautiful, shiny, sexy way. Trey Songz making every single dope track of the moment his own. I've never seen an rnb singer do the freestyle thing like a mixtape rapper for a full length tape before in my life and dude just splashes all over these songs. this is going into rotation.

stop making rap

2008-09-08T12:46:00.005-05:00

holy shit this is so dope. I thought T-Wayne jumping around like lunatics with their underwear showing was gonna be the highlight but obviously we missed this little performance. Kanye is taking his whole persona to levels I had not imagined. Grey suit with a red flashing LED heart on the lapel? It's like Pee Wee Herman in a tim burton movie or some shit. DAMN. Also, dude sounds like what pop music should sound like in 2012. He's so ahead of everyone that he's using some other shit that's not autotune but is clearly cooler sounding and makes him sound like some sort of heartbroken cyborg who who's only heard N*E*R*D* and Talking Heads records. This clip is fucking phenomenal. MTV's production value was epic and the purple and red foggy backgrounds were killing it behind Ye's army of synchronized drummers. SHIT IS SO ILL when all the lights go down and you just get him looking like a rap David Byrne.

Oh yeah this song is incredible and is such a good move I can't even really wrapped my head around it. Dude has officially manifested himself into being all that he thought he was or could be. GENIUS.

OK. I happen to be a fan of Travis barker. I think he's cool, I like his new schtick as the guy who "remixes" rap songs by just playing drums to them way louder than they were originally recorded. I also am a fan of DJ AM. That really doesn't need explanation. But this little partnership they've arranged seems a little lame and kinda contrived. I like everything about it until it gets into MTV's hands: a drummer and a DJ, that's cool. This, however, is isn't:

TRVSDJAM - "Wonderwall (Remix)

The collaborative DJ/drummer combo TRVSDJAM re-mix a tune from Oasis to highlight what's coming up next. (2008 MTV Video Music Awards)

the LAAAAME writing (seriously MTV holler at some talented writers a fucking monkey could come up with more interesting copy than that), the MSTRKRFTian name (such an LA thing right now, wouldn't be surprised if they remixed some Does It Offend You, Yeah? tracks or "Paper Planes" remixes, too). when did MTV become completely ignorant about actual MUSIC.

from the archives: a letter I sent to the Badger Herald re: the comic "Better Left Unsaid"

2008-08-13T11:35:00.005-05:00

From "MATTHEW ABRAHAM GARDNER"
Sent Monday, May 7, 2007 10:49 am
To better@badgerherald.com
Cc
Bcc
Subject Genius

To the "authors" of Better Left Unsaid,
Is it really the last week readers will be graced with the pleasure of reading your incoherent, idiotic rants? Wow, it truly is a sad day for all the bigots, meatheads and ignorant morons of the UW campus (which apparently is a HUGE demographic since you guys managed to convince someone to keep publishing your garbage this long). I would just like to tell you guys that I've read your comic strip as much as possible since I first discovered it, and you have absolutely NO
talent or future whatsoever in satire, writing, comedy, graphic design (HA!) or animation, and the editors of the Badger Herald should be ashamed with themselves.
Trust me, I "get it," I understand the type of offensive, subervise approach you're going for, but you just suck at it. Really, really badly. Journey to a coastie's vagina? Are you fucking kidding me? I couldn't even enjoy that on the shitter in college library, where I enjoy pretty much anything. You want to know why? BECAUSE IT WASN'T FUNNY, IT DIDN'T MAKE SENSE AND YOU DIDN'T REALLY PUSH ANY BOUNDARIES OR GIVE THE READERS ANYTHING THEY COULDN'T TAKE, like the best of the type of comedy you guys wish you could imitate. It was just an insignificant, childish peak at the bong-soaked conversations you and your pathetic friends have on a regular basis, a jealousy-fueled rant against people that probably have way more fun than you in college. It wasn't "edgy," unless you consider the scrawlings of a 12-year-old with [red.] syndrome "edgy." (Hey, maybe you guys have been going for the outsider art thing this whole time.) You know how someone released the plays written by Cho, the VT killer? When I read them, I was INSTANTLY reminded of your moronic peice of shit comic strip, because you guys sound like fucking complete idiots.
Anyway, good luck with your future. You guys should put the Better Left Unsaid comic strip on your resumes. There's a real feather in your cap!

"I have a nightmare...of a man...who is made of cotton balls..."

2008-08-11T15:04:00.004-05:00

this is the future of TV. Maury is so next level right here I just decided that I love him. Dude actually had TWO guys come out dressed as cotton ball mummy monsters and run on stage to scare this pathetic woman into tears on live television!!!

Serious. Think about this. The man had some broad's actual phobia-fueled nightmare manifested in the flesh and then shoved it in her face and laughed. That's a real life horror movie!

i'm on patron and purp I can't think

2008-08-06T11:23:00.005-05:00

It's weird how anachronistic this video seems. Lil Jon, the King of Crunk, who was planning to come out with a Rock album and use this has his first single, jumped on the Snap train and got one rapper associated with the Hyphy movement and another with Crunk and made a snap track, then got Hype Williams to make a tripped out ravey-ass video with strobes and rainbow colors. The video is one of my favorites, and the beat seems to be a kind of template for a bunch of HUGE T-Pain records that have come out since that kind of echo that synth line a little too closely (examples: "Cyclone," "Low," "Got Money"). Shit is still murder though, and this video encapsulates the swagger and professional touch that Lil Jon put into to what could have been a pretty typical throwaway club jam. A few months ago I wrote about TVT, the label for whom I once interned, going under. During my time there, and I'm sure for a few years before that, Lil Jon was pretty much the big focus for the label, what with the dude becoming a cultural icon at the turn of the millennium. I remember dude was all about his myspace, always on his sidekick and pretty much pulled all the strings when it came to his online presence (unlike any artist of his caliber that I've come across) to the point where he would even give us updates on what he was doing day-to-day. At that time (summer '06) this consisted of him kicking it in Vegas and "working on" his next album Crunk Rock but really I think it involved as much Patron as the ATF in Nevada could manage to get across the border. That album was supposed to come out in October or November of that year but of course, as everyone loves to ntoe in any mention of the label, it got caught up in some sort of limbo with TVT execs (read: that one dude who owned the label probably, not gonna name names).

What's so funny about it to me is that at the time Jon thought the Rock sound would be the best look for him to bust out on his first album without the Eastside Boys. But now, two years later, doing a rock-inspired rap album would be about as relevant as doing a ragtime-inspired country album. Dude needs to rename his album in a more '08-friendly way, something like Disco Crunk or Crunk House and ride that shutter shades, AA-wearing Daft Punk sampling neon bandwagon. Oh wait he already did (can Bun turn down a guest spot please?)

But, trends be damned, because the album is now free from its label chains and will most likely see the light of day at some point in the near future. Who knows what he has written or recorded or thrown away since that summer, but all I know is that some of his major appearances since "Snap Yo Fingers" have been pretty classic, like "Act a Fool", "The Anthem" and "Get Buck In Here." I was originally really looking forward to hearing what he could do with a full album on his own, almost like a great DJ/producer finally ditching the 12-inch format and going for the artist album. I think he knows what he wants and has some great vision of what he wants his album to be, and that's why he never let it trickle out through a feeble TVT marketing machine. For some reason I don't think a few SUVs wrapped with Lil Jon's mug would have done the trick for this album.

they were all in love with dying, they were doing it in Texas

2008-08-05T11:54:00.008-05:00

just because this popped into my head today and I realized it's one of my very favorite songs of all time. It reminds me of Camp Wildwood, being a semi-weirdo wannabe skater brat, sequestered in a tiny Maine backwoods town in a sports camp for the summer. Normally, when not in camp, I was a devout MTV zombie, at the ripe age of ten years old literally absorbing every single detail of every alt rock video they played on the channel until I could call each one before the credits popped up in the left hand corner after about 10 seconds (REMEMBER HOW VIDEOS USED TO HAVE THOSE CREDITS??? THEY DON'T EVEN DO THAT ANYMORE!!) This was a good way to pass the time and a fun game to play with my orhtodox or Israeli babysitters Ronnie, Atara, Orit. They were always very impressed. So when I was at camp I had to gage what was going on by infrequent trips in camp vans to random field trips or sometimes sneaking a listen to my counselors radio or even heading up the radio station and browsing through all the CDs they had there (one of the only trophies I ever won there was Most Improved for Radio. seriously, if that's not the most embarrassing thing ever...I feel like I should go back in time and tease the younger version of myself). I have a vague memory of this song having its little moment in that summer, which would have been 1996, my tenth year of life on this planet. What isn't vague, though, is the impression the song has had on me since then. The chorus is so engrained in my consciousness I feel like even if I hadn't ever thought of it again I would still know every single word to it when I'm 80 years old like some sort of lullaby or collective consciousness folklore nursery rhyme. Whatever cultural currents or perfect storm of post-Nirvana, height of MTV-fueled alt rock surge this song caught in order to propel itself to #1 on Modern Rock Tracks I'm glad I spent my formative years gestating within them. Just the fact that the Surfers managed to make a hit song is enough to realize how fucking cool the 90s were. Something like this could never EVER be a "popular" song again. It's half-rapped but stream of consciousness and abstract. It's chorus is steeped in reverb. The whole thing breaks down into a swirl of guitar feedback and tape loops. But people were feeling it. Now we have Nickelback and Flobots. The shit they played on MTV back then sounded like this!!!! Is that mindblowing to anyone else but me? It's like how me and my friend Danny decided that the litmus test for your child's future drug use when we were kids should have been whether they enjoyed Ren & Stimpy: if they did, you got a pothead, mom and pop. Loving "Pepper" as a ten-year-old should have been a similar tip off for my parents, except not just for pot but for everything else, too.

black and silver american flags

2008-07-24T11:48:00.005-05:00

jeezy somehow managed to get more intense and depressed and cynical over the course of a three year period in which he went from unheard of, barely-talented ATL rapper to messiah status in that city and top-tier rapper in all cities. Dude is so serious right now I love it and I'm feeling like his new album is gonna be a real good one, like a real ALBUM not just a collection of phoned-in favors like his second one (which I think will eventually seem like an anomaly sandwiched between his debut, which is an undeniable CLASSIC OF ALL CLASSICS, and The Recession). Anyway, Felipe went over to Def Jam yesterday and got Jeezy to spill a little bit of info (he's been extremely tight on giving away anything about the new album) and as you can see in the video he was kind of, well, grave. So over three albums he's gone from motivation to inspiration to reality check.

anyway, I'm really feeling the Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez/Christopher Nolan blacks and whites and greys and dystopian urban America/shiny deep space (in one case) of some of these new videos. I can feel a little Dark Knight ripple effect. Also, The Spirit has ScarJo in it!

it is what it is

2008-07-23T10:54:00.010-05:00

usually it's best to let others express the feelings that we can't on our own.

sometimes an album comes along and hits a spot in a person's life by either filling in a void with what's missing or providing reflective, cathartic soundtrack to the emotional haze. Trae and Z-Ro are becoming like my own personal poet laureates. Weeks before our friend passed away this album dropped and was exactly what was needed in my life for the combination of reasons above. Now it's like almost too somber, like they know me and they know everything that could ever happen in a person's life and they've been through every single depressed moment and paranoid all-night freakout and drug-fueled cycle and letdowns and disappointments and embarrassments. They're like motivational speakers for the Lexapro generation. I don't even wanna get into the woozy and haunting and booming typically-houston shit you will hear or the way they hum and wail and harmonize like old bluesmen in a jukejoint (because really this music is BLUES) because it's whatever, these guys have put out dozens and dozens of albums and if they're not rap legends by now then rap is bullshit.

due to rap-a-lot's BLATANT INEPTITUDE at promoting their own artists when they've dropped dope albums over the past YEAR (see DEVIN, BUN, SCARFACE) this album is un-googlealbe. but they have it at amazon.

~~but I'm gonna link it up right here for the time being because this just needs to be heard.~~

OH AND BY THE WAY TRAE GOT HIS OWN DAY IN THE CITY OF HOUSTON!!!!!

jay reatard and deerhunter split 7"

2008-07-01T15:12:00.002-05:00

covering each other's songs!! according to Jay's myspace it's the next in his series of limited edition 7"s on matador. jay is the king right now and my love for deerhunter goes way back....to '07. excited to hear these covers

robin thicke

2008-06-30T15:46:00.007-05:00

it's got nothing to do with the fact that he's been on a certain rapper's last two albums or that he's signed to the label that happens to be owned by a Major dude (who also produced most of his secondalbum). I remember when he first was coming up he seemed like pretty typical post-hip hop R&B, blue eyed soul crap . And then I was escorted to a very fancy and quite lovely New Years Eve party that made me feel kind of like an immigrant street urchin and his dad (the famous TV guy) was there, and as I shook his hand and stared into his eyes I felt the power of a thousand years of familiarity rushing through my pathetically television-addled brain but couldn't place who he was until like ten minutes later. Anyhoo. I thought, "Yeah, that guy's son has to be a douche." Then when his last album came out it was so dope. Listen to it and don't feel kinda gay because real men should listen to music that girls like, too (totally guessing here).

His new single sounds like 70s perv disco with Philly International strings and blaxploitation funk horns and bongos. Fuck yeah Robin. And then there's the falsetto bridge...

"If these trends continue...Ayyy!"

bravo vice, bravo

2008-06-28T20:02:00.003-05:00

haters wish they could feel the wood

This is the kind of shit that meth-manufacturing bikers would decree “righteous.” It is the kind of shit that makes you want to simultaneously “make it” with a “foxy mama,” peak on four hits of pure windowpane, and fire off a greasy, hot AK-47 indiscriminately into a forest, all on New Year’s Eve, which also just happens to be your birthday and you just got out of jail.

mute helps for optimum comedic effect

2008-06-28T11:21:00.003-05:00

the hat really just puts the whole thing over the edge

via different kitchen

boy 8-bit horror mix

2008-06-26T11:37:00.004-05:00

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Fuck yes. probably my favorite post ever....

Italian horror film scores + Boy 8-Bit = this guy right here! Fulci, Argento, Romero....it doesn't get any better than that, folks.

CLASSIC trailers from some of the flicks in the mix:

Tenebrae

Zombi 2

Demons 2

The House By The Cemetery

City of the Living Dead

Inferno

summer robot rap

2008-06-25T10:50:00.005-05:00

so I posted about "Put On" right when it came out and I wasn't so crazy about it at the time. I think the true breadth of the track needed time to simmer and burrow itself into my already autotune-rap-filled consciousness. But this is so fucking epic it's like confusing me. There's nothing about this track besides the personnel that would point to it becoming a big hit right now during the summer. It sounds dark and sad, big synths and drama but not in a "Got Money" way. I could see it being a big street track for Jeezy fans who loved that Shawty Redd, Southern gothic sound from Thug Motivation, but add an event appearance from Kanye and you don't know what you're gonna get. As has been mentioned elsewhere on these innernets, Kanye sounds like a dying robot who just found out how to feel feelings and wants to sing all about it. I got to give one thing to the dude, he's never satisfied. Which is good, considering he just came off like the biggest tour ever and basically knows he's the shit in every conceivable way right now. But there's still bitches that owe him sex!!!

Of course, the verse is tinted with a little bit of melancholy, being only one of three major appearances he's made since his mom died. This verse is proof positive that Kanye is a world class rock star, taking a pretty good concept (if not entirely mundane) and elevating it to his vaguely-delusional bizarro universe where Kanye is Jesus and Jay-z combined times a billion. But I have to call bullshit. Dude, I was at your Chi "Glow In The Dark" show and you didn't Put On. Also, this verse is a lesson in overtly exaggerated sentimentality. We know you Kanye. This is the guy that cried after he didn't get a fucking MTV award. I'm not claiming the guy doesn't miss his mother or isn't feeling a little slighted (and for his credit this dissatisfaction is clearly driving him to what looks like some of his best and most interesting work yet), but I am questioning whether he really gives a shit at all about all the people he "put on from the 'Go"..."The top is so lonely" but you forced yourself up there, would never even consider yourself anywhere else.

But besides all that, the love for this song is the most encouraging thing this year, for me. After a endless strings of "Low"s and "Crank Dat"s people are feeling these two guys for their weird, dark, overly dramatic selves. Jeezy is one of my favorites right now, and he's doing something that most other rappers don't have the balls to do, just doing themselves and whatever comes with that. And people are feeling him.

jeezy and kanye last night at BET via nahright

"Put On" is an unexpected summer jam. And with the "Lollipop" Remix and "Got Money" it forms the 2008 Triumvirate of Autotune Masters and a strange network of Weezy, Yeezy and T-Pain dominated bangers and ubiquitous Hot97 summer-in-BK car window blasters. (Props to Maino and T.I. for having the other best songs out right now).

sincerely yours, southside

2008-06-24T13:56:00.004-05:00

This is the weirdest/coolest mixtape I've ever heard from a deflating mega star rapper like 50 Cent. He managed to win me over (for the time being) with an awesome idea and a pretty good sense of humor and TASTE. If you haven't heard about it yet, this mix, which is given away free at thisis50, consists of a bunch of classic 70s and 80s R&B and dance tracks...not beats but TRACKS. Fif basically throws a verse onto the intro of each one and then lets the rest play out while he plays goofy hypeman and yells about how great he is. This includes the appropriation of "Genius of Love," "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Ring My Bell." (!) This last one deserves a big AYO! After the "Rider Pt. 2" video and those Village People-esque navy outfits, 50 and the whole Unit is a little suspect! Free Buck!!

some of the songs used for the mix:

lexie mountain boys (girls)

2008-06-19T16:42:00.002-05:00

these girls are so next level I don't even want to show my internet face anymore in fear of being totally outdone. They're like so beyond any existing cool spectrum for anything: art school hipsters, musicians, crazy people you see walking around the street, crazy people you party with and who do too many drugs. Way past that. There are so many things that are cool about Lexie Mountain Boys that you could ignore their music totally and the list would still be pretty thorough.

1. They're from Baltimore.
2. They're girls.
3. They wear beards on stage.
4. They don't need any gear or even microphones when they play shows.
5. Their music is pretty much just them humming and chanting and chirping and breathing(!) and banging on things.
6. They have a song called "Fried Swash Accidental" and another called "Glasses Are Classy."

Even though they sound like cave-women I imagine them to be really attractive. Not clicking on their myspace because I want to hold on to that, OK? Some of my favorite excerpts from the email interview of theirs that I just coded:

"we got big religion. we are souls growing together and looking out on the world from the mountain we form. we got a big mountain of religion."

"Acapella music in general sounds vaguely religious, it is spare cause the lord don't like no junk cluttering up His praise."

"We are zealous and dedicated and backsliding and contrarian so that makes us a new scary type of ultra-conservative -- so far left we've already fed everyone in the world and so far right we enforced mandatory helmet-wearing and smoking-cessation."

"I tease at the Idea of us being a goober cult."

"Beards protect our delicate faces from the harsh elements, filter large particles from the air we breathe and delight children far and wide. In their furry fettering of our faces, they allow us to do our work freely and unfettered indeed."

"I like peering out of a beard. It is like armor and like fun underwear."

"day 'n' night" crookers remix

2008-06-15T02:55:00.009-05:00

so this is that latest internet remix to get love from DJ nerds and work at mainstream Betty and stripe shirts spots, apparently. I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the OG is one of the catchiest, spaciest melodies I've heard in forever, and it's a strange track that I've never really known where to place. It's somewhere between the hispter-hop and blawg haus hype worlds and just some normal pop shit for the radio. Then there's the monster remix from the crazy ass rave-talians that just takes all concepts of a normal dancefloor and smashes them straight into the sides of your brain until you forget what it was supposed to look and sound like. These dudes have a way with the heavy-handed house rhythms and rave energy that basically no onther remixers or even producers at their level can keep up with right now. That's why they're in F55! It's lose-your-shit type of stuff...like the track off their EP "Big Money Comin" is what I imagine life to sound like when they invent the prefect drug tailored for each person individually and parties stop being about who you know or who you are and everyone just automatically gets assigned to their party-mates for the night with whom you have the greatest night ever with every night. This Kid Cudi thing is like that except less rave and more swagger. It's a special track, like a nu-disco banger on hgh, but without the super beefiness or over-the-top samples. A lot of that has to do with the tastefulness of Kid Cudi's original, but I a lot of credit is due to crookers for realizing that a peak time killer doesn't always have to be all whistles and molly and shit

this is what Uzbekistan looks like. So crazy cuz when I was in 2nd grade I used to study maps like a weirdo and it was right around the time that the USSR broke up so all the new maps came out with all these bizarre new countries on them. And I used to love telling people I knew all the capitals of all the -Stan countries like Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan and how I could tell them all apart. Then Borat came out and now everyone knows what Kazakhstan is. But this shit is real and people actually live in places like this.

caspa & rusko fabriclive

2008-06-12T11:02:00.007-05:00

In the crisp sense of self-awareness I'm feeling right now since I got my haircut and shaved and changed my pants I now realize how much blogging there is for me to do. I think I'm just gonna write every time I listen to something I love instead of saving the posts for the stuff that HOLY SHIT I FUCKING LOVE!!! (you see how well that's working for me)...I no longer look like a dissevelled, fuzzy, crazed lunatic with a perma-shadow (for the next day or two on that front) and my pants don't look like they're painted on with the navy blue lead pain that I saw them rolling onto the iron hand rails leading down to the depths of the Montrose station this morning, dripping off my ass cuz they're too big in the waist. The iced coffee I'm drinking and change in sentiment has really amplified the brooding yet oddly exhilirating rush from the dubstep that's quietly playing on the stereo in the fader office right now. I think I'm the only one really feeling it, but that might be because I had a progressive weirdo-house epiphany the other night at Cielo while Francois K spun deep tech-house with some Norweigian dude on Fender Rhodes and other crazy keyboards. It's kind of odd to know that this bizzarre music is like sweeping European dance music circles. Instead of pumping your fist in your striped shirt and shiny black shoes I imagine this being played to (and by) angry British kids in black hoodies and white Air Force 1s, which is so cool. I love that evil-but-social vibe that music can have sometimes. Like I've been listening to a lot of Three 6 Mafia lately and wondering how so many people in Memphis could have adopted that shit as their anthemic city-pride music in the late 90s and early 00s when it was so dark and evil and nihilistic and scary-sounding. I imagine dudes driving around on a sunny, 90-degree spring day (know these two well now) blasting Chapter 2: World Domination like dudes have been bumping the Weezy Yeezy "Lollipop" remix in BK this summer. Did that happen? I don't know, but if it did Memphis would have been like the set of a Rob Zombie movie for five years...

So bobbing your head face-down with your eyes closed to ethereal, spooky samples of old rasta chants and WHUMPing bass is what's hot in some dance scene now, which makes me feel good because I like doing that anyway and if I can do it in a snazzy club with ridiculous sound and a bunch of Stella then what the hell. This Caspa & Rusko mix is like Big Club, Pacha-style dance for people on codeine. Or what a big club in Barcelona would sound like in a Ridley Scott movie. The thought of Fabric filled with people raging to this seems like London is a different universe from New York. But so is a Memphis where the big hometown tunes are about scattering body parts or NYC when all the music was either gay divas or girl group obsessed greasers. There's nothing easy or inviting about this music. Why are British people so quick to adopt and tranfsorm the best, most populist American music and then create indigenous stuff that sounds like a stuttering robot army about to explode and destroy the city. Resident Advisor claims the first track "is still very much a party-rocking, feel-good track." It makes me feel good but I'm a borderline personality with a set of iPhone earbuds and a venti iced coffee who likes Ghostface and the Misfits. The fact that this is "party-rocking," though, is inexplicable and, frankly, pretty awesome. There's a party out there with a room full of a thousand goth/jock hybrids eating amphetamines and trying to get in fights or something...jamming to old reggae melodies and rhythms over swirling, nauseous synths and the most brutal, distrorted bass ever recorded. It's a vision that I will have to hold onto, that's for sure, until I hit up a dubstep rave, which won't happen and would only when the genre has long passed into the cultural wood chipper.

trill.i.am

2008-05-20T21:58:00.003-05:00

the first (fake) issue of MAD NOISE

2008-05-09T15:21:00.014-05:00

that there is part of my final project for my Multimedia Graphic Design class. As I stated before, I discovered that I really don't have a gift for this sort of thing, and luckily I'm relying on other skills to break into the industry (pffffff)...I don't think this is so bad though. I like it, so I'm posting it on my blog. My idea was a magazine for Madison's music scene, but one from my perspective that reflects my taste in music, cuz why not? No one's gonna make the thing anyway, so I might as well put Ian St. Pé's grill on the cover and pretend like Ladyhawk and the Cool Kids are a big deal. Thank god there are other, better mags out there, with designers who know what they're doing. The spread I made for the inside of the pretend magazine is pretty dope, too. Featuring the Greatest Band in America, BLACK LIPS:

these are probably the last time I will ever have to make visual art so don't worry eyeballs everywhere will be safe from now on. click on the spread if you really want to see it. disclosure: I ripped the quote above the photo (which is also stolen) from the badger herald. ALSO: the photo of Ian on the cover is from this guy's flickr account.

the Cool Kids show at MU

2008-05-07T12:38:00.004-05:00

just passing on the good word from my boy Mikey that the Cool Kids will be doing an in-store this Friday at Flow (bka Cook)...WAS CANCELLED

if you don't know you better axe somebody

been following these guys for a while and find it crazy how they blew up so big without releasing a single proper record. Seems like they're really riding a nice little hype wave as the only hipster-rap collective to really get that buzz, but they're dope and even held they're own on this Kidz in the Hall remix with two of THE BEST RAPPERS ALIVE (maybe THE two best rappers alive?)...

I remember when I heard they were gonna be a big deal after last year's SXSW and how they were supposed to come out on Fool's Gold, which would have been a very good look for both parties. SOmething must have gone down cuz that never happened and they have since switched over to Chocolate Industries and I guess coming out on their own imprint, C.A.K.E. Recordings. I tried to interview them last September but had a hard time getting in touch. Seems like they got new management...

Originally, the blogger talking points on these guys were their throwback aesthetic and general good-guy attitudes. "They wear gold ropes! They sound like 1988! They're from Chicago?!" All I know is the white girls of Madison's headband and scarves-in-springtime scene have endorsed this group for some reason and will be out in full at their show on Friday night, at the Union. "Gold and a Pager" went off big time to my surprise last Friday night at Montmartre at about 1:30 am so they are being felt by non-rap fans around here. I don't know if it's they're look - which is like Pharrell mixed with Flight of the Conchordes - or their non-threatening rhymes about bmx bikes, dressing well, being good on the mic, rap's golden years and now, apparently, baked goods. Also, they're mad photogenic:

On "Put On"

2008-05-05T14:45:00.001-05:00

the latest addition to the autotune revolution in popular music, Young Jeezy ft. Kanye West "Put On"

an excerpt from a facebook message conversation:

but yeah I like "put on" but if kanye and jeezy are gonna do a big event single where kanye experiments with vocal effects it totally should have been about somehting other than repping your city...I mean just a normal street song or maybe if ye had jsut rapped it would be cool but if theyre gonna do this it should be about somethin else...especially since jeezy is like the new ll cool j

really Ross? really?????

2008-05-01T13:06:00.001-05:00

google in mad town

2008-05-01T11:10:00.008-05:00

Madison, get ready for Google. (Fuck Microsoft)

albums from 2008 that I love: Black Mountain

2008-04-30T18:00:00.007-05:00

Ahhhhhhhhh. This record is like jumping into a big comfy time machine. It feels very nostalgic to me, but nostalgic for a time that was more than a decade before my own birth. I grew up on real nerdy, guitar-dork classic rock like Zeppelin and Floyd and Sabbath, stuff that is decidedly uncool as checkpoints for new indie rock. Sometimes this sound comes back in, and in recent memory bands like Wolfmother, Mars Volta, Muse, have mined the riffs and pomp of the Gods of dinosaur rock, to pretty uncool results. I normally try not to revisit this era of my musical taste, it being second only to my extensive foray into jam band fandom on the embarrassment scale. Black Mountain totally love Blue Cheer and Deep Purple (I'm guessing) and kind of sound like "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." But this is really good! And everyone loves it. Strange how they managed to keep some of the lame stuff from 70s stadium/prog/psych rock and still keep it a cool indie rock album form 2008 - a pretty hard thing to do no matter what type of influences you're using. I mean, their web site is called BlackMountainArmy.com!!!

I think what keeps the album fresh and easy to embrace is that the band doesn't simply rely on the Sabbath riffs for 80 minutes straight. There are plenty, but they're balanced out by beautifully restrained organs or passages of soft acoustic guitars and flutes or something like that. There's an equal emphasis on psychedelia as there is on brute force riffage. Songs like "Tyrants" switch from stompy prog to atmospheric psych at the drop of a hat, which helps to keep the band from sounding too stuck in one mode or the other. Even when they are getting pretty or trippy the Rick Wakeman synths and monster guitars aren't too far behind. A perfect example is "Wucan," maybe my favorite track. The shared vocals really save some of the songs from their stupid lyrics. "You've got to change your evil ways"!?!? Amber Webber's voice is incredible and so is the dude's. This album is totally badass in ways that albums really haven't been in a while; unabashedly rocking out in some parts but keeping it psychedelic and kind of druggy at the same time, not caring about "hip" influences, silly lyrics, alternating scary/beautiful parts, long epic tracks. It seems kind of anachronistic, but there is a weird thing going on in Vancouver with a bunch of dudes with beards who are in awesome rock bands. Big synths, kraut-ish grooves, Sabbath riffs aren't exactly ground-breaking, but I can't think of many indie rock records that are as unpretentious and listenable.

made up the word that's why I'm so....

2008-04-29T15:23:00.001-05:00

new GTA looks crazy

2008-04-28T15:12:00.004-05:00

I wouldn't think that I'd be excited about a video game ever again, but this looks really awesome. The only way I could really care enough to sit down for more than 20 minutes and do something like that would be if the game is so ridiculous and offensive that it's actually like a subversive act just playing it. This looks interesting. Some nutbar conservative attorney in Florida (obv.) is demanding that Take Two be indicted and claims that the game is as big of threat to our children as Polio. Yeah. Sign me up (for the game, not Polio).

According to the article, the video above "strips the game of all context and merely shows scenes of sexual content and violence, one after the other...and since the acts are shown one after the other, the game can be portrayed as a nonstop sexual experience." it's nsfw obviously

I also thought this was funny: via wikipedia
"Grand Theft Auto IV takes place in a redesigned Liberty City consisting of four boroughs, based on four of the boroughs of New York City. Broker is the equivalent of Brooklyn, Queens is Dukes, the Bronx is Bohan and Manhattan is Algonquin. Adjacent to the city is the independent state of Alderney based on New Jersey and named after the Channel Island of the same name. A Staten Island-esque area is not featured in the game as Rockstar Games believes that game play in such an area would not be amusing."

so who's apartment am I hitting up tomorrow for some gangster sex and violence gaming???

new no age

2008-04-23T17:24:00.007-05:00

I've been anticipating the new album from this band since I heard the news that they signed to Sub Pop. Their first LP, Weirdo Rippers, is one of my absolute favorite albums of the decade. I've listened to it a million times and they've become one of my favorite bands. I kinda wish every band sounded more like them: incredible melodies, NOISE, thrashing guitar and drums, honest and simple lyrics that are either sort of hummed and barely audible or shouted/barked.

Needless to say, I was kinda nervous about Nouns. A band like this is a fragile thing, and while they clearly had a ton of potential and room to grow there was also the enormous possibility of a let-down. Everything about the band was so perfect; a series of great EP's released on tiny indies, a small following, a scene. I was equally scared that they would come out with a clunker and hesitant to even think about the album's hype. Well, it leaked and I downloaded it.

After my first few listens I was prepared to be officially disappointed. Nothing on it was as immediate as "Everybody's Down" or "Every Artist Needs A Tragedy." They also seemed to have changed their sound a little bit to a cleaner, more straight-ahead punk band sound. There weren't as many blissful, static-y moments like "Neck Escaper." But after a few more listens I've realized that this album is GENIUS. The new sound isn't as drastic as I thought. It's subtle, yes, but it's just as powerful as before, it's just more focused. Here, when they do noise, they do it for a full two minutes. When they write a song, they play it. When they thrash, they thrash and then move on to the next one. But when these sounds come together the band is at their most brilliant and sublime. On their early songs they would sometimes juxtapose two of these sounds together on one track, but there are moments on Nouns that get closer to that perfect fusion of noise and volume and power and melody. I'm really relieved and just happy that I have a new album to dissect and listen to over and over for the next few months. Thank you dean and randy

you should pre-order it

and also check out their blog
and go see them

albums from 2008 that I love: Cut Copy

2008-04-17T19:10:00.012-05:00

This one definitely took me by surprise. Back in 2004 Cut Copy's debut seemed like an 80s pastiche album from some fruity Australian guys who loved neon and synthesizers. While it may have been slightly ahead of the curve, it feels very much part of the whole new-rave thing that is still pretty much dominating indie and dance music. So it has been easy to lump them in with a bunch of other bands, many of whom are from Australia or even on their label Modular. Maybe I wasn't paying attention or maybe it's a new development, but at some point this band became really creative and ambitious, incorporating sounds and approaching territory that is pretty foreign to all those other bands in the hypem/remix/bloghouse continuum. They also got way, WAY better.

This inventiveness is apparent right off the bat with the opening "Feel The Love," starting with oddly hummed vocals and synth flourishes over strummed acoustic guitars. Right away it sounds slightly more psychedelic, more unabashedly joyful than what is expected of a band like this, and it's clear that it belongs to some other sphere of influence, with a melody too perfect and so many bubbling elements that it sounds like it has nothing to do with everything that's going on right now. "Feel the Love" is pretty enough to make me wonder if the band had suddenly gone hippie until the end finally brings in the beat. That's what everyone is waiting for anyway these days. But what makes this album stand out is the sticky sound that surrounds each element of the songs, not to mention the incredible melodies. Songs like "Out There On The Ice" and "Lights and Music" sound so genuinely New Wave that it's easy to ignore the fact that these guys made an album full of danceable, four-on-the-floor house-rock tracks that work much more strongly as an LP, that is as a great album.

One of the most engaging features of the album is the feeling of an ebb and flow that occurs throughout it. Songs like "Lights and Music," which is the new single and is a pretty direct dancefloor track, have these incredibly sublime breakdowns in them where the band lets the ever-present synths soar or bounce or just wash over you. The whole album is padded with a distorted wash of noise that comes and goes, sometimes giving way to powerful beats or serene breakdowns or odd samples. There are even several short, ambient instrumental tracks that act in a similar way, bridging moments of bliss with fuzzy atmospherics or pounding drums. They really don't shy away from the noise, either. "So Haunted," which was the first track to leak, alternates between pretty, lilting choruses and clanging post-punk guitar before giving way to a breakdown that sounds like it was taken straight off a German or French electro-house record. Seriously. And then there's "Far Away," which has got to be one of thee best songs this year. I don't really feel like saying much about it because it speaks for itself, but I would like to add that the breakdown on this one is one of my favorite moments on any recent album. That sample thrown in the middle of the song blows my mind, too.

In a million years I never would have expected this album. Somehow, Cut Copy became a truly original art rock band. Instead of straight ripping from their influences they built an homage to many of them. Everything comes down to influences these days, because it's so hard to sound new in an environment in which New Order and Daft Punk have as much influence as Prince and Brian Wilson. In Ghost Colours uses its influences perfectly, letting them in but allowing them to pass by freely without weighing the music down. This will hold up as a great album and will be hard to beat for my album of the year.

mixtape monster

2008-04-16T11:14:00.011-05:00

YES!

I love mixtapes like these that collect all of a rapper's recent guest spots and whatnot when they're in between albums. One of my favorite mixtapes from the past year was very similar to this, Young Dro's Purp By The Pound. Jeezy is having something of a renaissance right now, all of a sudden turning into an R&B love machine. His verse on "Love In This Club" is great because everyone can rap along to those first few lines ("Seshully, emoshunlly!") but it's a laughably simple and kind of stupid verse. Although I think he may have topped that one with his verse on this new Mariah track "Side Effects" which will probably be on her new album (EDIT: I'm retarded, it's already out). The verse is notable if only for its opening line, in which Mr. 17.5 exclaims that either he or the subject of his sexually seductive verse is "magnifical or should I say magnificent?" Amazing. There's also a track with The-Dream that I had never heard that is pretty awesome, but that's expected since it is The-Dream. I strangely haven't heard anything about a new Jeezy album but he's put out a bunch of good guest spots and remixes in the past year or so, and the remix of "Superstar" with T.I. has added to my slowly reversing opinion on Lupe (used to hate him, coming around...) Also, this mix has me checking for Slick Pulla, which is cool I guess. There's a track on here called "Fuck The Other Side" that I'm definitely feeling.

That Jeezy cover is just TOO ILL though! I woke up to great news (news? whatever) and this is just hitting the spot. I wish I could have done Rap Mixtape Cover Art as the subject of my Multimedia Graphic Design 15-page research paper because I think it's one of my favorite media for graphics in the world right now. Some of my favorites that are out right now:

ryan leslie "diamond girl"

2008-04-15T16:30:00.005-05:00

I can't decide on this song. I guess I like it. Sometimes synths are just not that great, too much of a good thing maybe. I also think he's kinda forgettable, especially on the rap at the end...I'll still take The-Dream or even "Sexy Can I" over this.

a review of the Dipset (12)

2008-04-09T21:08:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since the Dips have been relevant, and they've sort of become uncool. I have the feeling there are a lot of people out there who are pretending they weren't into this in 2004-05. But they were. And it's still great stuff, no matter how many internet rap cycles away we are. The height of the movement is long gone, but I'd like to just remind you of how dope it really was to see these crazy dudes giving NY rap some excitement and originality for the first time in so long. I mean, who's ever gonna touch the Dips on the swagger levels alone? Didn't they birth that whole thing anyway? I think it's almost a good thing that they imploded so they never got too crappy while they were still an official unified group. Although Killa Season flopped and the two More Than Music comps were pretty forgettable (too many shitty second tier dudes), they went out the same way they came in: quick and confusing. I think it's just important to remember that they created some of the weirdest music of the decade.

This post is to commemorate the greatest moments in Dipset audio/video history

Cam'ron "Hey Ma"
The first real Diplomats moment, the coming out party. Not much to say about this. They're like a bunch of comedians in this one. The dance is amazing, of course.

Diplomats "Bout It Bout It...Part III"
Crazy old video from the first Diplomats album. A relic of the throwback jersey era, incredible outfits with matching hats and bandanas all around. Looks like they got all of Harlem to come out for this. A remake of an old Master P and TRU track, with the Ice Cream Man in the video. Classic and grimey as hell.

Juelz Santana "Dipset (Santana's Town)
Juelz first real solo smash. Not a real hit but a Dipset classic nonetheless. Great pink moment in the beginning with Cam in the car, bandanas around the neck and wrist. This song is too ill, a perfect example of the Dipset sound: hammering Trackmasters beat, chanting chorus, stuttering verses with a lot of words that rhyme with themselves.

Diplomats "S.A.N.T.A.N.A."
God I love this one. IM BAAAAACK...The high pitched little kid sample is so recognizable and weird and just out there. The whole thing sounds like it was made by some aliens or something, especially the beat. The furs in the video, the whole NYC setting, the driving...This was Dipset 2.0 at its best. (sorry about the AOL videos, it's impossible to find this one on YouTube)

Jim Jones "Crunk Muzik"
This shit is just frightening. Amazing track, one of the hardest ones they ever made. The quintessential Juelz verse, a hillarious "Tuttie frutti" Cam verse and a sick hook. This should have been a bigger hit... The video is really dope, too, probably my favorite. Great Warriorz theme with Sizzurp bottles.

albums from 2008 that I love: Atlas Sound

2008-04-08T16:21:00.004-05:00

OK, here's the first in a series of posts that I've been meaning to start. It shouldn't be that hard because there really aren't many albums coming out that I like enough to even bother with, but so far Atlas Sound has been my favorite album of the year. I never thought I would like Bradford's solo album as much as I love last year's incredible LP/EP output from his main band Deerhunter. I usually don't like sad-sack music that much and I'm really not into all the new indie that comes out every week and takes the campus by storm (although I'm thinking about going to see Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes tonight and they're both pretty damn indie and the latter is pretty sad-sounding). But something about Bradford Cox has got me hooked on his music. He has a schtick, that's for sure: high-pitched, aching, overdubbed vocals over swelling, gauze-packed shoegaze drones. I always go for sound and style first and content/lyrics/whatever well after the fact, so maybe that's why I love the warm, fuzzy, electric pillow-ness of the music, because if I was paying attention to the lyrics more I would probably want to kill myself.

Bradford is known to have a thing for pills, and I know that the feeling of being on anti-depressants and/or anti-anxiety medication has influenced his sound a lot. Whether or not this has had some sort of druggie subconscious attraction for me is unimportant really, because even if I don't enjoy hearing a dude basically nail my own fucked up anxiety-ridden thoughts with every lyric, I KNOW I love to soak in the sonic equivalent of it. It's like if a violent, sociopathic necrophiliac sat around listening to Cannibal Corpse everyday for the lyrics, it probably wouldn't help him curb his problems. I prefer that I can't understand what he's saying sometimes because I'm afraid I'll go off the deep end if I paid attention too hard. It strikes a great balance between being about what I feel and sounding like how I feel, which is way more important to me. Sure, sometimes I feel like "Chokes me 'til I'm dead / There are places in my head / That I could never conquer"... But I'd rather just hear guitars and distant voices and gently tapped keyboards wash over me and try not to think about it while I focus on other stuff.

The sonic effect of the music is what grabs me. This album has served as a fuzzy counterpart to all the other stuff I've listened to this year, which has been all pounding bass, sharp drums and upfront vocals. Even though it's a complete emotional detachment, which is the theme of his writing and his sound, this is the only type of thing I can listen to for an emotional resonance without wanting to throw up. He never gets heavy-handed, always staying within the range of the repeating noises or echoing whispers that flow throughout the space of each song. Even when he says "I'm trying to make friends but I'm always on guard," you can barely tell it's there. If it weren't for the beautiful and comforting setting he creates for each song then the impact wouldn't be half as strong. Even the instrumentals, such as "Ready Set Glow," have as strong of a cathartic coziness as a song like "Quarantined," which, in addition to being one of my favorite songs on the album, has arguably the most apparent meaning of any of the songs here. I can't decide if I have found such a close resonance with his music because I often feel so much of what he sings about or if it is because the sounds he creates have filled some empty space in my listening with the warm, static-y goodness that it needed. Or could one not exist without the other?

BREADHEADS

2008-04-07T16:35:00.001-05:00

a T. Howard filmette

dope Lupe art on a Moleskine

2008-04-06T18:36:00.008-05:00

So I'm the intern for EtchStar, who get really good artists to do dope engravings on shit like this Lupe Moleskine honoring one of the only songs by dude that I actually like! Love the different fonts for each city. By Nathan Cabrera

Join our Facebook group!

long live

2008-04-06T14:57:00.006-05:00

this gave me chills. Bun is like my favorite dude alive right now, second to maybe Ross. Can't wait for II Trill to come out and looking forward to the video for "That's Gangsta" (pictured)...R.I.P. Pimp C

know what's goin through your mind, boosie he retarded

2008-04-02T14:14:00.014-05:00

Lil Boosie - Da Beginning mixtape

The above line from the hook on "Somebody Gonna be My Victim" is the type of thing that makes me love Boosie right now. While it clearly has a different meaning when used by the man himself, many people can't take Lil Boosie seriously and look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them I listen to his music, without irony. It's not just his shrill, cartoonish voice that makes people scoff at him. He's a raw, unapologizing version of the Southern rapper; materialistic, violent, loud and unconcerned with anything except money. But he's really one of the only honest and fresh voices in rap, unafraid to put what's on his mind onto the ridiculously critical hip hop stage. Coming from Baton Rouge and having such incredible talent surrounding him (beats and rappers) helps him stand out, of course. But Boosie is all personality, talent and execution.

The new mixtape is a classic waiting to be adopted by the nerd-rap blogosphere, especially since Trill Ent. has been crowned the next rap dynasty. On Da Beginning, the production is so refreshing that it makes Boosie's rhymes so clear and even a little bit humble. Every track has some toned down, homemade element, like flutes, organs, hand claps, bluesy guitars or horns. All sounds that are strikingly different from the current state of rap production. In fact, Trill Entertainment's in-house producers produce banging club tracks on the regular, which makes this even more intriguing. I'm not sure who did the beats here (I don't hear Mouse's "Mouse ont he track, it'll make ya bounce back" tag?), but whoever it is was clearly listening to a lot of Pimp C. As we all know, Chad Butler (RIP) put these dudes on, but I've never really felt the influence of Pimp C as much on any other Trill Ent release as on this one. The woozy organs, laid back beats, guitars all sound perfect for a styrofoam cup and a big ass Cadillac.

Whoever is on the hook on "They Hatin" has the greatest nasally drawl ever, and the track is a perfect little posse cut to show just how dope this camp is. What's so exciting to me is that they can make songs like "Zoom" or "Wipe Me Down" but also they can make MUSIC, stuff that truly carries on the tradition of Pimp and Bun. "They Hatin" sounds like it's from some old mixtape by a bunch of Houston dudes that I've never heard of from 2000. Noz already told you about the political one, "Dirty World," which is another perfect example of why people who scoff at Boosie are mistaken. But it's not just the overt political track that proves Boosie's got stuff to say, he does it all over this mixtape. "I Ain't Comin Home Tonight" is a great storytelling track, a break-up song, and a sober moment for the perpetually flossing rapper, all in one. "Take My Pain Away" is a drug ballad about how he prays instead of whooping his bitch when things get rough. "Doin This 4 U" is the 'giving back to my hood' track but holds a little more poignancy knowing just exactly how hugely important this guy is to a whole lot of people in Baton Rouge and the rest of the South right now. This guy just basically threw his personality all over this thing and I'm eating it up completely. It's the type of thing that really tips a rapper from a regional sensation to a star, and maybe his recent spot on the cover of Fader is a sign. Either way, he deserves to be appreciated much more than in just a cursory, ironic sort of way.

rave @ crave, thurs 4/3

2008-04-01T18:11:00.003-05:00

you smell me?

facebook event page

tim and eric really nailed my life post-spring break

2008-03-30T16:50:00.000-05:00

GOATs

officially hyped on new N.E.R.D. music

2008-03-28T12:34:00.003-05:00

N.E.R.D. Live At The Levi's/Fader Fort from The FADER on Vimeo.

Fader dudes give you a sufficient breakdown of the N.E.R.D. stage antics, but I'd like to add that their band sounds real next level, all spazzed out and shit. I love it. Wasn't feeling "Everyone Nose" at first but it's grown on me and now I actually think it's kinda awesome. I love that Pharrell is really into just rocking out but at the same time getting real weird...makes Gnarls Barkley look like a couple of pussies.

Side note: the third guy, Shay, does he just go into hibernation and come out for new N.E.R.D. albums?? what's his deal?

check out my Muxtape yo

2008-03-28T11:15:00.003-05:00

here is my Muxtape. listen to it and be blown away, or maybe have it on really quiet while you do something else, or maybe gather round the computer with your family like it's an old fireside chat with Fdr.

and here is a Maxell XLII, the greatest cassette tape on which I ever recorded countless hours of Grateful Dead live shows:

barack obama X baltimore club

2008-03-27T16:10:00.003-05:00

boomp3.com

probably the most amazing thing I've ever heard. Apparently chopped up samples of some nut job preacher from Harlem named Pastor Manning who's got a big thing for hating on Barry, Bmore-ified by DJ Excel... So Dope! If I can find I a link I'll drop this every night until November (or the convention...)!!

apparently this guy RONDO is pretty good...

2008-03-27T12:18:00.000-05:00

COLD

poured over the head of a male model

2008-03-25T11:08:00.004-05:00

I haven't been that into the Colbert Report lately (and by lately I mean probably the last year or so). When the show first came out I was convinced it was the greatest thing to happen to television since the "info" bar first showed up on my cable channels. and if you don't remember that moment then you're like 13 years old. I remember I called my friend Gustavo (GOOSE THIS IS WHERE THE LINK TO YOUR BLOG WILL GO) for the first episode because I was so excited for this show to premiere. The first year was amazing, and his address to the White House Press Correspondents was one of the funniest moments of the decade. Anyway, it's been a while since I've really LOVED something on the show, but I'm glad I got to see this sketch because it's fucking hilarious and exactly the type of comedy I want to see more of from everybody. This reminds me of classic SNL fake ads from the 90s, and Colbert is definitely a Phil Hartman-worthy successor to the fake-serious throne.

5 years, 4,000 bodies, more bullshit

2008-03-24T15:12:00.007-05:00

This mosaic of 4,000 fallen faces by Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post is one of the most sobering, depressing and visceral images I've seen in a while. I think a lot of people like John McCain but are not realizing exactly what he stands for (including myself). Sure, he seems like less of a nut than Cheney and smarter than Bush, but this guy may be a complete warmonger. It's fucking scary to think that because of complete apathy, the competitive dissolution of the once-formidable Democratic force in '08 and the seemingly harmlessness of McCain we could be looking at four more years of Iraq.

Hillary, I love you, but give it up or get the fuck out of the way.

mission of burma gets their shine

2008-03-18T13:27:00.006-05:00

Mission of Burma is one of my favorite bands of all time and not just because they're probably THE greatest Boston band ever. When looking back on the progression of my musical tastes over the past few years, something I think I do a little too often, I can trace a pretty significant split to the moment I heard MoB. When I was in high school, my boss and all the dudes that worked at Ace Ticket with me would talk about this band that I had never heard of like they were the lost key to Boston's coolness. I remember thinking from the name that they were some cheesy 80s new wave. Then one day my freshman year in Madison I was in the late great The Den on State St. browsing the CDs and stumbled upon the best of collection A Gun To The Head. My whole listening world basically exploded. They still hold a special place for me even if I don't listen to their Ace of Hearts years that much any more (The Obliterati is the only one I still play), but that's gonna change today when I buy the complete set of reissues.

I honestly don't think I've been this excited to buy a new record in a long time, and it's partly because I'm in LA right now and am going to get my hands on these at my favorite record store in the world, Amoeba. But really, I'm excited because Matador just did this right for so many reasons, and it's great to see a label do something like this for a band that I really love. It feels like an event. Idolator shared a similar enthusiasm for these reissues, but this is more like an event to me. The discs were even remastered by Rick Harte, a pioneer of indie music and one of Boston's most important underground figures, the dude who signed Burma to his label and put out their legendary singles in the early 80s. Even though the band has had one of the most remarkable comebacks ever, it feels good to know that their original material is going to be appreciated all at once like this.

thugged out orthopedic

2008-03-13T17:30:00.001-05:00

just a friendly reminder that everyone involved in "Banned From T.V." is the shit...including Swizzy!

the world before "Lollipop"

2008-03-10T14:37:00.008-05:00

As I type this, we are dangerously close to finally hearing the first single from The Carter III, Lil Wayne's long-awaited, frequently leaked and delayed sixth album. The first single is a curiously auto-tuned club joint called "Lollipop," the video for which is supposed to premiere on Wednesday on BET. A one-minute snippet has leaked and the track is even more intriguing and off-putting than I had previously thought.

Obviously an attempt to capitalize on the current vocoder and synth craze in hip-pop that has taken over the charts and the clubs, the song is also an effort to reposition Wayne as a solo pop star rather than a sensational mixtape rapper and charismatic guest on other artists' singles. He stands right now on the verge of absolute pop superstardom, a sort of perfect storm of months of hype, hit songs, popular appeal and critical acclaim from the right (white) places: The New Yorker, the New York Times, Pitchfork. Wayne has been notorious for never having really secured a hit single as a solo artist (his biggest hit to date is "Go DJ"), despite declaring himself and willing himself into becoming the "Greatest Rapper Alive." So, in other words, the first single from the new album could make or break it, either sending it to the upper reaches of the pop charts or condemning it to internet acclaim with real world obscurity.

It's truly incredible how risky this move is that Wayne and his people have decided to take with "Lollipop." The song is seemingly contradictory to the persona Weezy created with his Dedication mixtapes and their predecessors, a series of seething, hallucinogenic, ravenously hungry runs of lyricism and lunacy. There is no denying that he could have created a lyrical masterpiece to leak to the streets, release as his first single or whatever (and I'm sure he made many), but this is a curious move, perhaps even a brilliant one.

What Wayne needs is a hit. Plain and simple. If he got too fancy his album would flop, but if he gets too "pop" his die-hard fans (and the rap community) would discredit him. While I haven't heard the whole thing, "Lollipop" seems like it may tread some bizarre line between chick-friendly club pop and weird sonic experimentation with enough RnB flavor to keep enough music heads on board. I mean, the thing is a smash hit, let's face it. Right now, Weezy can almost do no wrong, that is unless he released something like "Gossip" as his first single. "Lollipop" is perfectly timed, coming right off the heels of "Sensual Seduction" and "Low," occupying the same sonic template and popular territory. We'll see if he can keep his dignity after the full thing leaks, depending on how embarrassing a song called "Lollipop" actually gets. But knowing Wayne, it will have some sort of edge of competitiveness, irony, or self-consciousness.

It's also worth noting this summary of the song from Lil Wayne himself: "Dudes are gonna hate this one...Ugly dudes, that is."

I love Will Arnett...and am kinda down for some more Human Giant

2008-03-07T17:06:00.002-06:00

This preview of Human Giant's second season is MAD funny. I remember some of the first season being pretty good, but I just don't like Aziz that much. He's not as funny as the other two and I think he may just be funnier as a stand-up. Makes me miss shows like Kids in the Hall...I'll be watching though, I'm sure, so we'll see about Season 2.

Anyway, Will Arnett is the shit and since he played the immortal character G.O.B. he's tried to bring his profile up a little bit, I'm just not so sure how well it's going...

Justice - "DVNO" video...So Me est Dieu.

2008-03-05T16:11:00.006-06:00

I have a long, troubled history with Justice. After discovering their remixes (and a bunch more by Sebastian, MSTRKRFT) on a blog called To Here Knows When that I think is now defunct (if you're out there, holler) back in the fall of '05, I followed them pretty closely. I bought the "Waters of Nazareth 12" at MC Audio, then the "Never Be Alone" 12 at TTL in NYC. I had every single leaked track, loved em all. I knew the whole movement was popping off on the internet, but couldn't have guessed what would happen in '07. Then when D.A.N.C.E. came out, it blew up, and I had to backtrack and constantly remind the new jacks that I was up on that shit first! blah blah blah, didn't matter.

So Me never crossed that line, though. Even after directing a video for Kanye West and T-Pain, dude is still holding that spot of dope underground designer who gets crazy attention in magazines and online but hasn't fallen off a bit. Maybe that's because designers don't really blow up ever. Nonetheless, if I could pay him to design my whole life I would (walls, clothes, pills that make me see everything as So Me-animated, EVERYTHING). The videos for "D.A.N.C.E." and "Good Life" were whole new levels of dopeness, even after he dropped ill art for Ed Banger single after single. Now here's a new video for fav. album cut-turned new single(??) "DVNO."

I can't stress enough how incredible I think this shit is. I've spent the past six weeks in a design class realizing how lame my own vision is, trying to come up with logos for myself and site designs. If I could design ONE logo as fresh as any of the fake ones in this video I would be tremendously proud and consider myself a pretty competent designer. This dude killed the retro logo schtick here so hard!!! At first I was skeptical like "More of the same." Nope. Ed Banger and France aren't going anywhere.

Oh yeah. Add this to the list of great So Me sleeves:

hillary will steal the nomination

2008-03-05T14:49:00.004-06:00

I'm calling it right now but have been thinking it since before last night's double victory in Ohio and Texas. According to the email that Obama campaign manager David Plouffe sent out today, Clinton only won "a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted." So, basically, last night meant nothing. Yet here we are, on March 5, and Clinton is curiously poised for a big comeback, even though we still have almost exactly the same race as we did on Monday.

It doesn't matter how many primaries Obama will win in the next three months(!), Hillary will take the nomination. Superdelegates, legal wrangling, second counts, Michigan and Florida re-primaries, whatever, she will somehow take this nomination away from Obama. I can feel it. This isn't some "too good to be true" shit either. McCain will be president because the Democrats will suck all the air out of this tremendously exciting and invigorating race.

the night I deejayed a music video

2008-03-04T15:38:00.003-06:00

On Saturday afternoon, as I nursed my hangover and incredibly bruised left foot after a night with Black Lips, I got a call from someone from the KK. I don't even know who it was. I don't know most of their names. Anyway, the guy told me some rap group was going to film a video that night and I was supposed to play the song three times for them. I obliged and didn't really think much of it. As the night grew closer and I realized that I was actually going to have to DJ and play some song a bunch of times, I worried that this group was gonna suck and the whole night was gonna be even lamer than a normal Beckies-and-Bros Saturday night hoedown at Kollege Klub.

I was wrong. The dudes in Reigny Day Productions were mad cool and more importantly made a dope song. These guys really came off like musicians (especially the dude Reign) as opposed to "rappers" with some wack-ass demo. I was skeptical when I found out the name of the song was "Broadband Love" but shit went off like crazy in KK. I was stunned. And, frankly, I had a great time.

I told them they could do whatever they wanted as long as they put me in the video. I think I was half-joking and half-wasted but they did it anyway!! Look for your boy Mush Kid at around 1:27!!

Gotta give them respect for their hustle, as well. Got a text message from Reign himself alerting me of the video (three-day turnaround!) and telling me to post it on my facebook. That's grinding. Keep making moves!!

notes from a former TVT Records intern, or TVT AIN'T DEAD!

2008-02-20T14:17:00.009-06:00

Two summers ago, I was the New Media intern at TVT Records, an independent label with a big, poster-riddled loft office in NoHo on Lafeyette and 4th St. that has been the home for a bizarre collection of artists, some great and some very forgettable. Yesterday, news broke that the company has filed for Chapter 11, which isn't that surprising and really not very tragic. The real news, for me, is that supposedly most of the employees were laid off. The experience was pretty great and I actually really liked the people that worked there, especially compared to the people I met at my previous label internship the summer before at Island/Def Jam. Looking back the internship at TVT could have ] been a lot more beneficial for me if I had taken more advantage of both the actual hands-on experience and the people that worked there. I never really talked to anyone and just sat in the closet-turned-office that I shared with a guy (whose name I forget, but he was chill) who was like some sort of NYC drum'n'bass promoter/expert. If it had been the summer of '07 instead of '06 I probably would have made a lot more friends. But then again, they all would have been fired a few months later!

In a new post he made today, Tom Breihan (I swear I'm not a stan) goes through some of the better albums that TVT has put out over the years and in the process gives a pretty thorough history of the lamented label, one that it probably doesn't even deserve because, like he says, the label never really had a clear identity and thus never offered the music world any defining artistic contribution. They didn't pioneer either industrial or crunk music, they just put it out after both movements had gone through their indie infancies in their respective regions. What he doesn't mention though, and what stuck out most to me while I was there, was the amount of purely laughable products this company put out. While I was there, the big push was behind a Ying Yang Twins side project called Da Muzicians that was made up of one of the dudes from YYT and his brothers or cousins or something like that. Truly embarrassing and unlistenable garbage with retarded singles that never had even a whisper of buzz. There were crappy alt-metal bands like Bobaflex, lame pitchfork-indie bandwagoneers like The Cinematics and The Holloways, some weird danish '60s revivalists called The Blue Van and, of course, The Towers of London, who really took the cake. I can't even begin to describe how shitty this band was, but they had this kind of strange affability and I actually liked them, even though I knew they were the worst Sex Pistols/Motley Crue make-up rock mashup in the world. They had a big following of mostly English girls and supposedly put on a crazy live show. I just uploaded ridiculous videos of them fucking around with little kids and getting in fights with drunk soccer hooligans to YouTube.

Around the same time, TVT put out an album by their Memphis rapper Yo Gotti, who's actuallly a pretty good rapper who has never made it out of the underground despite being on TVT and having appearances from Bun B, 8Ball, Jazze Pha and even Lil Wayne and Birdman (!) on his album Back 2 Da Basics. I have a feeling he was a victim of the same fate that Pitbull complained about, that is, never being cleared for any guest spots or features, which can kill a dude like that who basically only had a Gangsta Grillz and hometown following to build his buzz on. Also at the same time, Lil Jon came out with a new single called "Snap Yo Fingers," a track that was not only ubiquitous in the office all summer but became something of a smash club hit. I spent the summer updating these artists' myspace pages and sending out innocuous bulletins like "Check Out New Pictures of Pitbull!!" and "The Cinematics Live Footage added to indieshows.com!!!"

While the focus of the label definitely was all over the place, and some of the bands sucked really bad, I have no evidence or really any knowledge of their business practices. A lot has been said of owner Steve Gottlieb's shadiness, but I only shared an elevator ride once with the guy. What I do know, though, is that the New Media department did some pretty incredible work. While I was there we were absolutely killing the myspace game at the very height of the site's influence. Lil Jon, especially, was a phenomenon on there, and the guy actually was very involved with updating his pages and promoting "Snap Yo Fingers." He used to send dozens and dozens of photos every week to be uploaded onto his Web site and myspace page while he was out in Vegas working on his album Crunk Rock, WHICH STILL HASN'T COME OUT!!! By the way, the Drum'n'Bass dude whose office I sat in the whole summer is responsible for those artists' sites linked above, and every single page he constructed while I was there was truly dope. Myspace pages that were so much iller than anyone else's, crazy home pages with all sorts of interactivity and cool shit on them. What I'm saying is, I don't know what happened with this label, but it definitely was not the internet promotion.

I do have to call Breihan out on his eulogy of a post, though. Saying "1985-2008" is going a little too far. They might have fired everyone but I'd be willing to bet that the label is NOT dead and gone. Maybe Steve should get a "TVT AIN'T DEAD" chain.

biggest hit of '08?

2008-02-19T15:23:00.004-06:00

One of my favorite music writers just did a really great piece on a few tracks from pop megastars' forthcoming albums, a few records that face a drastically different landscape than the last time time people like Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson prepped new projects. One of these stars is Usher, whose last album was a colossal but whose recent leaked track "Dat Girl" was not well-received. I have a feeling that his newest one will be a little different. I'm gonna have to go with Breihan here and predict that this song will be HUGE, and I hope it is. Shit's great. I am not mad at this new synth thing we've got going on in the second half of this decade, and Polow absolutely kills the epic synth cathedral vibe here. This is a white girl panty-dropper in about 2 months, maybe less. Move over "Flashing Lights"/"Good Life," "Sensual Seduction" and "Boots with the fur!!" or "Apple Bottom Jeans!!!!!!!!!" or "Do you have that one by Flow Rider called get lowowowwww?!?" Actually, just move over T-Pain in general! Although, that may be wishful thinking (see "Who The Fuck Is That")... This new Usher's got this end-of-the-night, blissful feeling to it, and I can see it just soaking the club with happiness and sing-a-longs...Mmmmmmm...

I have to wonder whether this could have been ever better with someone like Ludacris on it, or maybe Big Boi? Jeezy does hold his own though.

Usher - "In This Club" ft. Young Jeezy

what better way to kick things off?

2008-01-30T10:56:00.001-06:00

Damn. One of the things I love about Kanye is the conviction he puts into every single piece of art that he makes. He treats every release like it's a world event, and most of the time it is. He'll never just let something sneak it's way onto the blogs or the radio. He releases snippets of songs ("Can't Tell Me Nothing," "Stronger") with cover art (!), when he finishes a video he posts a screen shot, and now, before any tour dates have been announced, he hits us with this ill tour poster. No one has figured out this brave new world of Web hype like Kanye West. Maybe it's because everything he does is just so fresh.

The look is consistent with his newfound adoration for Daft Punk, but this time with a Star Wars theme. It could have come off mad corny, but the dude pulls it off like the pro he is. (I wonder whose design this is? Murakami?) There's a fine line between ripping stuff off and using it as a jump-off point for your aesthetic and Ye has managed thus far to walk it like a tight rope, but let's just hope he can stay away from the pyramid for his stage show.

Now, I wouldn't normally even bother with thinking about some new big-name, pop superstar tour. I don't think I've ever even been to a show like this. But this one is serious! Rihanna at this point could probably headline her own tour, and she's quickly becoming that one teen pop star who's cool to like. Her songs are actually good and she's gorgeous. Not to mention the return of N*E*R*D* which is both crazy exciting and kind of mind-boggling. Pharrell, who is not only both Kanye's production predecessor and homie but also his equal in the stadium-sized ego division, gets equal billing with Lupe. This tour is gonna be massive and awesome. Has there ever been a more hipster-friendly teenie bopper show???

a new beginning

2008-01-29T15:27:00.000-06:00

So I've finally decided to begin blogging again. I had a short run with it a while back, but this time it will be much different. I'm keeping the blatant ineptitude moniker, but I'm gonna publish through this site rather than the one Dan and I set up in order to keep it low-key, more personal. I don't plan on publicizing this among my real-life friends, which would very easily be accomplished with a simple link on my facebook page. Maybe I'll switch it over if anyone actually ever reads this...

For months, blogging has been one of those "t0-do" things for me, like joining a gym or something like that. I've been needing some kind of therapeutic intellectual release, and it's pretty silly that I haven't just done it already. I spend all day on the internet, obsessively checking message boards and music blogs. At the same time, I'm constantly kicking myself because I feel I don't write enough, or that I don't have a well-rounded portfolio of published clips. The internet has become both my most time-consuming hobby and the bane of my existence, so I figured maybe if I channeled all the energy I put into traversing the Web into writing I may be able to relieve some of this pent up nervousness I have over finding a job in four short months, etc.

Since this blog is going to be my very own confessional, it's important to know a little bit about me. I'm a senior graduating in May, I'm a journalism major and I tend to write about music mostly, although I have not been doing it as much as I should be lately. I'm also a DJ, so much of what ends up on here will most likely be about the music that saves me from obscurity/insanity/killing myself or everybody else. I'm hoping to become a writer, or at least be involved in some sort of media, whether it is online news, traditional newspaper or magazine or even television writing. I would really love to work for a music culture/lifestyle magazine in NYC, so we'll see over the coming months how that works out.

Take out your Beretta on 11/1

2005-10-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

Billboard reports that R. Kelly will be releasing his TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET mini-opera on DVD on Nov. 1st. Not only will the first five volumes be on the disc, but the next seven, too! I'm fucking excited. Now Max Robbins won't be the most ridiculous thing for us to watch.

Steve-O trashed Derek-style on TV

2005-10-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

Steve-O went on the Adam Carolla show, which at press time had not been cancelled, last week. They got the video right here, just click watch now.

Or here.

Weil vs. Sussi

2005-10-02T16:04:00.000-05:00

These kids beat the shit out of each other for like half an hour at 4 am on Saturday night...

Michigan

2005-10-02T15:55:00.000-05:00

So yeah, we beat Michigan.

This kid is THE biggest duschbag I've ever met in my life. He told me I am going to be working for him in 10 years, then Danny spit in his face.

And then we won.

Sussi and Snyder, post-win.

Quote of the Day

2005-10-02T04:50:00.000-05:00

"If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. "

-Jack Handy

Glazer with with funny hair and Grant at the game

2005-10-01T21:26:00.000-05:00

it's an inauguration bitches

2005-10-01T18:53:00.000-05:00

Hello. Today is a very special day. We now have a blog. Check here often, especially if you go to UW Madison, and know myself (Matt) and/or Dan. We will most likely mention you and probably make fun of you, too.

A lot of crazy shit goes on in our lives (maybe Danny will share some of his experiences from last night). We're gonna share it with you bastards, cause we love (hate) you all.

The Badgers won today, 5-0....peace

Blatant Ineptitude

2005-10-01T18:41:00.000-05:00

Today is only day one!