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“You better write about this in your…blog.” – A Phish-in-water story

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July 25, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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On the night of July 12, 2013, four of my friends (I’m not typically one to name names, but for the purposes of this piece and clarity, it seems necessary: Laura, Tommy, Mike and Ray) and I met in Brooklyn, packed into Ray’s black Hyundai and departed the five boroughs. Our destination lay on the South Shore of Long Island, around forty miles and an hour outside of the city. We were to meet another one of my friends, Conor, at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh for what was to be a concert event of the summer, for all the right and wrong reasons. Phish, the legendary genre-disregarding jam band which has been pounding the musical pavement for thirty years, was to perform that night, and if every other Phish show was any indication, it was going to be a night to remember. And so it was.  Read More

Diving Into the Ragga Rabbit Hole

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July 24, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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Genres of music are being broken down into very specific, micro classifications due to the tags that taste makers, music bloggers, and critics fabricate to identify a certain styling that has yet to be labeled. At times, it can be difficult to keep up with but, at the same time, they are very fun to explore. Each week, I will explore a different sub-genre and try to explain the stains left on my shirt after climbing out of each tedious rabbit hole of musical stylings.

Shabba Ranks, one of Ragga’s biggest toasters

“Mercy”, “Crown”, “Blocka”, “Send It Up”, “I’m In It”,“Feds Watching” – besides all being songs that revolve around the nucleus known as Kanye West, they all contain an element of dancehall reggae, specifically Ragga music. While it may seem like a new phenomenon to a younger generation, this infusion of Ragga into Hip-Hop is nothing new. KRS-One, Black Moon, Smif-N-Wessun, Heltah Skeltah, and other East Coast acts of the early ’90s were using the vocal flows of Ragga deejays to formulate boom-bap. Now, Ragga samples are being pumped into trap music and Kanye’s acid house/industrial grind nightmares in a way that seems to clash with the syrupy, pounding production that utilizes it. The closest Ragga comes to a full reincarnation in the current landscape is through artists like Waka Flocka Flame, A$AP Ferg, and Trinidad Jame$ whose high energy, rapid fire delivery, and call and response choruses punctuate their most famous songs. But, what is Ragga and does its stylings have any long time staying power?  Read More

Diving Into the Ratchet Rabbit Hole

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July 17, 2013
Music
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Genres of music are being broken down into very specific, micro classifications due to the tags that taste makers, music bloggers, and critics fabricate to identify a certain styling that has yet to be labeled. At times, it can be difficult to keep up with but, at the same time, they are very fun to explore. Each week, I will explore a different sub-genre and try to explain the stains left on my shirt after climbing out of each tedious rabbit hole of musical stylings.

DJ Mustard, at the vanguard of ratchet

 The murmuring drone of a keyboard starts the track then the barely decipherable watermark drops quickly, “Mustard on the beat, hoe”. What followed was America’s introduction to ratchet music. This was the new sound of Los Angeles: stripped down, bare bones, minimalist, direct approach to rap that received national attention with Tyga’s ubiquitous “Rack City”. It also didn’t hurt that the song became ushered in the arrival of Chris Paul with the Clippers. Even though some in Shreveport claim that they fabricated the sub-genre long before Blake Griffin started time traveling, Los Angeles has successfully appropriated the name for it’s current obsession.

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Magna Carta… Holy Grail: The Rapper Versus the Businessman

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July 12, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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When I think about Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, there’s one lyric that won’t stop bouncing around my brain. It’s eight years old: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” I mean, how else could Jay sell a million records before anyone even knew the album existed?

MCHG was announced in conjunction with a $5 million deal with Samsung that allowed one million of its smartphone users to download the album for free five days before its official release. It’s a testament to Jay-Z The Musician’s immense popularity that Jay-Z The Businessman (or Business, Man) could even make such a deal, but it’s also the epitome of “selling out.” And therein lies the problem with Jay-Z: I love him as a musician. I’m impressed by the way he has progressed from the gangster braggadocio of Reasonable Doubt to the King of the Rap Game braggadocio of Watch the Throne, and everything he’s done in between. I love how he proves you don’t need an MBA to be a brilliant business man. But can he continue play both roles?

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Hudson Riverside Blues

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July 12, 2013
Blues, Music
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BB KING

“Anytime you thinkin’ evil, you thinkin’ ’bout the blues.” – Chester Arthur Burnett, AKA Howlin’ Wolf

Slowly, timidly, the sun set over the Hudson River. Thousands of people had gathered in the World Financial Center, soon to be renamed Brookfield Place, to see an 87-year-old, diabetic black man play a six-stringed instrument he had named “Lucille.” When the backing band took the stage and played its way through a few instrumentals, stretching out seemingly in an effort to prove its worth to the audience, anticipation growing to a fever pitch. The band’s tight transitions and familiarity with the changes in direction one member would make in leading the others, all the while acknowledging the formidable vacancy at center stage.

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Diving Into the Black Metal Rabbit Hole

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July 9, 2013
Music
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Genres of music are being broken down into very specific, micro classifications due to the tags that taste makers, music bloggers, and critics fabricate to identify a certain styling that has yet to be labeled. At times, it can be difficult to keep up with but, at the same time, they are very fun to explore. Each week, I will explore a different sub-genre and try to explain the stains left on my shirt after climbing out of each tedious rabbit hole of musical stylings.

I was reading a review on Deafheaven’s Sunbather which I had assumed was either a dance record or an indie rock act based on its vibrant cover. I was shocked to find that what I was reading about had the surface packaging of a Los Angeles electro outfit. Instead, the review pointed out that there were no popping synth lines or pulsing bass. What was offered on the album was black metal. I pulled up the record on Spotify and started listening. Yup. Black metal. Machine gun drums, shrieking vocals, plodding bass lines and assaulting guitar chords. But there was a sort of shimmering softness to it. A kind of lush instrumentation on the downbeats. Is this the norm for a branch of metal most closely associated with Satanism, paganism, nihilism, I thought. What I found was when you hold Deafheaven’s music in contrast with the other acts it stands out as the brightest, most beautiful sounding thing there is. Everything else indicates that there is darkness ahead. Oh boy.

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Jay-Z Nervously Surveys His Empire: A Review of “Magna Carta… Holy Grail”

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July 7, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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A lot has changed for Jay-Z since 2011’s Watch the Throne, which serves as social commentary from the top wrapped in a luxury item inventory. His empire has grown tentacles, his influence growing almost on a daily basis. The Brooklyn Nets opened their home at the Barclays Center. Then, he sold his share of the team so he could represent athletes with Roc Nation. Even Magna Carta Holy Grail is a record that is more business than personal. The marketing scheme surrounding the album was based on an app which only Samsung Galaxy owners could download on Independence Day – all others had to wait until July 9th. This is Jay-Z cementing his brand while increasing his bottom line. But, all is not golden at the top of the world.

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Diving Into the PBR&B Rabbit Hole

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June 28, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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Genres of music are being broken down into very specific, micro classifications due to the tags that taste makers, music bloggers, and critics fabricate to identify a certain styling that has yet to be labeled. At times, it can be difficult to keep up with but, at the same time, they are very fun to explore. Each week, I will explore a different sub-genre and try to explain the stains left on my shirt after climbing out of each tedious rabbit hole of musical stylings.

PBR&B (also known as indie R&B, alternative R&B, or, yikes, urban contemporary) is a relatively new sub-genre that was slapped with this distinction around the time that artists like Frank Ocean, Miguel, How to Dress Well and Theophilus London started to drop material. The sound of PBR&B is more or less defined by an exchange of ideas from several other genres such as EDM, hip-hop, rock and soul. It draws greatly upon the influence of R&B from generations past and filters it through a modern lens. The best examples of this are Ocean’s Channel Orange and How to Dress Well’s Total Loss. The former utilizes a lot of the same style techniques from legends like Marvin Gaye, Al Green in a lush, hip-hop oriented soundscape, while the latter feels more like a Ralph Tresvant record set to Gregorian chants. The artists that represent the sub-genre also diverge from the common theme that dominates the narratives of its standard bearers.

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Illadelph Halflife

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June 28, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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Questlove

…well Tariq?

So begins the mid-life memoir of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. Thompson, whose drumming with neo-soul outfit The Roots and, consequently, on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon has catapulted him to fringes of the American musical conscience, a place which seems hard-earned and well-deserved, yet perhaps not entirely desired. The dedication, directed toward Roots co-founder Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, sets the tone for an exploration of Thompson’s ego, which rides a strange line between pretension, generally about the history of the music he loves, and modesty, generally about his own career and the experiences which have made him who he is.

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Why You Should Pay Attention to the Finals Now that ‘Yeezus’ Has Dropped

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June 20, 2013
Music, Pop Culture, Sports
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These past few weeks I have been scanning the Internet looking for any new scoop or fresh insight. I checked Flipboard; looking at the different perspectives each passing hour. It was allegedly one of the most exciting things the masses would bear witness to in recent years. And sorry, Gregg Popovich, it wasn’t your team’s stunning grasp of fundamental basketball and how they would fare against Miami’s White Hot Heat. It was Kanye West’s new album, Yeezus, and the rumors of a more experimental sound from the master technician of awesomeness.

A CD, a sticker – Yeezus

Like many others, I have wondered for weeks what this effort would bring to the table. Would this change pop music as we know it? What would the landscape of hip-hop be like after seeing his performance of “Black Skinhead” on SNL? Weeks went by and there was no single. No video. No damn album cover. It was a minimalist’s dream that included, of all things, a Corbusier lamp. Yet, Mr. West’s album was fulfilling considering all the empty space Rick Rubin created. But, I missed something in the process.

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