Jay Electronica ft. Jay-Z & The-Dream: Shiny Suit Theory
Like an MF Doom track if MF Doom tracks gave a shit.
"You being so prosperous is preposterous."

Jay-Z at Yankee Stadium:

New York Times (with slideshow)

Pitchfork (with video)

JAYZ OUT OF RETIREMENT 2


This is why Jay-Z can make Kingdom Come 5 times and still be my favorite rapper.

Jay-Z ft. Kanye West - Hate (or Hater, something like that) DJ Aziz EXCLUSIVE!!!

Ads I Like, Pt. 2

Oargh!

You Feeling Like You Run It, Huh? Now You Know How I Feel

By now, you've probably heard Kanye outrap Jay-Z on "Run This Town." It follows in a long tradition of challengers beating aging greats and nobody caring. Leon Spinks took the heavyweight championship from Muhammad Ali. But, that's not exactly analogous. Muhammad Ali was always an athlete driven by conflicted emotions. All his flashy dancing and ducking in the ring disguised a mind looking for angles to unleash destruction. Everything Ali was, he was in a boxing ring - mouthy, generous, ruthless, joyful and charismatic.

Because of the public personality Ali had and the one Jay-Z has (not to mention that Kanye>Spinks), a flabby Ali being outboxed by Spinks is not quite the same as Kanye's scenestealer on "Run This Town." A better example may be when Ricky Davis dunked on Michael Jordan. Jordan, like Jay-Z, is not comfortable giving himself over to his public. There is an impenetrability about both of them, a wary awareness that most eyes are on them and a tension in their shoulders as if they're braced against that responsibility. They are not uncomfortable in the spotlight (because they know how good they are), they're just not fully themselves there. Instead, we see two-dimensional superheroes - Jay-Hova and Air Jordan, dodging bullets and defying gravity. In fact, a determination to actualize the myths created around them seems to be both of their motivation to succeed. MJ wanted to be the greatest player ever because he needed to be the champion that Nike/Gatorade/Hanes had created. In public, he flattened himself so that he could be a better fit for everyone. Endorsements begat championships begat endorsements and the tongue-wag was trademarked. Over 25 years of public life, there was only one moment when the cracks appeared - clutching the trophy and crying for his lost father. Jay's image control is even better. A poor kid from Marcy rapped like he was the man until he got on the lists and, eleven albums later, I can't name a single song that Jay's sounded really real. When the beat calls for something somber, he spins a yarn (usually in third-person) about how in order to survive you gotta learn to live with regrets. It can be brilliant (like on the underappreciated In My Lifetime cut, "Lucky Me"), but it's a crutch. He can't see 'em coming down his eyes, so he's gotta make the song cry.

Back to Jordan: During the first year of Jordan's second unretirement, what should have been a sedate (and likely sleep-inducing) mid-season matchup between the Cavs and the Wizards was given a jolt by Ricky Davis, the perpetual knucklehead. Oblivious to protocol, Ricky broke the cardinal "no-meaningful-quotes-during-pregame-press-conferences" rule and promised to dunk on Michael Jordan when the Cavs met up with the Wizards later in the season. Unfortunately, no YouTube footage exists of the actual incident, so I have to rely on the vagaries of my memory. In the waning moments of the game, Davis reached into a passing lane and was able to poke an errant pass away. Sprinting towards the basket with the ball, no player was in the vicinity of Davis except for Jordan who was well back. Davis slowed down to entice Jordan's natural defensive instinct. MJ turned on the hustle to try to save a bucket. Just as the greatest player to have ever graced the hardwood closed in, Davis leapt up and put down a fairly pedestrian one-handed jam. Then, he celebrated like Jordan after he gutted Ehlo's Cavs.

You see, Tyree Ricardo (Ricky) Davis idolized Michael Jordan. He taped every one of MJ's NBA on NBC games, humming the theme song in his excitement. As soon as the game finished, Little Ricky would rewind and watch it again looking for the sleight of hand behind Jordan's magic. Soon Ricky became the Michael Jordan of his podunk Iowa town, wearing 23 for all his high school and AAU games. Come senior year, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill still hadn't offered him a scholarship despite the letters (handwritten and increasingly desperate) that he'd sent to Dean Smith. The Heels weren't interested because they already had an explosive swingman in Vince Carter and rumors of Ricky's erratic behavior had begun to surface. So, like his hero MJ, Ricky decided he would go the biggest school in his state and wear 23. After a year at Iowa, he entered the draft early (even though he wasn't a certain first-rounder) so that he might still have the opportunity to play against Michael. He was picked 21st by the Charlotte Hornets - he took it as a sign that he was finally going to North Carolina. But, before Ricky got the chance to play against him, Jordan retired a second time. The Hornets found Ricky later that day in an equipment closet playing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" on an unplugged electric cavaquinho.

Ricky Davis had that Wizards game circled on his calendar with sparkles and hearts from the moment he heard that Jordan was coming out of retirement. Jordan probably didn't know what team he was playing until the day before. To advance, you have to kill your idols.

Hova

I don't have a beard and Santa Claus aint black...

Nice Beat

Symbolic

I Recommend...

Magic Eye

As music become seemingly more plentiful and actually more available, more and more people are asking themselves where to start. It's easy enough to download every single Neil Young album, but you have to play the right one first or the context of the rest could be forever skewed. So the question remains, what Neil Young album should you play first? (Answer: After the Gold Rush if you want to hear him explore the full emotional range of his nasal twang)

Q: What Radiohead album most expertly blends their experimentalism and songcraft?
A: In Rainbows which somehow has supplanted OK Computer & The Bends as both the best introduction to Jonny Greenwood & Co. and the best of their output.

Q: What Stones album captures their jaunty sexuality before it dissolved into caricature?
A: Probably Beggars Banquet, but nods to Aftermath for coming close.

Q: What Jay-Z album comes closest to supporting everything that he would say about his own greatness?
A: Resoundingly, The Blueprint - although the dirty little secret is that The Blueprint sounds much more ordinary now that everyone else sullied its, ahem, blueprint.

Like scientific hypotheses, these are simple questions with complex answers. And there should be some guidelines for recommending albums. Here goes:

1. Start at beginning and work forward.
It takes a musician her whole life to write her first album and sometimes 6 months to create the next one. So it makes sense that there's a humanist honesty in the gore of It's Dark and Hell is Hot that no other DMX album even approaches. Familiarity has not yet bred contempt, so you can belt "Yellow" out along with the jukebox without wondering what the hell Chris Martin is ever talking about. As the musician's introduction to the world, the songs on the first album will forever (and paradoxically) be fresher.

2. Don't get too slick or overthink it.
I have a friend that used to work at a record store. One day, an old white guy (his age and skin color matter here) approached him and asked my friend to recommend an album as his introduction to rap. You see, the old white guy decided - in 2006 - that it was time to see what this whole rap business was all about. One can only assume that this was on his list right behind "Stop by witch trials" and just before "Go to doctor for weekly bloodletting." Anyway, my friend led him over to the Dead Prez section and sent him home with Let's Get Free totally unprepared for the shock that awaited him. The next day, someone called the store to say that the old man had died of a heart attack in the middle of "Assassination."
OK, the last sentence was a lie. But, if that guy had asked me to recommend one rap album as an introduction to the genre, I would probably hand over Ready to Die or Illmatic or Black on Both Sides or Aquemini or something else unassailable and representative and hope that some of it stuck.

3. Choose the most "pop-y" album that still fits in the artists' overall body of work.
The idea that pop music or a pop sensibility is a guilty pleasure or a changeword for sellout confounds me. I don't think any artist sets out to create something that won't be appreciated by the masses - that's like aiming the starter's pistol at your foot. In fact, most of the backlash against popularity seems to come from the listeners, niche audiences and fringe elements that don't feel so interesting now that their favorite band is on iTunes' most downloaded list.


Even following these 3 general guidelines, I've strained to pick an introductory album for Animal Collective. Usually I rely on their breakout (as far as avant-garde noise pop bands "break out") album Feels to answer the question, but that always felt like a canned answer. While its definitely overflowing with striking moments, the dewy-eyed elation of much of Feels does not convey all that AC can be. The problem is that I don't believe that their work pre-Feels holds up from start to finish and Strawberry Jam is also too inconsistent, so Feels used to win by default. Luckily, Merriweather Post Pavilion now exists. From now on, my suggested listen for Animal Collective will be Merriweather Post Pavilion. I don't want to write about how it's the same Animal Collective, but more danceable or talk about what's so good about it.

I'm just recommending it as a starting point if you ain't up on things.


Here's some songs from Merriweather that I also recommend:
Animal Collective - Brother Sport
Animal Collective - My Girls

Mr. Carter

My list of my dream collaborations is now one duo shorter. To me, "Hello Brooklyn" was one of the most disappointing moments in music history. I looked at the tracklist for American Gangster and was all abuzz for track 4, but when it finally came around it only had Weezy (F. Baby) on the chorus and Jigga rapping 8th-grade lunchroom freestyle bullshit like "I'll lay Flat in your Bush." As far as Jay-Z songs go, it wasn't even bonus-disc material.

But, if that was required for "Mr. Carter" to happen, then praise be to all B-sides with awkward choruses. Dwayne Carter sets the table with a typical stream-of-consciousness verse with an especially sizzurp-addled section addressing hating seasons. Then, Sean Carter (Young!) appears with a free-association "top this" flurry of a verse that lights a fire up under Wayne's ass for a monster last verse. As Wayne said, "Colossal."


Without further ado:
Lil Wayne ft. Jay-Z: Mr. Carter

Jay-Z

Cause all beef return well done filet mignon
The Don, smell of Dom on my breath as I
yawn, (slow) when you hoes try to con a pro
-Jay-Z, "Cashmere Thoughts"

The self-proclaimed God MC is back with a few solid guest appearances...


Get em here


GO OBAMA! ¡Cambio! ¡Si se puede!

I know what you like...

Lately, Takashi Murakami, mastermind of the Superflat postmodern art movement and those Louis Vuitton patterns with rainbow colors, has been getting a surprising amount of press. First, he was selected to create the eye-searing cover for Kanye West's Graduation. Then, his work was shown at the Gagosian. And now, he has a five-month installation at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art.

All this is surprising because his art is compelling in an uncomfortable way. Often it's dainty, but there is always a sinister edge to the sweetness. A canvas exploding with smiling flowers quickly dissolves into a depiction of cold, cheshire grins and empty eyes. Upon closer inspection, a busty jump-roper is actually leaping over a stream of her own breast milk or a nude male figure's lasso is made from a stream of his semen. Outside of its obvious references to manga and anime, there is little in his work that evokes familiarity, closeness, or warmth. The spareness and artificiality of his work is overwhelming. It never takes from nature unless to subvert it and any humans depicted are only loosely based on real people. Murakashi peddles alienation and disaffection, so it makes sense that Pharell is a fan of his.

I've always felt that the success of the Neptunes is one of the weirder pop phenomenons. Their production aesthetic is equal parts dissolution, dissonance, and devolution with no consistent effort for communion. This is why even casual music fans can name the samples on Kanye albums, but most music critics would be hard-pressed to name one sample from any Neptunes-produced track. The aptly-named Neptunes don't hark back or borrow to give the listener a sense of comfort, instead they chop up, configure, and package their drums and loops into something that could exist on another planet in some minimalist future. That packaging, that "sheen" is what the surface of the Neptunes' art shares most with Murakami (whose canvases often look coated in a layer of brilliantine).

With paradoxical beliefs in withdrawal and gloss as their canon, it only follows that the Neptunes would construct a speaker-rattler like "Grindin" - which is basically a precisely-executed ode to percussion. "Milkshake" and "Drop It Like It's Hot" also feature as successful attempts to make shiny fuzz. But, there are also instances when Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo let the yang overpower the yin and produce syrupy tracks like "Beautiful," and "Excuse Me Miss." However, you still hear their moral conflict raging on as the drums refuse to cooperate on "Excuse Me Miss." "I Know," one of two Neptunes-produced tracks on the leaked version of American Gangster, is another exemplary tortured soundtrack in the Neptunes' catalog.

The "big fact" about the Neptunes is that Chad Hugo is the peanut butter and Pharrell is the jelly, i.e Chad brings the foundation, bass, and substance and Pharrell brings the swirls, sweetness, and prettiness. So, I'll blame the unidentifiable chimes on this track on Pharrell. These chimes chatter on behind the track, stealing the show, while the synthesizers and bulbous drums struggle for dominance. Lost in the background, I didn't get around to listening to the lyrics until the fourth time I heard the song.

Meant as a song that explores heroin addiction through the lens of a complicated relationship, Jay-Z double-entendres himself to death on this song. Saving the trump card line for the end, Jay-Z stuffs every verse with words and phrases that could apply to a relationship kept together by sex or a debilitating heroin addiction before signing off with, "Damn I miss the days when you needed the D." The delivery works beautifully. After all, love as drug addiction is an apt analogy. Though, if I ignore the love and listen to the song as just a tale about a woman addicted to heroin (a drug derived from poppies), it does put an unshakably tragic spin on the song.

I guess flowers aren't as innocent as they look.

Buy American Gangster now

American Gangster

Link Dead



Buy American Gangster now

I Partied For A While, Now I'm Back to the Block

So, Jay-Z is releasing a new album in November. The album has a tracklist, a first single, and some sweet cover art.

All of this was about as expected as a shart.

The track bumps too. It bumps in the way that hip-hop singles don't bump nowadays. It is mellow and menacing. It's familiar and new. It's got Jay-Z and Pharrell, but it isn't overpowered by the stench of Top 40 ambition. In fact, it smells like album fodder. It feels like a "22 Twos" or "Threat" kind of track. A strong song that keeps the album moving, but isn't necessarily intended to draw radio play. An accidental favorite.

And Jay-Z sounds like a Boss on this joint. His voice drips with quiet menace. His flow glides all over the breaks in the beat, contrasting against them at some points then moving in lockstep moments later. The lyrics are intertwined, the metaphors pile up on each other.

Blame Oliver North and Iran Contra / I ran contraband that they sponsored / Before this rhyming stuff we was in concert

It is a lesson in technical mastery. And, in typical Hov fashion, it all sounds so easy. There has been much said about how Rakim was the inspiration for Jay switching up the flow, but I could give a damn from whence the flow came. It's perfect.

So, here's hoping that he makes 11 songs at least this good on American Gangster. Songs like this may not go plat, but they will go a long way to soothing those people that felt bruised by the hour-long Exelero ad called Kingdom Come. Anyway, I should have learned from that album, so I'm gonna calm down. I'm gonna temper my excitement. Besides, my Radiohead digital download comes in 6 (!!!) days.