In Which Pitchfork Makes Sense of Lady GaGa and Millenial Pop

Pitchfork's recent list of the top 500 songs of the 00's seemed a bit premature, as it's 2009. I'm sure it's just chock full of misplaced songs, missing entries, and love for artists who in no way deserve it. But to be perfectly honest, I haven't combed through the list at all, because the particulars don't concern me. I can't even think of 500 songs from the last 9 or so years, let alone rank them.

But if you're interested in what's been happening in pop over the last decade, then check out Tom Ewing's wrap-up essay, "The Decade in Pop." It's one of the best pieces of music crit I've read in a long time. He distills the list (I assume) into a thoughtful critique of just what the hell happened in the 00's, and how it shaped a new pop. I don't buy it all (the argument that American Idol is music criticism on a national scale seems a little flimsy to me), but what I kept thinking while reading this piece, which seems destined for next year's Best Music Writing anthology, was "this is on Pitchfork?!" Now, I don't hate Pitchfork as much as some, in fact I think it's a pretty alright central voice in online music writing, if at times a bit heavy handed. But aside from the odd well-written album review, I don't think I've ever read such a thought provoking piece on their site. Maybe it's that I haven't been paying attention all that much. Go check it out.

The Decade in Pop [pitchfork]
The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s [pitchfork]

If You Read Only One Account of the Recording of We Are The World This Year...

Taking the death of Michael Jackson a very loose reason for the post, you're going to want to check out this summary of the events that occurred at the recording of "We Are The World," the song that ended famine in Africa once and for all. (NOTE: I did not do a lot of background research, but I assume the combined power of Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Al Jarreau, Bette Middler, Paul Simon, Dan Akroyd, Cyndi Lauper, et al. was unstoppable. It was, right?)

At exactly 5.57am, Dylan's lines are played back over the monitors. Lionel Richie falls flat on his back, eyes closed, then dances awhile, waving his ladies' Reebok aerobic shoes in the air.

Pretty much all of it is that quotable. One more for the road:

Soon after, Al Jarreau corners Dylan by the piano. He's choked up. 'Bobby', Jarreau says, holding back tears, 'in my own stupid way I just want to tell you I love you.' Dylan slinks away without even looking at him. Jarreau walks to the door of the studio, looks back at Dylan, cries 'My idol,' bursts into tears and leaves.

It's basically unbridled pop music porn, a bit flighty but filled with fascinating little nuggets like the ones above. Also, Bob Dylan: not a hugger.

When Bob Met Michael Jackson [bob dylan encyclopedia]
via The Roundup [goings on/new yorker]

"Bad Habits" Official Video Premiere

The second video from Maxwell's gorgeous BLACKsummers'night was just released. In it, he reluctantly(ish) cheats on his wife with actress Kerry Washington and shows us that while on hiatus, he apparently was working out 7 hours a day. I need a minute alone. Or like, an hour.



Maxwell "Bad Habits" [YouTube]

TDOS Obituaries: Baatin

Co-founding Slum Village member Titus "Baatin" Glover passed earlier this weekend and was found in Detroit this Saturday. The reason for his death is unknown at this time, but foul play, which had been suspected, was ruled out yesterday. The 35 year-old rapper and Detroit native had told the Detroit Free Press that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia right after he left Slum Village in 2002, but had rejoined the group, performing with them at the Detroit Rock the Bells tour date recently and shooting the video for their single, "Cloud 9" (featuring Marsha Ambrosius, formerly of Floetry) off of their forthcoming album Villa Manifesto this past week. He will be missed.

My favorite Baatin contributions after the jump.







Slum Village "Climax (Girl Shit)" [YouTube]
Common f. Slum Village "Thelonius" [YouTube]
Slum Village "Forth & Back (Rock Music)" [YouTube]

These Stank Ass Rappers Make Me Sick.

This 2000 clip sums up precisely how I feel about the majority of R&B/soul (Maxwell, Erykah and Saadiq you are excluded; thank you for continuing to make music that gives me pause) music that is being promoted/released thus far in 2009.



The Original Kings of Comedy [YouTube]

Weather Forecast for Thursday, August 6th: It's Gonna Rain Purple

A friendly reminder from Two Day Old Shit:

This summer marks the 25th anniversary of Purple Rain, the greatest piece of semi-autobiographical celluloid to ever be created. It spawned the greatest soundtrack of all time (while simultaneously giving us an album that successfully chronicled the Seven Deadly Sins), managed to demonstrate Prince's phenomenal ventriloquist skills and gave the world the greatest power ballad it will ever know.

A simple tale really: a troubled yet talented Kid meets a total smokeshow named Apollonia. They fall in love and wear matching hoop earrings. Tragedy strikes and the Kid blows it by perpetuating the same violent cycle that his talented but troubled father created, and almost loses Apollonia to his dapper and smarmy musical nemesis, who has an amazing man slave named Jerome. The Kid finally learns to use his words, not his fists, and channels his frustration and anger into musical collaboration. He then wins the hearts of the club goers, his long suffering band and of course, his girl, in the end.

So, in celebration of the glory that is Purple Rain, Celebrate Brooklyn! is presenting the Purple Rain Sing-A-Long, which invites you to belt out "I Would Die 4 U" and "Computer Blue" to your heart's content, surrounded by the lovely Prospect Park Bandshell and hundreds of other adoring Paisley Park fans who would gladly purify themselves in any body of water Prince asked them to. Movie starts at 7:30pm, a suggested donation of $3 is encouraged.

C U There.

Maxwell is BACK. And, I Still Would.

Oh hey! Its been a long time, and I know I shouldn't left you, without a dope post to step to. But sometimes, life (moving, job hunting, wallowing in your post-graduate, unemployed, broke and single pity) gets in the way. And when that happens, it usually takes something extra extra extra special to snap me out of my bummer fest. Luckily, my favorite Brooklyn born West Indian/Puerto Rican neo-soul wet dream has graced us with the first installment in an upcoming trilogy of pure unadulterated soul. Ladies and gentlemen, Maxwell is back.

It's been eight years since his last and third album, the lovely and shimmering Now (you know, the record with the super sensual and ethereal cover of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work") and the countertenor has been laying very low ever since. Then, sometime last year, some whispers about a new project began floating around and he started doing some promo gigs. But it wasn't until he showed up at last year's BET Awards and performed "Simply Beautiful" in honor of Al Green that people besides die hard fans truly remembered him and remembered why he was so fantastic. To put it bluntly, he killed it (the Youtube linked there is great because towards the end a woman filming it starts singing along super off key to his hit "Fortunate") and if you were wearing pants they probably were off. He had cut off his trademark locks, but nothing else had changed: same sexual charisma, same gorgeous voice and the same Marvin Gaye circa "Come Live With Me Angel" vibe. And at this year's BET Awards (which I will not discuss further FUCK YOU JOE JACKSON YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID) he performed the first single off of BLACKsummers'night, "Pretty Wings."

I have always thought if Maxwell's voice was anything other than his voice (uh, stay with me, this is going somewhere I promise) it would be the manifestation of laying in the world's most luxurious bed with the one person you wanted the most, just rolling around touching forever, while the temperature was a perfect balmy warmth, and your skin was bathed in shades of gold from a Sun that didn't burn. Hunger, anger, jealousy and insecurities didn't exist, and neither did clammy sweat. That's what I have always believed. Always (the song "Bad Habits" perhaps best demonstrates my hypothesis).

Well, the album dropped two days ago and for the past two days it's all I have been ingesting. A farewell to a love lost, the record is at once heartbreaking and uplifting, stimulating and numbing. Lush and vibrant horns (best illustrated on my second favorite cut "Cold"), soft guitar and pleading vocals ("Playing Possum") and the same haunting, beautiful yearning ("Fistful of Tears") that he always has exuded in his textured, emotive vocals ("Help Somebody") make this very worth the hiatus he put us through.

2010 and 2011 should give us the rest of his trilogy (and dare I call it too soon, trifecta?) but until then, don't treat this like a comeback. He never really left.

Please Let This Be The Song Of The Summer

So, today a coworker sent over "LOL," a new Trey Songz/Gucci Mane/Soulja Boy collaboration about... well, I don't know really. I guess it's about Twitpic and sexting? Either way, I kind of can't stop listening to the stream over at The Fader blog. Kind of stupid and totally awesome is the only way I can think of to describe lyrics like "Shorty just text me, say she wanna sex me/ LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face/Shorty sent a a twitpic saying come and get this/ LOL smiley face, LOL smiley face." Also in bonkers hip hop today, this ode to a combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell.

Trey Songz f. Gucci Mane & Soulja Boy, "LOL" [the fader]
Das Racist, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper. Remix)" [the burning ear]

I Can't Think of Ten Great Ones Either

You guys know how I like to complain about hip hop all the time, right? How no one makes decent LPs, no one cares about their live show, no one gives a fuck? Well, it really warmed my heart this weekend to see this piece by Free Darko blogger Dr. Lawyer Indian Chief (seriously) on the Straight Bangin blog. It's at once thoughtful and off-the-wall bonkers--in the good way.

Basically, Dr. LIC was asked to make a list of his top ten hip hop records since 2000, and he could only think of about six, so he penned this condemnation of the genre instead. It contains nuggets like:

That black male figurehead has been replaced by a white woman. Jim Jones would rather have Cory Kennedy on his jock than Chuck D at this point. Not exactly sure why this is (is it simple economics that white girls drive the market-->get white dudes to buy stuff/white people = 80% of America = buying public?), but it is. This whole steez has led to pointless Feist-sampling/MIA-jocking/Lady GaGa-collab’ing/KANYE STATING THAT HE KNOWS WHO PETER BJORN AND JOHN AND ANIMAL COLLECTIVE IS SO THAT HIPSTERS ARE LIKE WOW THAT IS SO SURPRISING and other nonsense that has generally resulted in music that sounds like the opposite of The Infamous or Livin’ Proof. Aside from the Lykke Li/Drake collab, which I really dug, rappers’ pursuit of validation of white women has created this super-faux “Pitchfork Media got Pharoahe Monch to play so it’s like the Roxy with Talking Heads and Afrika Bambattaa and Debbie Harry” in one room. Except it isn’t. It fucking sucks.

That's what I'm talking about! He also actually says something negative about Dilla and then backs it up with so much evidence, you can't even get mad, just kind of disappointed in yourself for never realizing it. I'm gonna make you clickthrough for that line, though. And I'm not gonna repeat what he has to say about ?uestlove, but suffice it to say it chilled me to my core. And:

Here’s an interesting experiment: Pull out your Ice Cube and Paris albums from the Bush I presidency and listen to their anti-prez raps. Shit makes waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more sense and is oddly far more topical than any political rap produced in the past ten years. Putting the strange new Obama-era aside for a moment, let’s focus on Bush II era political rap, one of the greatest creative letdowns of our time. I remember reading some article in URB magazine right after 9/11 about how the fuckedupedness of the time would spur a renaissance in political rap. Never happened. Instead groups like dead prez et al. made the hip-hop equivalent of Farenheit 9-11, conspiratorial, jumbled oversimplification with an easily digestible “Fuck Bush” tagline.

Yeah! And he's looking at you too, Jigga:

Jay and Nas became de facto kingz after Biggie died for no real reason other than there was a throne to fill. This was also during the point in their careers that they both started snoozing hard. [...] These days we can’t accept an empty throne, so we have been stepping over each for the past few years trying to give the “crown” to people like Cam’ron, the Game, and Weezy. And seriously, I love Lil’ Wayne, but I once tried to tally the number of instances on The Carter III where dude makes an “I’m the shit”/actual pooping pun, and I lost track. The guy is great, Top 30 all time, sure. But, like I said, let’s have some standards.

Alright I guess I'm just reprinting the post at this point, but you get the idea, there's much more to it and if you care at all about the quality of popular music (hip hop, indie or otherwise) these days, get over there and take a look.

All That Glitters Ain't Shit [straight bangin]
(Thanks for the heads up, Jonathan)

Don't Feel Right: The Roots Picnic, Festival Pier, Philadelphia, 6.6.09

So, remember when Isabelle interviewed ?uestlove for the Weekly Dig in January and asked him about the status of a then-unannounced 2nd annual Roots Picnic in Philly? We posted the interview here on the site, too. ?uesto told Isabelle that this year was going to be a two-day affair, among other tentative plans:

ID: Are you guys going to do another Roots Picnic this summer? I went to the first one.
?: Yes, we are. And this time I promise it's gonna be an actual picnic. We're new at this festival-throwing thing, so we forgot to figure in fatigue of the audience and how to protect them from the sun.

Well, a few months later the official announcement came: the second Picnic was going to be a one day festival again (fine by me, as I day tripped from NYC) featuring a lineup that was as amazing as ?uest alluded to. Antibalas, TV on the Radio, Black Keys, Santigold and the centerpiece of the lineup, Public Enemy playing the entirety of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, backed by not only the Roots but Antibalas as well.

Before I tell you how the performances were, I have a bone to pick. Festival Pier is a terrible, terrible venue. It's more of a concrete parking lot than a pier. The drinks are overpriced and the food is terrible. I will admit that all of this so far is par for the course when it comes to outdoor shows. Sad but true. That, I can get over. But you're gonna put thousands of people in the hot sun all day with no water fountain or cooler or anything? Last year, the weather was way worse--95 degrees and no cloud cover, as I recall. Maybe that's why they set up water coolers for everyone to stay hydrated. This year was much cooler and partly cloudy, so maybe we just didn't deserve complimentary water? Maybe I'm old fashioned or naive, but I believe that if you have a ten hour music festival you need to look after the crowd, especially when most of them paid upwards of $60 to attend. Adding insult to injury, security made me dump out my water on the way in ("For all we know, you have vodka in that bottle") and told me I could fill it up at the water fountain inside. The nonexistent water fountain. It must be the one that appears once you start hallucinating from lack of fluids. This was beyond an inconvenience; it was a risk to everyone's health, and basically felt like a huge 'fuck you' from the venue and the promoters. Of course, water was for sale at $3.50 a bottle, if you could afford it. Judging from the number of people I saw pass out (I counted five in my immediate vicinity) not everybody could swing that. People were dropping like flies all due to the negligence of those in charge. I'm not sure whose fault this was--Live Nation, Penn's Landing, the Roots, Okayplayer, or some other party all of whom I'm sure would just blame the other for the problems and call it a day--but it was severely disappointing. In my decade long career of concert going, I have never felt so abused and mistreated, which is saying quite a lot, since this is an industry that generally tries to do just that to its customers whenever possible. Perhaps worst of all, it made ?uestlove's words on this very blog feel fake.

So how was the music? It was phenomenal. The Roots always bring their A-game, and Antibalas' set was one of the most dynamic, sonically satisfying sets of my concert going career. Black Keys were a welcome break, bringing their stripped down blues licks to a crowd that seemed mostly disinterested. Their loss. Santigold, who bailed on the first Roots Picnic at the last minute, played a passable set marred by terrible sound (bass and voice turned to 11, drums buried in the mix) but hey, her backup dancers were pretty cool. Too bad she didn't show up last year, when I still cared. Busdriver played a great set, but as one of the only traditional emcee-and-a-DJ hip hop sets of the day didn't really stand up to a lot of the live instrumentation that was going on. Fun to watch for sure, though. TV on the Radio's set was hot like fire, with the Antibalas horns backing them up. It seemed like TVOTR were sort of the symbol of the day--a band encompassing rock, hip hop, soul, blues, and world music all in one place. You know, like Santigold thinks she does, only successful. The last act of the night was the Roots, who of course rocked the house (25 minute version of "You Got Me," anyone?), although I would have liked to see them play a longer, more wide-ranging set like they did at the 2008 Picnic. To be fair, the show was supposed to be over by the time they took the stage, so maybe they were pressed for time.

As expected, the highlight of the day was the Public Enemy/Roots/Antibalas set. It Takes a Nation... is one of the most dark, dense, difficult albums in the history of hip hop and watching these musicians breathe all of this life into the work was nothing short of a revelation. This performance actually exceeded my greatest expectation for it. The Second Annual Roots Picnic was a fantastic day of music, marred by conditions that had me fantasizing on a Woodstock '99 style uprising.

Please guys, next year, can we do this somewhere else?