Forest For The Trees.

So. This started out as my usual waking up at 12:40pm to my cousin/roommate making me eggs and a warmed up chocolate croissant while I YouTube Aaliyah music videos Sunday afternoon slothing, but quickly turned into me searching for my favorite videos that take place in the woods. (I don't know either, just go with it.) As you may or may not know, I recently did a post about my top roller skating vids and now I am kind of inspired to continue to delve deep into the recesses of my mind/the World Wide Web to continue to bring you some of the best of the best xy and z themed vidjahs. Let's get started!

From the jump, babygirl usually preferred the ill Mad Max vibe. Biker chains, leather, eye patches, cages, post Apocalyptic settings...but in "4 Page Letter" she flipped her "California Love" game on its head and added a vegetative level. Part secret night club (it's called Redemption), part Sherwood forest outpost, part Lord of the Flies, this video is all kinds of dark, wooded futuristic fantasy. That ring of fire seduction dance? Ay yi yiiiiiiii.



Next up. Deborah Cox. The first time I saw this video on the Box, I was like, wait, HOW DID HE GET HERE? She's in some remote postbellum bayou house chilling with her girl all sad and alone and then BAM dude shows up with his biker crew all like, what? We always hang out on this dusty secluded forest road in tight tanks. The backdrop is all weeping willows, verandas, dirt roads, charmingly quaint black folks, misty lush greenery, abandoned one room churches and creaky shacks and even at the age of 12, I was like, hmmm, whoever did the treatment for this is romanticizing a certain something that maybe they shouldn't be...Apparently she's Canadian. She didn't know any better.



Speaking of Canucks, here we have Nelly Furtado (remember when she was the truth?) and the first half of "Turn Off The Light." Mud, spooky trees, creeping dancers and a DJ cutting in the brush. The video then takes a few different artistic paths (all of which I'm kind of into, even if they make no cohesive sense) but up until about the 1:37 mark it's straight up fabulous forestry.



Helen Folasade Adu. No one, and I mean no one, can pull off wooded nymph like this woman. Can you even fathom being lost in the woods (both theoretically and literally) and coming across this vision of beauty and salvation? No, you can't. Don't bother answering. From Wikipedia:

A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing; their amorous freedom sets them apart from the restricted and chaste wives and daughters of the Greek polis. They dwell in mountains and groves, by springs and rivers, and also in trees and in valleys and cool grottoes.

NAILED IT.



Jumping to the other end of the classy spectrum, we have Jenny From the Block I Would Never Like to Live On. Technically, this takes place in a jungle, but that is just another form of forest so it totally counts and besides, this is one of the most epic pre-millennium videos of all time. GOOD LORD DOES THAT PARTY LOOK LIKE FUN. I think we all can agree, we would have much rather been watching the countdown with La Lopez, under the glow of green lasers surrounded by shimmering dewy rain forest babes (her homegirls, duh) at her (idea of an) Amazon rave. Instead I was in my friend's basement drinking sparkling cider watching MTV secretly hoping that the world didn't end because I was only 13 and HAD SO MUCH LIVING TO DO.

I must say though: a French mani is NOT tropical chic, Jen.



OK, so technically this isn't a classic wooded setting per se, but it is an abandoned and overgrown with vegetation mental institution/kingdom/disco and that's good enough for my purposes so honorable mention for Missy Elliott! (Disabling issue, my b)

I would include MGMT's "Electric Feel" and Crazy Town's "Butterfly" but they both are basically the same thing to me so I won't.

Roll Bounce: Celebrating the Greatest Roller Skating Vids

Today is the kind of day that needs this. Now, I have only roller skated a handful of times myself (R.I.P. Rainbo Roller Rink!) but if I had my druthers, this would be my preferred method of wheel based entertainment. Don't get it twisted though: I do NOT condone roller blading. That is just goofy. I'm talking cruising around a rink with your homies while disco and R&B blares and fools have roller skate dance offs and you try not to clutch the side of the rink too much because your crush is totally there but being a cool guy and like, not skating just hanging out by the arcade leaning on the Hoop Fever game all Catalano like and you are just like OMG THEY ARE PLAYING DRU HILL WHY WON'T YOU HOLD MY HAND AND GLIDE INTO PARADISE WITH ME?

Yeah, I saw Roll Bounce in the theaters.

De La Soul - Music - More Music Videos

Yes. Yes. And, yes.

Just read this most excellent piece from Jozen Cummings over at The Awl. I urge you to check it out, especially for this excerpt:

It's not so much that the term "hipster R&B" is inaccurate. I'm no hipster, but if The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are getting mad love from people who consider themselves hipsters, then I suppose hipsters can call it whatever makes them feel comfortable. But as non-hipsters like to say, let's keep it all the way real. Calling it "hipster R&B" is a nice way of saying it's R&B that white people like (black hipsters notwithstanding), and here's my problem with that: It's myopic, lazy, and it sounds to me like a form of musical segregation that's not entirely based on genre.

Here's a proposal—how about we call it "nappy-headed pop"? If that sounds even slightly politically incorrect or lazy, then you understand my frustrations with the term "hipster R&B." It's not with the term "hipster"; it's with any hipster or white critic labeling a black artist "an R&B artist" just because he or she sings a little.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Oh, and also:

All this automatic categorization of black artists who sing harkens back to the social roots of the R&B genre. Before R&B was even called R&B, the record industry and magazines like Billboard categorized it as "race music," shorthand for any black artists who sang with a backbeat behind them. For years, white artists who made similar music never had to worry about being designated as "race music" until 1958, when Billboard began using "R&B" instead. The switch made it possible for acts like the late, great Teena Marie and current artists like Robin Thicke to chart in the R&B category. Unfortunately, many critics still referred (and refer) to those artists with the term "blue-eyed soul," which is a nice way of saying they're white singers that black people like. Equally hackneyed is calling black singers who white people like "hipster R&B"—or, for that matter, "nappy-headed pop".


You Say Hipster R&B, I Say Nappy-Headed Pop. Either Way, It's Offensive. [The Awl]

This Looks Promising.

Stones Throw via Fuel TV's The Daily Habit

Music Journalism Time Machine

Fourteen years ago yesterday, I was at Alexis Maule's house on the South Side of Chicago in her downstairs TV room, and MTV had the breaking news that Christopher Wallace, better known to us as The Notorious B.I.G., had been killed. This was only a handful of months after Tupac Shakur's murder, and two years after Selena's, and to date, those had been the only musicians whose deaths had shook my young self up. I remember the news about Biggie being the most shocking to me, however. Mostly because I had just started really listening to hip-hop seriously and Ready to Die in particular. Childhood me liked Pac alright, but not the way I liked Big. Not at all. As a 25 year-old, I could give you a concise and complex reasoning as to why I prefer him over Shakur, and some of those reasons would be lyrical prowess, cadence in his flow, overall production quality, growth as an artist over time (albeit short, for both) and contributions to the soundtrack of my life. But as a kid, who just knew she loved music that she loved, and had only the tiniest, babiest inkling of why, it was all about resonance. Not resonance as in, I understand, I too have Everyday Struggles, but more like, this music makes me feel something that I have never felt before. Simple and pure. Naturally, emotional response plays the largest part in my draw to any music to this day, as I believe it should for all, but when I was young, that was all there was. And that was all that mattered.

Anyways. Here's a fantastic piece from ego trip's "Chairman" Jeff(erson) Mao, written for The Source for their April 1997 issue. A few weeks after it hit the stands, Biggie was gone. Really great article. Makes me wish I had been born several years earlier.

The Notorious B.I.G. RIP: Final Source Magazine Interview [egotripland.com]

Open Post: A Haiku I Made From Sade Lyrics

crown you with my heart
i can't give you more than that
it dives and it jumps

LOVE: A Two Day Old Shit x Ministry of Tishon Hip-Hop Lovesong Mixtape

Happy Valentine's Day from Two Day Old Shit x Ministry of TISHON.


download here. xo.

Dusty Groove: The Vinyl Room

I think it's safe to say that if I could hang out with ANY production crew, it would be Organized Noize.

I mean, if this hypothetical and delusional question was based on craft alone, and if I was a wizard, I would stand behind J Dilla all day and night just to soak in the ambiance of Genius, but chances are that once I got there I would go into catatonic shock and be rendered speechless and wouldn't even be able to offer to run to the store for him (my treat, obviously) so we wouldn't even be able to talk about how "Find A Way" changed my world forever and still continues to absolutely destroy every molecule in my being OR about the bass line on "Dynamite" and how it is the Greatest. Bass. Line. Of. All. Time.

But that would be totally cool because honestly, I would be content just watching him push a fader up and down. So, good thing that would never happen.

However, if we are talking about a mind blowing musical education session + the most fun I could ever have with my clothes on, you would find me in Atlanta in the Dungeon with Sleepy, Rico and Ray.

Just started absorbing this little underrated gem from 1998. I adore OutKast and Goodie Mob, but what I reallllllllly love more than anything, is Sleepy Brown's voice. It's the audible equivalent of a time machine. It's almost as if Curtis Mayfield, late '70s Marvin Gaye and Leon Ware all melted their honeyed voices into a Crock Pot, and then let it simmer all day. And when it was time to enjoy it, Organized Noize added a pinch of synth, a dash of crisp drumming, a ton of lush orchestration and a generous sprinkling of dreamy wah-wah riffs and then served it to you while you reclined on a cloud.

His fantastic solo (and most recent, unfortunately) album, 2006's Mr. Brown which I listen to on extensive repeat all the time, is a culmination of sorts; it marries his soul and funk pedigree with the sonic hip-hop aesthetics of Stankonia. But this record, Noize's first solo creative outlet, The Vinyl Room, is pure unadulterated hot, buttered, soul, with only a tiny mix of Dungeon Family humor filled skits thrown in.

The trio, using the moniker Sleepy's Theme, pretty much reinterprets the silky falsettos of Curtis Mayfield (fun fact, Sleepy Brown worked on the legend's last album, 1996's New World Order) and the layered melodies of Barry White without any pastiche or derivative results. For those who think this kind of record is a '70s cliche or knockoff, you are a. wrong and b. clearly don't know much about the immaculate blueprint that our beloved soul and funk giants created. Yes, Gaye, Mayfield, White, Ware, Hayes and co. left behind an often imitated but never duplicated legacy. But, they also left behind an invaluable text book that if studied properly and diligently, can be reinterpreted, extrapolated and re-imagined to create shimmering and gorgeous results. And this album, much like Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, is proof that some people do their fucking homework.

Three of my favorite tunes on the album after the jump.

"Still Smokin'":



"Private Party" (ignore the ridiculous homemade YouTube video):



"Simply Beautiful":

Open Post: William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music From The Motion Picture

An absolutely perfect film soundtrack is extremely hard to come by. Most everybody has at least a few that come to mind, but I have recently found that many of my old go to favorites don't really hold up anymore (I'm not goofing. This used to be my shit when I was 11. Inappropriate, I know.) I guess that's to be expected. I mean, half the time certain movies I love(d) don't cut the mustard anymore, so it stands to reason that their accompanying scores have become little more than spotty playlists- a few solid gems sprinkled in there for sure, but straight through playability? Not happening.

At its best, an OST can serve as an amazing mix tape, a Cliff Notes like musical recap that triggers your recollection of certain scenes and exchanges of dialogue or a completely amazing stand alone record that regardless of any film's association, you would like to own. At its worst, it can be well, this.

But, in case you were curious (you weren't) the soundtrack of my really complex and important middle school life (the amount of side eye I am giving my childhood self right now is not even quantifiable) still holds up! Solid. Solid as a rock!

Baz Luhrmann's tropicalia drenched post-apocalyptic Mexico City take on the star crossed lovers will still, without any doubt, make me cry. The last montage of their (two week) courtship? Peering at each other through the fish tank? Those angel wings? The pool scene? Losing your virginity to your husband at 14 surrounded by a million saint candles and dolls? Leonardo DiCaprio's smooth as a baby's bottom chest peeping out from the most awesome of awesome Hawaiian shirts? Visually, the film is truly breathtaking, but then again, that's what Baz does best. That's a given. I mean, say what you will about Moulin Rouge! (wait, don't I'll get mad) it is nothing if not lush and gorgeous. His reconstructed Monte Marte is like a pop up book on absinthe (which was the point) and his attention to visual detail is always impressive. In Romeo + Juliet, he pulls off creating a world lost in a very specific aesthetic past (think Cuba), where everyone speaks in Shakespearean tongue, but hangs out with cholas and cross dressing disco loving gun toting roll dogs AND listens to the best of what the '90s had to offer sonically. That is not an easy task.

This soundtrack has it all. Garbage (I would die for you). Radiohead. The Cardigans (so I cry, and I beg, for you to, love me love meeeeeeeee). Butthole Surfers. DES'REE (no. words.). Everclear. Future B2K affiliated Quindon Tarver, who, when he appeared in the film as a young choir boy, literally had the voice of an angel (his cover of "When Doves Cry" is unfathomably magical, but, although featured in the film, it is technically only found on the second volume of the soundtrack along with the instrumentals). Kym Mazelle's cover of Candi Stanton's "Young Hearts Run Free" is one of the greatest disco/house tunes in my (not so) humble opinion. The pseudo creepy babytalk singing style of Stina Nordenstam that then takes a surprising turn and delves into a very decent and actually not awful sax solo breakdown on "Little Star" is understated wistful longing at its finest. There isn't a bad jam on this album. Don't believe me? Full track listing:

1. "#1 Crush" - Garbage
2. "Local God" - Everclear
3. "Angel" - Gavin Friday
4. "Pretty Piece of Flesh" - One Inch Punch
5. "Kissing You (Love Theme from Romeo + Juliet)" - Des'ree
6. "Whatever (I Had a Dream)" - Butthole Surfers
7. "Lovefool" - The Cardigans
8. "Young Hearts Run Free" - Kym Mazelle
9. "Everybody's Free (To Feel Good)" - Quindon Tarver
10. "To You I Bestow" - Mundy
11. "Talk Show Host" - Radiohead
12. "Little Star" - Stina Nordenstam
13. "You and Me Song" - The Wannadies

Flawless. Watch this if you still have a fence post up your butt:



Whaaaaaaaaaaaat. Give me my sin again indeed.



Don't be no fool when love really don't love you. PREACH.



Later, I'm busy weeping in my room.

My Special Monday Morning Tape For You, Special!

Well, to quote Rob, it is Monday afternoon (I should have woken up earlier) but nevertheless, in celebration of the clown shoe convention that was last night's Golden Globes (Ricky Gervais, please, be mine) here are ten songs I believe have epic cinematic qualities. These picks all possess swelling crescendos, waves of complex melodic emotions, a lush sonic narrative and of course, would all work perfectly, or already have worked perfectly, as the soundtrack to characters realizing they are in love, staring out windows wistfully, having their hearts smashed, or having impeccably lit and expertly choreographed sex scenes.




Ay yi yi! That string intro is the audio equivalent of a film's protagonist thinking about a new crush and smiling. In fact, this whole song is just one gorgeous and silky tribute to new possibilities, feeling like you are 100 feet tall, and those electromagnetic vibrations that you emit when you meet someone that you just want to stare at, all day.



So, the Ray Charles duet version of this gem was totally used in a very young Lilo's remake of The Parent Trap (when the twins get separated and British Lohan has to go back to London with her mom (RIP Natasha Richardson), while Napa Valley Lohan has to be sad and ride horses with Dennis Quaid) but I really like Betty Carter doing this solo, because it takes melancholy to all sorts of new levels. Like, can't you just picture someone singing this in their apartment alone, wishing someone was there to finish the verse with them and tell them everything was going to be alright?



A pink and purple sunset. A rooftop in Brazil. A longing and wistful glance into an overpopulated, but oh so lonely and isolating city. A void in a heart that can be only filled with true love. Wait, no, I change my mind. Actually, this song is basically this Murakami story.



Speaking of Brother Ray: Correct me if I am wrong, but can't you just picture this song playing over a really bittersweet end of film montage of a doomed relationship? Meeting, falling in love, falling out of love, amazing highs, depressing and scary lows, fights, making up, a soul crushing break up. Like some Blue Valentine shit, but not to the music of Grizzly Bear.



The clip is in German, I think, but just jump to second :45 and you will know why this song can never again be used in another scene as effectively as it was used here. Look at Robert Forster's eyes. He pretty much sums up love at first sight during that first kitten soft guitar lick and drum roll. Then again, I think Pam Grier was created to strut out of a correctional facility to the sound of Bloodstone so, I mean, do with that what you will.



The title of this Let's Get It On session jam kind of says it all. I picture someone laughing and grinning to themselves while trying to grocery shop, remembering the night before. It's the complete emotional opposite of what using this other Let's Get It On masterpiece would be (it was used in a sad relationship fight/break up scene between Taraji P. Henson and Tyrese IN THE RAIN, in John Singleton's Baby Boy):







Here are two that have already been used, and exquisitely. In The Mood For Love is one big beautiful, bittersweet and staggeringly sad ode to forbidden love, all set to Spanish Nat "King" Cole.



Oh boy. Roy Hargrove and Shelby Johnson. This tune is kind of like having a whole pack of butterflies in your stomach while glowing and sauntering down the street, half tipsy, half dreaming. It would work perfectly in a film that will never be made.