weiss Archives
Weiss' Muxtapes #3 and #4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Thus Far
by Jeff Weiss
May 16, 2008 4:00 PM
In case you missed it, Sach O of Oh Word touched down briefly last week, taking a break from trying to find Manuel Noriega in the Philippines (He has a mansion?) to bless the blogosphere with one of his hilariously entertaining rants. If you're too lazy to click over, the gist revolves around the assertion that Portishead and Erykah Badu have pretty much bodied all hip-hop made in 2008. Dart Adams of Poisonous Paragraphs fired back in the comments section with his claim that there have been 50 worthwhile rap records released this year and then wrote this post where he pointed out that "hip hop is far from dead, but the way we used to hear it and become exposed to it may be dead forever. If you’re not scouring the internet or the bloggerverse for that new shit then chances are you have no idea what (if any) new Hip Hop albums dropped last Tuesday."
Personally, I'm somewhere between the two. Yeah, Badu and Portishead dropped two monster records this year that pretty much sonned nearly every hip-hop full-length. But Bun B, El-P, EMC, Elzhi, Metaform, Why? and The Kidz In the Hall have all made albums that I would've happily purchased had the Internet not turned the music world into a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet. Moreover, the year has produced a bonanza (yes, a bonanza) of great singles, many of which are on albums still forthcoming (in theory).
So if you've glossed over most of what I've posted this year in hopes of the rare chance that I'll make fun of the Iron Sheik or something, the muxtapes are below. I purposely omitted songs that were on my first tape, so "Royal Flush" didn't make it despite being easily one of the year's best songs. Next time, I'll do best non-hip hop stuff for the four of you into that sort of thing. In the meantime, peep the tapes below to find 24 of the finest rap songs made by rappers that contain rapping, sometimes in rhythm, occasionally on-beat, often high. In the words of William Mulholland, "There it is. Take it."
Weiss' Muxtape #3: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part 1
Weiss' Muxtape #4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part II
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Shiny, Happy People: El-P's Weareall goingtoburninhell megamixx 2
by Jeff Weiss
May 14, 2008 4:00 PM
In truth, part of me wants to be like, "Yo, El, why don't you just chill out, smoke a blunt, take a deep breath, even if it's not going to be okay, why don't you just pretend that it will." I'm sure by now the guy's been told this one or two or 34,566 times. Yeah, the oeuvre might be a razor's-edge from being gimmicky and yeah, at this point, it seems like there's no piece of smooth sleek vinyl that El-P couldn't apocalyptically contort, no sunny personality he couldn't turn dyspeptic. It's a lot to listen to regularly, but ultimately, it's none of my fucking business. Artists should be artists and regardless of whether you love or hate the guy, it's difficult to deny that his paranoid, neo-Bomb Squad wall of sound is as innovative as anyone in hip-hop, 2008. *
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The Islands' "Arms Way," Islands' Kona Pie and The Pros of "Miscenegenation"
by Jeff Weiss
May 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Last year when Sasha-Frere Jones wrote his now-infamous piece on the whiteness of indie rock, he repeatedly included the phrase "miscenegation" to describe the cross-pollination of sound between black and white music. The diction seemed deliberate, a molotov cocktail designed to rile up the chattering classes and leave them more discombobulated than someone with melanin at a Vampire Weekend concert. It was funny in a way. After all, few things are more comical than watching a bunch of white-guilt saddled liberals squirming with difficult topics like the intersection of race, class and music as though Al Sharpton had to vet every word beforehand.
Ultimately, it was a ballsy essay with some valid points and some not-so-valid ones. Despite their obvious talent, I've quite often found myself disinterested in the more vanilla "indie groups" like The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie* and Sufjan Stevens, who Frere-Jones rightfully declared lack, "swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies-in other words, attributes of African-American popular music. "But as Carl Wilson's excellent Slate rebuttal, pointed out, "indie-rockers" like "Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem and Spoon," fuse indie-slanted guitar rock with soul, funk and R&B, to produce music so danceable that it conned my reverse-racist sense of rhythm into getting down. Not bad.
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When ex-Just Blaze proteges, Kidz in the Hall released their debut album, School Was My Hustle on the newly revived Rawkus Records, I didn't listen to it for a variety of reasons. Chief among them was the "Ivy League Rap" label critics ascribed to the duo of Nawledge and Double-O. Still scarred from having heard Brown grad MC Paul Barman, I figured Ivy League Rappers were the last thing the world needed, besides something seemed corny about Kidz in the Hall's insistence on trumpeting their Penn degrees and posing for their album cover in letterman's jackets.* And by all accounts, their debut seemed stuck in the "conscious" neo-Native Tongues albatross that has flapped over indie rap since Rawkus' first-go-around. To say nothing of the fact that one of the Kidz' had the audacity to bestow himself with a rap name as openly condescending as Nawledge.
But that was two years ago, an eternity in rap time. In the interim, something people persist on calling "hipster rap" has come into vogue, an inane classification that Kidz in the Hall have roundly rejected (like the Supreme Court and prior restraint.) But no matter how vehemently they deny such labels, there's a bit of truth to them, as the retro-aesthetic dominates the very funny and very good video for "Drivin' Down the Block," the jump-off single from The In Crowd, the Kidz' new record slated to drop next week on Duckdown Records. **
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You'll have to forgive me this one. I know I'm late. Ian Cohen tossed a 7.8 to Crystal Castles' in his Pitchfork review of their eponymous debut back in March and the blogosphere had been incessantly buzzing about the Toronto duo of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass for well over a year prior. But dance music has never been my forte and besides I'd always suspected there was a hint of hipster hype to Crystal Castles' sudden rise to fame. I'd articulate concrete reasons for this, but I feel the picture above more than suffices. To say nothing of the unfortunate and hopelessly nebulous "blog-house" appellation that music journos coined to describe Crystal Castles, Justice, Simian Mobile Disco and the rest of the video-game inspired electro acts that have levitated to the top of the hype machine Most Blogged charts.
Granted, a significant portion of Crystal Castles, sounds like the mind of an ADD-addled, Atari-addicted 8-year old circa 1984, in those halcyon (or horrific) days before adderall was prescribed to every pre-teen averse to quiet time. "xxzxcuzx me" is as grating as its name, a two-minute conflagration of keyboard farts and hellish screams striving towards "existential horror" but landing closer to timorous caterwauling. As for "Love and Caring," let's just say that in ten years if they ever come out with one of those special edition deluxe re-packages of this record, I sincerely hope it comes with a bottle of Nuprin. (Ah. Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Better.)
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Why Biz Markie Should Have Known From the Get-Go That He Was More Than "Just a Friend"
by Jeff Weiss
May 6, 2008 4:00 PM
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It's reductive to say that if you like Deadringer and Entroducing, you'll probably like Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. Then again, that's just the sort of thing you're going to get when you explicitly invite the comparison in your album title, not to mention referencing Shadow and RJD2 in your bio. I don't know much about Metaform, other than the cryptic and cloying one-sheet sent to me, where he calls himself, "a multi-instrumentalist, vinyl villain...whose anonymity, coupled with the divine knack for gleening [sic] the essence of countless genres has positioned him as an act to be reckoned with, as well as enhanced the mystery of his identity. " By my count, there are 17 things wrong with that statement, but I'll let them slide because the guy's produced a great record.
The music hews to the template Shadow established over a decade ago. Dusty samples, cinematic dialogue stitched in ("The telephone" mines Weird Science for excellent results), crackling hip-hop drums and that gauzy stoned haze ideal for users of tangerine haze. When They Reminisce Over You called it "the most complete hip-hop instrumental album [he's] ever heard." I'm not willing to go that far, but certainly along with Dilla's Donuts and Blockhead's Uncle Tony's Coloring Book, this is one of the best hip-hop instrumental albums in recent memory. Now if only Metaform can get someone to spell-check his bio he'll be just fine.
Download:
MP3: Metaform-"Crush" (especially recommended for fans of Rappin' 4-Tay's "Playaz Club")
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Weiss' Muxtape #2: A Tribute to Albert Hofmann-Pour Out a Little Lysergic
by Jeff Weiss
May 2, 2008 4:00 PM
Lost somewhere in the shuffle of the 43,214 stories on the potential impact of Obama's ex-pastor's crack-pot comments*, was the news that Albert Hoffmann, the founder of LSD, died this week at the ripe old age of 102. Along with completely dis-proving everything you ever learned in D.A.R.E class and befriending Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, Hofmann also invented methergine, a drug for postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. Understandably, he's more remembered for his other invention, the one that allowed hundreds of thousands of people to expand their minds, and hundreds of thousands more to roll their eyes. The New York Times obit on Hofmann is fascinating and recommended reading. In the meantime, this muxtape goes out to the memory of the father of LSD, with songs selected that wouldn't have been possible had Hoffman not accidentally ingested some ergot fungus on a fateful day in April 1934. Ergo.
Weiss' Muxtape #2: A Tribute to Albert Hofmann-"Pour Out A Little Lysergic"
* Question to ponder: Do you think at any point in the past week, Obama turned to Michelle and said, "Damnit, why did Rev. Wright have to become such a little bitch?"
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Beards, Blazers & Glasses or How Hot Chip Prove that My Sense of Rhythm Isn't Racist
by Jeff Weiss
May 1, 2008 4:00 PM
It happened again. The dancing thing. I'm not quite sure how and I'm not sure why. I know we talked about this the other day but I'm not ready to move on until we get to the bottom of it. Because this whole thing is getting embarrassing. Seeing Hot Chip two times in three days and grooving (yes, grooving) at both of them? What's next, traveling to Berlin to snort Molly off a chick named Molly? Dressing in all-black, slicking my hair to the right and listening to only Neu! records? Actually learning the meaning of the phrase "deep German House?"* The ramifications are endless and ghoulish.
The thing is, I actually do dance, it just takes a lot, and when I do, it's invariably to music made by black people. You know that Chappelle skit where Dave brings John Mayer and his electric gee-tar around the barber shop and everyone starts heckling him. That's me. Sure, part of it's because John Mayer really fucking sucks, but really, put on some hard drums in broad daylight when I'm totally sober and I'll suddenly find myself swaying uncontrollably, beat-boxing and asking ?uestlove to borrow his afro pick. **
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Coachella Day 3-Never Underestimate How Long It Takes to Blow Up An Inflatable Pig
by Jeff Weiss
April 28, 2008 2:26 PM
By the third day, we were knocked out, loaded. Hungover, weary, wandering the festival grounds like lethargic lemmings, queuing in lines off instinct, jostled, aggravated and in no mood for the weird Aramaic gibberish spouted by the kid seeing God underneath the Tesla Coil. Three days of this is too much to handle, unless you're either steadily downing a diet of amphetamines, booze and hash; 16 years old, and/or Keith Richards at 16 years old.
To make matters worse, Sunday's lineup had no chance in hell of topping Saturday's Prince/Portishead extravaganza and everyone knew it. Scalpers couldn't give tickets away and out of the five years I've been to Coachella, I've never seen fewer people on the field. It actually would've been nice, had my brain not felt it was composed out of hardened tapioca pudding and squelched grape fruit. The performance enhancing drugs, the miles of walking, and the dry desert heat have a way of sapping any and all energy you may have left after two days. Yeah, seeing Chromeo and Justice would've been nice, but the P.C.E. * levels would've been far too high. The followers of Vigo the Carpathian, scourge of Moldavia, were still out in masse, tucked away from the scrum, creeping their way through the VIP section. Even Carmen Electra was there and something told me that she and her ilk weren't staying late to see Roger Waters.
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Coachella Day Two: The Accidental Tourist, or Can We Please All Agree To Stop Using the Phrase “Coachella-Ella-Ella-Ella”
by Jeff Weiss
April 27, 2008 4:08 PM
I ran into a guy I knew from high school standing in line for the restrooms in the VIP area. I hadn't seen him in a decade but was about four glasses of $7 wine deep and feeling good. No reason not to be friendly, after all, I no longer harbored a grudge from that time in the 11th grade when he tried to tell me that Magoo was a great rapper, a moment in which I knew that our friendship was well on its way to being up-jumps-the boogied.
"Hey Vargas," I greeted him. (Names have been changed to protect the insolent)
"Hey Weiss," he responded with a dazed, bovine look on his face. "I'm so wasted."
"Cisco?"
"No. I didn't see him here. But I think I just saw Mischa Barton and I definitely saw Paris Hilton." he said,
"I meant...never mind...so have you seen anyone good today?"
"No, just some friends. We went to the Spin party, it was awesome."
"I mean like bands. Have you seen any good music."
"Ha..." he chucked drunkenly, leaning in towards me and spewing hot boozy breath all over me. "I don't know anyone who's playing. But they sound good from here!
"You can't hear anything from here."
He ignored the question.
"This place is an awesome party! Have you ever seen this many hot chicks?"
"Once, in an incubator."
"You've still got the same sense of humor, huh Weiss?" he slapped himself on the forehead, doing my work for him.
"It's not me, it's the drugs," I smirked and walked off, bobbing and weaving my way past the "hot chicks" re-intepreting Rihanna's "Umbrella," as "Coach-ella-ella-ella." Needless to say, if one were ever to start recruiting a Fourth Reich, he would be wise to begin conscripting the thousands of ding-bats lurking past the velvet rope, er chain link fence.
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I hate lines. They're somewhere in the lower rungs of my own personal inferno along with club kids in fedoras, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the abstract concept of valet parking. Unfortunately, entering Coachella brings me into contact with three of those four food groups as quite often, while waiting in the Bataan Death march-like line to get in, you wind up next to a car full of trust-funders in fedoras maligning the Andruw Jones acquisition (seriously, you give the guy $40 million and he shows up to camp looking like Pop-N-Fresh?). It's times like this, I like to play a game creatively entitled, "What Band Are They Hear to See." As for the fedora fedayeen, I'd bet even money they were there to see Diplo. Or maybe Spank Rock. The guy strutting to the right of our car wearing a scarf in 100 degree weather? Vampire Weekend. The shirtless frat brahs tossing around a football? Jack Johnson. The girls to the left of us who wrote "Licking Windows all the Way to Coachella," on the exterior of their Toyota Carolla. Slightly Stoopid. No questions asked. But the lines. Good lord the lines. Two hours trying to leave, one trying to enter. An interminable snarl of scalpers hawking tickets and t-shirts, hazy beat-up brown dust, beads of sweat slipping slowly down your spine, dull heat-stroke headache, Lawrence of Arabia thirst, and that gnashed teeth silence where you ruminate on the simple fact that after nearly a decade of doing this, no one has been able to figure out how to get cars in and out of the Empire Polo Grounds faster than than 250 feet per hour. And all this while the palm trees tauntingly sway in the breeze, laughing, calmly, coolly, reminding you of all the wonderful things waiting to be seen. That is if you ever get in--chump.
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On last year's None Shall Pass tour, Aesop tabbed Pittsburgh psych weirdos Black Moth Super Rainbow to open for him. It was an inspired move and one that I recommend more rappers do, lest I get stuck standing stupidly watching a bunch of mush-mouthed Myspace MC's clinging to arbitrary 20th Century notions of what constitutes "underground rap." (And why are you kids still wasting your night handing CD's outside the show? Haven't you heard of the Internet? )
Superficially, the pairing of Black Moth Super Rainbow front-man, Tobacco would make for a weird mix. They're hippie-freaks from the woods outside of Pittsburgh who play Richard Simmons videos at their concerts and name themselves after cash crops. Aesop is a misanthropic, hyper-syllabic B-boy from New York who used to call himself "Bazooka Tooth." Then again, marijuana has been known for its keen ability to unite seemingly disparate entities. Not to mention that last year's Dandelion Gum, with its woozy drum machines, cavernous mellotrons and pink bubblegum and LSD vibe, felt more like a cross between Moon Safari-era Air and Edan's Beauty and the Beat record than it did "indie rock".
This lazy Summer, aesthetic meshes nicely with Aesop's thinking man's stoner sensibility on "Dirt." Over Tobacco's fractured pop, Aesop falls back in the pocket and takes rapid jabs at the beat, rather than trying to overwhelm it to prove his virtuosity. It's a wise move and it makes for my favorite psych-rap song since "Beauty." Not to mention the thing got heavy burn on my iPod all day Sunday. Just listening to it, you can catch a contact.
Download:
MP3: Tobacco ft. Aesop Rock-"Dirt"
From Black Moth Super Rainbow-Dandelion Gum
MP3: Black Moth Super Rainbow-"Forever Heavy"
MP3: Black Moth Super Rainbow-"Sun Lips"
From the Split Collaboration with Octopus Project, The House of Apples and Eyeball
MP3: Black Moth Super Rainbow-"Spiracle"
From Start a People
MP3: Black Moth Super Rainbow-"Vietcaterpillar"
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10 Reasons Why The Wu-Tang Clan's "The Heart Gently Weeps" Video Might Be Their Worst Ever
by Jeff Weiss
April 22, 2008 4:00 PM
1. Who made the decision to have an Asian Bjork clone perform a feather dance for one of the video's main plot threads? Okay fine, we all know the answer was Rza, but really, was Erykah Badu that busy taking trips to Israel with Jay Electronica that Bobby couldn't convince her to show up for a couple hours to lip-sync the hook? In other news, there is an 82 percent shot of Baduian/Black Israelite influence yielding an Electronica song entitled "Shalom Bitches and Drugs."
2. Why is Gza listening to wire-taps for the duration of the video? Isn't he supposed to be doing all sorts of crazy liquid sword-type killings or at least playing chess? Did someone brain-wash him into believing that he's a War II Navajo from the film, Windtalkers. And by someone, I naturally mean the Rza.
3. Wu videos have side-stepped having nothing to do with the song itself. Shit, the "Triumph" video plot line barely extended past "New York City is Getting Invaded by Wu Killa Bees," but it remains the most awesomest video in the history of awesomeness. Yet "The Heart Gently Weeps" is a hackneyed re-hash of Kill Bill. I know Tarantino and Rza are really really into double-dating (no, Quentin, you drive this time, I drove last time), but this just as predictable and infinitely less entertaining than Rick Ross jumping off a bridge for getting a speeding infraction.
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The Parson Redheads make sunny day music. I noted this in my Stylus review for last year's King Giraffe. It is now springtime in Los Angeles and everything is 85 degrees and radiant and glowing and even dedicated cranks such as myself have trouble being unhappy in these moments. This is when the Parson Redheads make sense. The group have a new EP coming out called Owl and Timber. I assume this is an homage to their Oregon upbringing, because as a life-long Angeleno I can safely say that I have never seen any owls nor any timber (though I did once see Tiny Tim). If you live in LA, or really any place with sunshine, downloading "Got It All" and putting it on your iPod while walking around someplace nice is strongly endorsed. Carry on.
MP3: The Parson Redheads-"Got It All"
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Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound of the Underground Lagos Dance Floor 1974-1979
by Jeff Weiss
April 17, 2008 4:00 PM
Let's be real for a moment--I don't know much about the sound of the underground Lagos Dance Floor during the years 1974-1979. The truth is those years were a blur for me, what with the fall-out from Watergate, the quaalude abuse and my unseemly fixation with disco, Suzanne Somers, and Farah Fawcet. It was terrible. The definition of insanity is watching hundreds of episodes of Three's Company and expecting them to turn out differently. Dammit Jack Tripper, why won't you just tell Mr. Roper you're not gay! He seems swinging and open-minded. He's wearing a leisure suit for chrissakes! But I digress.
So Nigerian disco-funk. Right. Totally passed me by. However, I have been developing a nasty addiction to this stuff these days. It might not be as good as ludes but it's close. And you can drive while listening to Nigerian disco-funk, which is always a plus. According to Dusty Groove, these tunes are the "kind of upbeat jamming funk performed in Lagos clubs and bars at the time...a distillation of the longer grooves of Fela, pushed a bit towards an American funk sound too." If the music is any indication, Lagos clubs and bars must have been a good time between 1974-1979. Call me crazy, but I'd rather hear this stuff than Flo Rida's "Low" played ad infinitum. Then again, there was that whole Nigerian civil war going on, which I imagine probably put a damper on the festivities.
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I've resisted the Muxtape meme that's been spreading across the blogosphere over the past month, but when Goathair of the very excellent Blowtorch blog, asked me why I hadn't made one to entertain him at work, I didn't really have much of an answer other than mumbling a few asides about the site being lamely named. After laboring in a light-less laboratory for the last week, I now can unveil my first muxtape. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hear Ghost declare that "Tony went raw on plenty." And yes, I even included a Lil Wayne song for the kiddies. Everyone wins. I'm hoping to make muxtapes a regular feature here, so please let me know what you think of this first hip-hop themed installment. It might not top the Catbird Seat's tape, which clearly wins the Montgomery Burns Award for Excellence in the Field of Excellence, but hey, one can always try.
The Passion of the Weiss Muxtape
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The 10 Rules of Pimpology According to the Video for Do or Die's "Po' Pimp"
by Jeff Weiss
April 9, 2008 4:00 PM
10. The ability to acquire flaming pennies (these were also reportedly Shaquille O' Neal's last words upon leaving Orlando). Such magic coins will give their owners the ability to turn homeless people into suave and dapper, ladies men and thus realize their dreams of using P.I.M.P.O.L.O.G.Y. to logically, learn these tricks biology. Obviously.
9. When in doubt, just ask yourself, "how would Bone Thugs rap it?" If that fails, just get Twista.
8. A rooftop pool is a must. The promise of such aquatic delight will ensnare all video vixens from the Southside of the Chi to Joliet. However, for safety purposes, a life guard must be present at all all times. Do or die.
7. Khaki suits with shorts, no shirt, no problem.
6 . The willingness to spend dozens of hours a week doing nothing but riding in the backseat of a Caddy and chopping it up with Do or Die. Other responsibilities may include buying 40s, carrying weed and trips to the mall to buy Girbaud.
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It was my third night in Austin. Devin had just blazed through an epic set that had been celebrated in the appropriate fashion , El-P was currently on-stage and I was wandering around the Def Jux party with four cups of Jack in my stomach, a head full of smoke and the strange desire to approach people and ask if they had also expected everything to be "1984" themed and staffed entirely by surly robots. But I held my tongue, instead approaching a ornery, heavily tatted bartender at the Scoot Inn, noting the sign above his head that read: "Sorry We Do Not Have Redbull, Wine coolers or Smirnoff Ice, Please Don't Even Go There P.S. No Shiner Either." So I did the only sensible thing, I ordered a Jack on the Rocks with a Zima chaser. The barkeep didn't find this funny and come to think of it, neither did I.
Luckily, I ran into my friend, Will, who was whispering weird gibberish about Del tha Funky Homosapien. As that's not a name you want to say sotto voce, there was a slight misunderstanding but when things were finally straightened out, I learned that he had canceled his interview with Del moments earlier because of a bout of laryngitis. Naturally, I volunteered for the assignment.
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You may not know who Jay Electronica is yet, but I'm willing to bet that you would had he chosen a better name. Jay Electronica does not sound like the one of the most buzzed about rappers of 2008. Jay Electronica sounds like the name of a small-potatoes Milwaukee techno DJ circa 1999 who magically found a way to include "Do you Think We're Better Off Alone," and "We Like to Party" in every set. Somehow, despite this ill-fated nomenclature, Electronica has received a deal from Just Blaze and Erykah Badu, a spot on the new Nas and Roots records and the cover of last month's Urb, where he elicited a comparison to a "Live at the BBQ"-era Nas. Not bad.
The buzz comes off the strength of his ambitious, wildly original, if not slightly pretentious,"Act 1: Eternal Sunshine: The Pledge," and a few unofficial EP's released on a since-deleted Myspace page. While the material that has surfaced is certainly strong, the Nas comparisons only bear a superficial resemblance. At 31, Electronica has spent the last decade living a peripatetic existence, with stops in New Orleans, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington DC, Denver and Dallas, a far cry from the 16-year old Queens prodigy with a ferocious imagination and a poet's eye for detail.
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Every time I write about Jens Lekman, I'm tempted to compare him to Morrissey, even though I know I shouldn't. After all, both songwriters specialize in witty and literate love-lorn laments sung in a smooth, mahogany baritone. And invariably, any time you can compare someone's voice to an article of fine office furniture, it's a good thing. Granted, Jens hasn't written anything nearly as good as The Queen is Dead but really, who has? Besides, Lekman has one thing on the notoriously chilly "Pope of Mope," namely an inherent charm and affability unmatched by few songwriters in recent memory.
You can sense Lekman's likability on his records. "A Postcard to Nina" finds him posing as his lesbian friend's boyfriend for her bigoted German father. " Yet rather than censure the old man's ignorance, Lekman takes the softer, kinder approach, wryly poking fun at the awkwardness of the meeting and the weird, kindly e-mails that Nina's father sends Jens in the aftermath. The hardest thing in the world is to be funny without being mean (perhaps one of these days I'll learn how), but in person, Lekman is the rare person who manages to be supremely nice without ever being dull. Forget the songs themselves, which are almost uniformly good, his between song banter is flat-out hilarious. With the timing and delivery of a crack stand-up, Lekman regaled the crowd with background stories that played like DVD commentary.
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With a spot on Entertainment Weekly's "8 to Watch in 08" and Ann Powers' SXSW rave in the LA Times, the Wale hype is getting pretty loud, yet it exists for good reason. After all, how many young guns can go toe-to-toe with Bun B and Pusha-T? Not to say he's quite there yet. From this angle, Bun-B wins the battle royal, continuing the rampage he's been on in the aftermath of Pimp's C's death. Meanwhile, Pusha delivers a pretty great 16 in his own right. But Wale holds his own, sounding like Kanye if Kanye was actually a great rapper. Indeed, between Wale, Jay Electronica, The Knux, Cool Kids, Clean Guns, Blu & others, the next generation is clearly bubbling. Coupled with fact that the 90s vets finally sound interested in making music again, the hip-hop is dead arguments of '06 seem, well, dead.
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SXSW Round-Up: The Kills Put On The Best Show Of SXSW By A Band Not Named My Morning Jacket…And Why Jenny Lewis Isn't the Hottest Woman In Indie Rock
by Jeff Weiss
March 21, 2008 4:00 PM
Unlike Sasha Frere-Jones, my main gripe with indie rock don't stem from it's lack of blackness. More than anything, I have trouble dealing with the idea that Jenny Lewis is indiedom's official pin-up girl. No joke, I think she won first in the 2006 Stereogum poll and came in second in 2007. The winner last year, of course, being Feist, therein proving the voters themselves have bad taste in both senses of the word. Nothing against J-Lew though, she's certainly attractive and the fact that she was the star of The Wizard gives her enough street cred to play Super Mario Bros. 3 at my house anytime she wants. But let's all be honest with ourselves, Jenny Lewis looks like the kind of girl who fakes it every time. Granted, my only evidence is that last godawful Rilo Kiley album that had her singing the world's least believable sex songs. But really, you could almost hear her yawning.
VV from The Kills, doesn't need to write tacky and tawdry pop songs about porn stars because everything she does is indistinguishable from the notion of sex. She could recite the phone book and you'd be turned on. To say nothing of the back of the LA Weekly. On-stage, this notion is inescapable. She's got a a damaged, Suicide Girl beauty, raven hair, cream-colored skin. That prettiest girl in art-school look, immaculately put-together. silverly jangly bracelets, skin-tight black jeans, leather jacket, and a robin hood hat slung low over a searing stare.
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SXSW Day 5-The Triumph of the Blogosphere...High Times at High Times...Why in God's Name Am I At The Perez Hilton Party?
by Jeff Weiss
March 20, 2008 4:00 PM
Bloggers are every journalist's favorite whipping boy. If a shitty band gets too popular, blame the bloggers. If the standards of professional journalism have eroded too much, blame the bloggers. If by 2010, Vampire Weekend has inspired legions of college freshmen to dress as ironic yachters, blame the bloggers. Ultimately, it's as easy to scapegoat the blogosphere as it is to blog and at worst, blogs are benign (at least music ones), at best you discover a lot of good music for free. The horror.
Most importantly, the blogosphere knows how to party, which I discovered at the blogger-promoted Hot Freaks party on Saturday afternoon, a place where Al-Queda could've wiped out 82 percent of the game had it gotten enraged by one post too many about the peace-promoting qualities of the Arcade Fire (Osama hates Neon Bible). I'm not exaggerating either, the place was a veritable Elbo.ws chat room (for those keeping score, that may have been my nerdiest joke ever). While watching Islands, Lykke Li, and Japanese cartoon psychos Peelander-Z, I stumbled across My Old Kentucky Blog, Gorilla Vs. Bear, Aquarium Drunkard and Rock Insider. Other bloggers in attendance who I didn't have the pleasure of meeting included Chromewaves, Largehearted Boy and You Ain't No Picasso, who was presumably searching for Picasso.
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SXSW Day 4-Pitchfork Party Gets a 6.4, Due to Highly Derivative Partying
by Jeff Weiss
March 15, 2008 12:25 PM
A Pitchfork party without Sparks? That's like Eliot Spitzer without whores: fatigued, thirsty and miserable. And rest assured, Sparks flowed like the River Ganges, even going as far to sponsor the bash, which wasn't really as bad as it was boring. A bunch of people sitting in bleachers trying to look affected and disaffected all at the same time. Granted, I arrived late and didn't stay long, but this had to do mainly with Yeasayer and my aversion towards their Spin Doctors brand of hippindie rock (caused by a collision of the hipster and hippie comets sometime around the year 2006). Inside, Times New Viking delivered a set of ear-drum fracturing noise, but as I'd seen the Matador-signed trio absolutely kill it the night before at the Siltbreeze show, I had no need to stay.
That's the thing about festivals like this, you've got to approach them with the mentality of a baseball player, where hitting safely three out of ten times makes you a Hall of Famer. But there's something about being surrounded by all this great music that leaves you impatient and fidgety. It's the same iPod phenomenon of having thousands of songs at your disposal, none of which you want to listen to longer than 90 seconds. Accordingly, Day 4 was dominated by a supreme case of Musical ADD. Or I as saw it, I was taking the buffet approach, not a very difficult prism to assess things through, considering all my childhood Sundays spent at The Soup Plantation.
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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."-Hunter S. Thompson
"What you gonna do when the people go home/ and you wanna smoke weed but the reefer's all gone/ And somebody had the nerve to take the herb up out the doobie ashtray/Why they do me that way?"-Devin the Dude
If the going hasn't gotten weird by the third day of SXSW, you clearly haven't been trying hard enough. By now, it's make or break time, you've finally surveyed the lay of the land and begun to accept certain inalterable realities: the crooked spine that feels like it needs to be re-aligned vertebrae by vertebrae, calves that feel like someone has slit cement in the back of, and not nearly enough time to properly convey the bizarre phenomena of this admittedly wonderful excuse to do for nothing but go to shows, drink, and eat burritos (often all three at the same time). You'll have to forgive me--if these posts feel rushed and ill-thought out it's because they are.
There's a thin line that separates artists, the media, and the fans here. After a few days, it's little surprise to see Jim James walking down 6th in a purple suit on his way to presumably blow the minds of people at the Austin Music Hall. Or watching El-P successfully run game on a very attractive female inside of a make-shift roped-off, VIP section at the Def Jux party, surrounded by Del tha Funkeehomosapien and half of Hiero, smoking beadies. Which was where I ended up last night, after watching Islands open up the Anti Party with an absolutely mind-blowing set that I can't even begin to talk about, lest I go off on another 1,000 word ramble.
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Hey, Aren't You Juliette Lewis?
Walking down 6th street yesterday, you had to wonder if everyone in the world somehow heard that Art Brut song, "Formed a Band" and decided that if Eddie Argos could do it, how hard could it really be? I've seen telephone directories thinner than the official SXSW guide they give you to registration, with about 54,322 bands scattered out in tiny print over four days, with each one playing an average of 3.2 shows. Even at the Red Roof Inn right now 15 miles out of Austin, I'm watching two dudes with long scruffy hair, goatees, porkpie hats, and skinny jeans bemoaning how their van broke down on the way here and how their keyboardist got denied entrance. As far as I can tell, they weren't demanding a Myspace Music page to enter the city limits of Austin this week, so the band must be Canadian. Or else very very stupid.
If you aren't in bands, you work for a newspaper, or you write a blog, or work for a music-related tech company, or in promotions or for an agency--something. Which goes back to my trade show theory. To paraphrase Back to the Future: it's like an alternate Austin 1998 Corvette Day. But things here actually look a little more '88. There are a lot of mustaches running wild, beards, blazers, lame head bands, ironic MTV sunglasses, the accursed neon (confession: I own one neon jacket that I purchased in the fabled year of our lord, 1998.). Even the Ice Cream Man showed up and gave me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ice cream bar, something I probably haven't done since l learned to tie my shoes (translation: roughly four weeks ago).
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SXSW Day 1-My Morning Jacket Prove That They May Be Invincible and Britt Daniel is Everywhere
by Jeff Weiss
March 12, 2008 12:57 PM
If you do a Google Image search for "Austin" this is one of the first things that pops up. Two girls at the 1998 Austin Corvette Day. Granted, this probably has nothing at all to do with SXSW--yet judging by my first impressions of this place, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if by the end of the week, I end up seeing two highly siliconed and bleached women purring atop a sleek sports car. It's shaping up to be that kind of trip.
SXSW is essentially a trade show. Except instead of blonde spokesmodels insinuating that they will be yours provided you spend $60,000 for a car that will make you look douchier than Steve Sanders, SXSW (and the major corporate behemoths paying for it), attempt to ply you with nothing but free booze, free food and free music. As Dilated Peoples once aptly put it, "You Got to Work the Angles."
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Who's the "Boss?": The True Definition of Boss According to Rick Ross
by Jeff Weiss
March 7, 2008 12:00 PM
If there are any aspiring young rappers out there reading this, now is the time to rejoice. With his second album, Trilla, Rick Ross has proven that all you need to do to have a viable rap career is the foresight to rhyme "Ross" with "Boss." For those keeping score, that's two albums on Def Jam, two songs called "Boss. " Thankfully, for those seeking clarity, the video above explains the truth definition of what it means to be "The Boss."
Have Moobs
Why: Man boobs are an essential part of being a Ross-like titan of industry. See the numerous close-ups of Ross rolling around in his boxers, breasts a-flopping. Wearing any sort of feminine "manssiere" or "bro" is unmanly and should be shunned. As should self-consciousness. The first rule of being a boss is being aware of your sacred duty to show the world your bossy bosom whenever the video-taped opportunity arises.
Examples of Other Ross Bosses: Frank Costanza, Newman, Your Father.
Refuse to "Make Love" Only Make "Magic"
Why: Self-explanatory.
Examples of other Ross Bosses: Magic Johnson, Magica De Spell, Harry "Pushin' Maybach's" Houdini
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Wednesday, March 12 11:30 p.m. Beauty Bar Backyard (617 E 7th St)
Saturday, March 15 10:00 p.m. Cedar Street Courtyard (208 W 4th St)
If I were bucking for cool points, I'd say that that the LA band you need to see most at SXSW is No Age or Health. Of course, bucking for cool points by writing about a trendy band on the Internet is perhaps the most un-cool thing I've ever heard (every time you say this out loud, another blogger dies). Nothing against Health or No Age, they'll both appear later on this list, but right now, the best band in town is The Deadly Syndrome.
I've brought nearly a dozen people to see these guys in the last year and all but one of them has walked away impressed. Last month, when I was in Mexico at my friend's wedding, I got to talking to another guest from Seattle who was really into music. When he found out what I did for a living (at least one of us could figure it out), he asked me if I knew about The Deadly Syndrome and then proceeded to tell me they were his new favorite band and wondered out loud why nobody really knew about them. I didn't really know what to tell him other than that a) they don't have mustaches b) they don't wear dresses and c) they're from LA. You should see them next week if you're in Austin. If you don't like them, you're allowed to write hate mail in the comment section.* Deal. Deal.
*Offer does not apply to people who voted in the 2007 Pazz & Jop Poll.
Download:
The Deadly Syndrome: "Eucalyptus"
Friday, March 14 12:20 a.m. Flamingo Cantina (515 E 6th St)
Saturday, March 15 2:00 p.m.
SESAC Day Stage Cafe Austin Convention Center (500 E Cesar Chavez St)
I'm not only writing about Health to win cool points (they're like the 500 ring in a game of hipster skee-ball), I'm writing about them because I like their taste in neon hoodies. I mean, who knew that it was possible for 1988 and 2008 to exist in one American Apparel American made dimension? Retina-shattering use of neon of aside, these Smell staples are pretty awesome live and worthy of the advance hype. I mean these guys are an electronic-minded art-punk band and if that doesn't get the Pitchfork types going, I don't know what would. (Panda Bear as Obama VP?)
Download: MP3: HEALTH-"Crimewave"
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As the voters of Texas, Rhode Island, Vermont and Ohio filed to the polls yesterday to help decide the Democratic Party's nomination for President, will.i.am., the capitalization averse mastermind of the Black Eyed Peas continued his steadfast efforts to help elect Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Indeed, while most election-day volunteers focused on get-out-the-vote efforts, i.am. sat down in his studio to concoct his most powerful campaign song yet, one that reveals his inner-most feelings for the candidate, as well as offering tantalizing sexual favors that have been hard to come by on the campaign trail.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm not gay," i.am said giggling and adjusting the pink fedora that he wore on the set of the new Peas video, "Shake Yo' Lumpy Love Bumps. "But if Obama needs a little stress relief, I want him to know that I'm there for him. That's how dedicated i.am to the message of hope and change that Obama brings to the table. Rest assured, I won't like doing it. At least not much."
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Week Day 4: Searching For the Elusive Identity of the "Ghetto Cowboy"
by Jeff Weiss
February 29, 2008 1:15 AM
I actually own this on CD-single, which is either keeping it real, or keeping it really retarded.
- From the first moments of the reel, one can immediately infer that the film is going to be of quality. Why? The stamp of quality from Mo' Thugs Family Features. Like the ill-fated male fortuneteller scheme alluded to in "1st of tha' Month," the film company was yet another financial miscalculation for Bone. Though to be fair, the company did churn out several pictures of high repute, including Thug Scuba Diver, Ghetto Holy Roman Emperor, and Thuggish Ruggish Mortgage Broker.
- Ghetto Cowboys apparently love the harmonica. They too understand that the harmonica is the most undervalued instrument in rock. Well, that and the mandolin. (Oh, Arcade Fire, you're so precious.)
- Counting your money seems to a prerequisite, which may or may not involve a mastery of the abacus.
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Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Week Day 3: Why "1st of Month" is the Greatest Song Ever Written About Welfare
by Jeff Weiss
February 28, 2008 12:21 AM
Sometimes, I feel sorry for the 13-year olds of today. I can't even begin to imagine how disgruntled my adolescence would've been had I been forced to listen to "A Bay Bay" and "Low" everywhere I went. We got "Regulate," and "Hip-Hop Hooray," they got the Soulja Boy dance. And of course, there was "1st of Tha Month," a song that pretty much defined the summer of 1995. Those were a weird couple of months. O.J. tried on the infamous "if it don't fit, you must acquit" bloody gloves, Jerry Garcia died, and really not much else happened. It was the 90s, this was perfectly common. In fact, all I really remember doing that summer was watching a whole lot of Small Wonder, playing a lot of Tony LaRussa Baseball, and listening to E. 1999 Eternal. I'm still not sure whether it was supremely awesome or the worst summer of my life.
In particular, I listened to "1st of tha Month" more than anything else. It was hard no