ANDY: Raj and I had the fortune of taking in a Star Slinger live set last weekend, which as one might imagine induced a fair amount of going dumb. The UK producer is tearing shit up with his keen ear for soul samples and layered production style, and his newest single "Dumbin'" is no exception. Not quite as esoteric as Hudson Mohawke (although HudMo's Pleasure Principle EP suggests he's got time for pop remixes too, not just crazy squeaks, although that's a topic for another post), Star Slinger loves his Curtis Mayfield, and here works with Missouri crooner Reggie B, whose hook on this track just won't stop. If you listen twice, I swear you won't be able to shake it all day. The hand drum samples and cascading harp licks give this song a certain tenderness, akin to the warm layers working on Jonti's "Hornet's Nest", but Star Slinger manages to do so without ruining the track's undeniable bangerdom.
Star Slinger's previous releases, the Vol. 1 mixtape, Rogue Cho Pa EP, and Teams vs. Star Slinger mixtape have all been great listens, and with this new single, I'm excited for more material from this cat, especially as he transitions from slammin' remixes to working with vocalists directly.
RAJ: The $3 million dollar deal that ASAP Rocky reportedly signed with RCA feels like as much of a throwback as the Houston-syrup sound of his debut mixtape LiveLoveA$AP. It's the kind of blind-faith corporate adoption that isn't supposed to happen anymore1, since labels now can just wait for hustling-for-free internet rappers to distinguish themselves first before stepping in (Drake had two mixtapes out before he was signed - Rocky had two singles).
If anything can explain all this, it's that label A&R executives may have sensed a kindred spirit in Rocky, who arguably is more skilled as a talent scout than as a rapper. Rocky isn't a bad rapper by any means - he has a relaxed charisma and a dazzling ability to bounce between straightforward flows and sing-songy double-time cadences - but he is somewhat bland lyrically. ASAP's only unique lyrical ambition beyond obligatory (and here not particularly witty) drug/girl/drugged girl talk is trying to be more foppish than Kanye - his self-declared nickname is "that pretty mothafucka" and he brags that the "only thing bigger than my ego is my mirror".
But LiveLoveA$AP is front-to-back fire as a beat collection, which is remarkable considering that most of the producers here are relative unknowns (no one's going to be particularly surprised that the Clams Casino beats are great, although ASAP is the rare rapper who doesn't sound completely overwhelmed by that kind of dense backing track). Beautiful Lou's track "Trilla" is too perfect as a Dirty South UGK homage, Spaceghostpurrp's "Keep it G" manages to make a trunk-rattler out of smooth jazz, and Lyle's "Brand New Guy" is the kind of aggressive, hallucinogenic sound that would greatly please Salem. There's a polished, consistent aesthetic here that you rarely find in rap albums period, let alone on career rap debuts, and it bodes well for whatever Rocky ends up doing in the big leagues.
1There is a case to be made that it didn't - the only person to have reported that figure is Rocky himself, and Rocky has proven to be A) a guy who is remarkably canny at knowing how to get bloggers talking and B) a guy who is pretty consistently stoned.
ANDY: I'd agree with Raj that Rocky's lyrics themselves aren't spectacular, it's his ability to deftly switch up the rhythms of his flows that are his main strength, especially when paired with such monolithic Clams Casino beats. The switch-up on tape opener "Palace" is a perfect example, where Rocky admits his syrup-influenced love for Houston micro-genre Screw Music, then issues a rapidfire verse that pairs nicely with Clams's skittering snares, right as we are tiring of his slower rhymes. "Leaf" is another spot where Rocky flaunts his ability to skip around Clams's droning background beat.
On the back half of the tape, DJ Burn One (featured in the SRS 420 Showcase) also delivers a couple slick beats, most notably on "Roll One Up", allowing for a little more lucidity than Clams's megafuzz. At the end of the day Rocky's drug-addled rhymes are paired with such undeniably strong production that this mixtape might sneak on to some 2011 best-of lists.
P.S. I am no fan of Drake, and wouldn't usually think to compare an artist like ASAP Rocky with him (internet beginnings aside). But I wonder if Rocky's syrup tinged rhymes would have made a better guest verse than Drake's on the stellar mixtape that The Weeknd dropped a few months back. Seems to me The Weeknd's penchant for drugs and sex wouldn't appeal to a squeaky clean aww-shucks-I'm famous rapper like Drake. Jussayin', Rocky should call The Weeknd up for a collabo, I'd listen to that shit.
Because all the BZNZmen live, or have lived, in NJ
ANDREW: I was walking somewhere a couple weeks back, and shuffle played me a track I hadn't heard in years. It was in the salad days of my music fandom in 2003, when I had only just discovered the thrill of digging through stacks of used CDs at Bull Moose Records when The Wrens released their third album Meadowlands. I was previously unaware of their 90s indie-cred, and their first two albums, but figured it was worth a spin. The Wrens delivered a crisp slice of indie melancholy, that sounded just right to my angsty ears. Somehow this record managed to avoid the sarcasm of previous era contemporaries like Stephen Malkmus, and the awful saccharine stylings of early 2000s dudes like Ben Gibbard. Meadowlands felt to me then as it does now to be a tremendously earnest and well-balanced record, and when I heard it for the first time in years it was refreshing. Not beholden to any microgenres or subtrends, not leaked on a blog or analyzed on Twitter, but chock-full of really solid songwritin' and guitarin' and such. Great for a fall day. Next year The Wrens are supposed to release a follow up to Meadowlands, putting them firmly on that one album every seven to eight years plan. I can only hope when I fire that album up on my subcutaneous iPod- augmented reality viewer in 2020 that it sounds just as refreshing.
RAJ: Danny Brown has been getting lumped in with Odd Future a lot as just another shock rapper, mostly by people who haven't listened to a lot of Danny Brown. It's not that Brown isn't very actively trying to shock people (on "Pac Blood": "Rhymes that'll make the Pope wanna get his dick sucked/Had Virgin Mary doing lines in the pickup"1), but there's a purpose to his shocks that goes beyond, say, Tyler the Creator's motivation of scaring old people2. Much of Brown's album XXXis a harrowing personal story about past poverty and present addiction - some anarchic, boundary-breaking glee makes for a nice counterpoint to the dour stuff. It's the reason why Trainspotting is a better movie than Requiem for a Dream - there's a human vitality (a lust for life?) that's always present instead of solely a parade of torment and degradation.
And it's kind of ground-breaking that the back half of XXX approaches a sort of rap Trainspotting, because in a genre so obsessed with the drug trade, nothing like a junkie-eye view of street life really exists. The closest thing to that might be Lil Wayne in the depths of his syrup days3, and he was never exactly lucid about it (or anything, for that matter) - usually, you just have the obligatory album track where the drug dealer half-heartedly reflects on the consequences of his actions. So it hits hard when Brown raps about stealing scrap metal from abandoned houses from drug money ("Scrap or Die").
And then we get to "30", the album closer and one of the most bizarrely brilliant rap songs of the year. The song starts out as a mess, with bleating horns and plucked bass stuttering in the general vicinity of the actual beat. But Brown seems intent on holding the song together through the force of his conviction alone - he's screaming by the time the backing track starts to fall in line. That happens just as off-color jokes start giving way to a painful personal history and the horror of drugs haunting even his current success. In the last few lines of the song/album, we find out that Brown is 30 years old, and that the album title is as layered as the album proper - a vulgar come-on masking a sober reality in Roman numerals, a rapper reflecting on the experience of age in a genre where rappers avoiding admitting being older than 22. It carries weight - it's the kind of thing that'll probably stick with you after Wolf Gang's latest rape joke has passed by.
(9)
1 Nothing wrong with this when it's as inspired as this track is - "Pac Blood" gets the same score.
2 Actual Tyler tweet: "I Want To Scare The Fuck Out Of Old White People That Live In Middle Fucking America."
3 I guess Eminem's Relapse, too? I was omitting it since it, uh, sucks. Am I forgetting anything?
