for rap and not rap
This month’s XXL cover reminded me of a pretty good Slate article from this summer called Lil Wayne and the Afronaut Invasion: Why Have So Many Black Musicians Been Obsessed with Outer Space?
I just eat them for supper, get in my spaceship, and hover.
I’ve always liked the Walkmen since I first heard Everybody Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone played before an Interpol show in D.C. like a billion years ago. Something about their sound reminds me of what J. Crew catalogs would be like if they weren’t preppy as hell and they were all screwed up on really good martinis. Did you ever read Franny and Zooey? Their music also kind of reminds me of that book if they all dabbled in coke. Anyway. This is the video for a song from their latest album, You and Me, which everybody likes it seems. I’m also a sucker for old horror so this video is like fifteen thumbs up.
The Recession is out now on the internet and next week in stores. I like it so far it sounds like Young Jeezy sounds.
Young Jeezy - Hustlaz Ambition (click to download)
So, first of all, I’m trying something new and not writing about hiphop. I’ve been reading about this band called Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. I think this band is the kind of genuinely enjoyable crazy little electro dance rock group that college kids really get into. I wanted to write about them because their name is brilliant and they just released an album called Glistening Pleasure. So they get style points right off the bat. Some people compare them to bands like the Fitness or MGMT but they remind me of a lot of other kind of geeky dance bands that have come along. I see a lot of DFA but also Architecture in Helsinki which is weird because I usually don’t screw around with twee pop. This band is refreshing to me because, well, they’re new but they don’t soak their work in hipster-y pretense (even though I have since found them on the Urban Outfitters blog, I guess nobody’s perfect). They seem comfortable just partying I mean they put a lionness on their album cover with some rainbow explosion thing that looks like a Frank Zappa halloween costume.
I said about YACHT that these kinds of acts should bring everyone in earshot to their feet for some freaky embarassing dance stuff. One of the many reasons this is good is because even if you can’t dance but you’re dancing anyway in that ridiculous way that we sometimes dance you’re gonna get more trim than the next guy. This is why, in part, I dig on bands like Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head: They are clearly enjoying themselves and that’s encouraging to us listeners and fun like that becomes sexy really fast. As far as that kind of sound goes I like “Sophisticated Side Pony Tail” and “Me and Yr Daughter” and I enjoy this “Beard Lust” business too. Here’s their myspace.
Do you remember when hyphy was a thing, before the ghostriding was something white people did? Nation of Thizzlam was my favorite site and they loved The Pack as much as I did.
The thing I liked about The Pack is they were super young but they rapped over the wildest samples—Styx and shit—and it was like yeah I knew that song when I was 15 except it was because I was reading Mojo magazine and trying to learn about classic rock. And they were super dirty, so they couldn’t have been reading Mojo because they were smashing girls for stories.
The Pack - Criminal Mind (click to download)
And when they weren’t rapping over Styx which was only 2 times, they were rapping over the corniest keyboards and the biggest drums, and like the Gregorian Chant synth. This was when I had a MP3 CD player in my car, and I had Wolfpack Muzik 1 & 2 on one CD for like 3 hours.
Based Boys was pretty good and In My Car video was sick, but the album cover was lame so they only sold 2,000 the first week. Clipse taught me to blame Jive, so blame Jive. But that got me kind of worried, because it was always like these kids are soo talented but there was no way The Industry would let them get away with that, making money and being good and in high school, Greek tragedy Wire style.
Except that their new mixtape is better than Based Boys, and it’s as good as Muzik 1 or 2. There’s dumb synths everywhere, and they rap over Freaknasty which is the way everything should be.
The Pack - Dip (click to download)
But I think my favorite song, like my usual favorite Pack song, doesn’t have space noises it has guitars and pitched up voices. The weirdest thing about them for me is that yeah they run the Casio game but they sound as good or better on regular rap. I mean this is really good.
The Pack - Bonus Track (click to download)
IN CONCLUSION, you can buy Wolfpack Muzik 3 for $10 at the iTunes store.
Duncan
James