Jay-Z: American Gangster and Other Hip-Hop Thoughts

(Never underestimate the importance of good album art.)

I have no logical reason to be excited about this album based on Jay-Z's recent track record (Kingdom Come, R. Kelly and Linkin Park collabo albums) yet I am. Probably because I've been ping-ponging between Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint.

Although what I am about to say is clear hyperbole, the concept album (in theory) is hip-hop's savior.

Let's be clear, concept albums are incredibly pretentious and notoriously difficult to pull off
but when done right

Deltron 3030



Kool Keith with Dr. Octagon



They can circumvent the main problem that makes rap music the incredible bore it is today; the inability to detach an entertainment persona from reality.

Much of rap's allure was built on the danger the artists presented to white suburban boys who ate it up, but it seems that shtick is wearing thin.

Where is the growth?
Where is the sense of perspective and grasp on reality?

People don't expect James Gandolfini to choke out or shotgun blast his cousins in real life even though it was amazing when he did it in the Sopranos.

Yet T.I. felt the need to attempt to acquire a machine gun at the peak of his career despite the fact that he is an ex-felon.

If these charges are true, what a dumb nigger T.I. is. And I don't mean that in a friendly kinship slang way.

On top of T.I.'s colossal boner, Wycelf calls T.I. a prophet and compares him to Malcolm X. Um, ok Wyclef.

That Malcolm X poster with the machine gun is cool on your college dorm wall, but less so in reality.

Other evidence of rap's waning grasp on reality and it's own devolution.

• Ja Rule is still beefing with 50 Cent even though both of their career's are jokes.
  
  • "I have conversations with myself," he told MTV News late last week about The Mirror, which is set to arrive in stores November 13. "I talk to the guy in the mirror. He never answers back; it's always the same guy that asks the questions and answers the questions.
    
    
    Ok...
    
    
    "[50] was no different," he continued. "He wanted to be where I was at. He wanted to be me. He just didn't know how to go about it. He didn't know how to go about and say, 'Yo, Ja, I want to do a record with you.' So his thing to get in the game was to insult everyone in the business.
    
    Yawn...
    
    
• Puffy is still attacking people at nightclubs.
  But as he said in his own words, more or less,
  
  "Diddy did it, but Diddy's lawyer is so with it that Diddy got acquited."
  
  
• Prodigy just got pinched for 3.5 years on a gun charge after dropping "Return of the Mac" a fairly solid semi-concept album about gully ass pre-Guiliani NY.
  Guess he missed the concept part.

Hopefully Jay-Z's American Gangster lives up to internal hype level I've set and it doesn't inspire Jay to try to buy an AK-47 from an Arab arms dealer working for the FBI in the back of Newark Airport or some shit.

Stay on your corporate game Jay.

________________________________________


Other shit:

• Why is Ghostface is crying like a bitch over the fact that Wu-Tang wants to drop an album on a day that impedes with his 34th album in two months. Fall back for the fucking group.
  
  There's this thing called supply and demand that Ghost isn't grasping. Stop dropping albums faster than my birthdays.
  
  
  
• Nas in a desperate attempt for attention, names his next album "Nigger."
  
  ...Sigh...
  
  Naming his last album "Hip-Hop is Dead" started an interesting convo and it sold about 700,000, but it didn't obscure the fact that the beats were embarrassingly minor league and the tone of the album was confused at best.
  
  Nas is a pseudo-intellectual of the worst sort who gets a pass from everyone because of his casual mix of Islamo-Christian iconography, old school nostalgia and because they want him to be something he is not.
  Smart.
  In terms of singles he has a solid back catalog, but if you drill deep into the content of his "political/conscious" songs or his interviews he is usually just spitting bullshit.
  
  Take his explanation of using "Nigger" as his album title.
  
  
  • "I wanna make the word easy on mutha----as' ears," he explained. "You see how white boys ain't mad at 'cracker' 'cause it don't have the same [sting] as 'nigger'? I want 'nigger' to have less meaning [than] 'cracker."
  
  Nas, you dumb nigger, your shitty album will not lessen the sting of racial epithets.
  
  "Yo I just copped "Nigger" at Best Buy. Racism is over son!!!
  
  No.
  
  White people don't care if you call them cracker because they still decide whether to sign your check or hire your ass.
  
  Nigger will always be nigger and nigga will never be acceptable other than something for black people to say to each other.
  
  For a man that hates Bill O' Reilly as much as Nas does, they sure play from the same PR handbook.
  What's Nas' next album going to be called?
  
  "I Miss Slavery?"
  
  Method Man sums it up best,
  
  
  • "Nas knows what he's doing. He's a smart brother. He keeps his name in the game," Tical offered. "Last year, when he put out Hip Hop Is Dead, I was being interviewed, everybody was asking me what I thought about his album. ... I think it's too much emphasis on just the word. I know a word worse than 'nigger': Darfur. Real talk. I'd like to see Reverend Al take a walk out there. Let's stop focusing on the wrong sh--."
    
    
  
  By the way, the tracklist for his greatest hits album is horrible. Did Jay-Z ask Rihanna to pick that shit out? Oh wait, it comes out on Columbia, not Def Jam. There goes that excuse.
  
  
  
• I am growing really weary of this whole white hipster music critic movement. You know, Tom Breihan, Kelefa Sanneh, Sasha Frere Jones (SFJ) etc, legitimizing god awful music and writing lazy criticism with lengthy graduate thesis apologias.
  

Generally they write well, although SFJ uses the term "musical miscegenation" four times in his last piece, but the conclusions they reach are usually complete bullshit.

SFJ newest thesis is that indie rock isn't black enough (Warning: long article full of bullshit and dubious conclusions.)

• "How did rhythm come to be discounted in an art form that was born as a celebration of rhythm’s possibilities? Where is the impulse to reach out to an audience—to entertain? I can imagine James Brown writing dull material. I can even imagine the Meters wearing out their fans by playing a little too long. But I can’t imagine any of these musicians retreating inward and settling for the lassitude and monotony that so many indie acts seem to confuse with authenticity and significance."

He reaches this conclusion because it was hard for him to add authentic Nigra vocals to his own band's funk soul-dub music. And because Sufjan Stevens doesn't lean or rock with it.

I guess that means that Soulja Boy isn't white enough?
What about completely amelodic rap like Anticon and Def Jux?
Give me a fucking break.

Slate tears SFJ apart while calling out his own contradictions and recognizing that the problem with Indie rock is a class issue.

• While it's possible to cherry-pick exceptions ever since, Frere-Jones does so selectively, overlooking the likes of Royal Trux or the Afghan Whigs in the 1990s, or more recently, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, Battles and the dance-punks LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, and Junior Senior, almost all of whom appear on his own best-of-the-year list in progress. Last March, in direct contradiction to what he says in this week's New Yorker essay, Frere-Jones wrote in an LCD Soundsystem review: "About five years ago, indie rockers began to rediscover the pleasures of rhythm." Where are those indie rockers now? Vanished, because they would mess with his thesis. He isn't really talking about all of indie rock, but a folkier subset that's hardly trying to be rock at all. But to say so would be less dramatic.

And...

• Ultimately, though, the "trouble with indie rock" may have far more to do with another post-Reagan social shift, one with even less upside than the black-white story, and that's the widening gap between rich and poor. There is no question on which side most indie rock falls. It's a cliche to picture indie musicians and fans as well-off "hipsters" busily gentrifying neighborhoods, but compared to previous post-punk generations, the particular kind of indie rock Frere-Jones complains about is more blatantly upper-middle class and liberal-arts-college-based, and less self-aware or politicized about it."
  
  

Ouch. SFJ needs to ask the internets to recall that piece. It's really indefensible.

• Big Q4 coming up for rap.
  
  We have new
  
  
  • Jay
  • Nas
  • Wu
  • Foxy (holy shit, it's 1997)
    
  • Lupe
    
    Also for industry purposes only
    
    
  • Three 6 Mafia
  • Cassidy
  • Lil Mama (who will outsell Foxy)
  • Rick Ross
  • Ja Rule
  • Saigon
  • Wyclef
  • G-Unit (Six weeks and Curtis still isn't platinum yet...)
    

• Looking at that list of releases I feel like we need new RIAA certifications. People just ain't going gold (500K units) or platinum (1 million units) anymore.
  
  I propose
  
  White gold: If you are stuck in that 650K - 800K range, which is a bitch to get out of. (Nas)
  
  Silver: If you cross 250K units but can't hit 500K. (Lupe)
  
  Bronze: If you cross 100K and stop, check the Soundscan, a lot of people are missing that barrier. (Foxy)
  
  Wood: Anything under 50K. (Ja Rule, I hope.)
  

Start Snitching Needs Jazz

What's good party people?

After numerous Windows failures and hard-drive crashes I am finally making a proper attempt to rebuild my jaw-dropping, awe-inpsiring jazz collection. Ahem...

Since I know the Start Snitching crowd fucks with cabernet sauvignon and turtlenecks, I'm sure y'all can recommend the quality albums that deserves to be in any real jazz collection.

I do it all.

Fusion.
Bossa Nova.
Latin Jazz.
Vocal Jazz.
Bebop.
Modal.

Just list the album names, I can acquire the actual files myself.

Any Kenny G recs and I will block your IP address.

Update:
If you name a big name like Miles, Coltrane, Monk, etc. then you need to name a specific album or three.

Obscure jems are appreciated.

Fiddy vs Kanye vs 9/11

I never thought I'd reach a point in my life where I'd be cheering for Kanye, but Fiddy has truly embraced his self-proclaimed stride as the George Bush of rap and now that Kanye and Fiddy's albums will both be dropping on 9/11, I hope Kanye somehow manages to outsell 50 and end his career.

It's sad how quickly went from beloved street underdog with "How to Rob..." to the boring special ed analogy raps of "Amusement Park."

This uncut interview with 50 at Spin magazine is actually pretty incredible and gives a pretty honest look at his vulnerability after being shot and the fact that he's intelligent until the interviewer and Fiddy go into a room with Fiddy's weed-carriers and devolves into the rich-boy bully shtick that's worn terribly thin. It's sad because the beginning of the interview shows he's smarter than what comes below.

Example,

• What about the MCs -- Chamillionaire, Ghostface Killah, Master P -- who have said that they're not going to curse in their music anymore, in response to the post-Imus outcry?
  None of those people sell records.

  Chamillionaire sold more than a million records.
  Let him go sell gospel records, if he's so fuckin' righteous. I can write around the curses if I want to, but you can't tell me to write around the curses. First of all, there's a clean version of the record available, anyway, if people don't want to hear that content. This is adult entertainment. Why is pornography legal? Wouldn't you say that the women who do pornography are hos? They get paid $1,000 to fuck on tape. You understand? And we can't say 'ho'? And who's the leading consumer for pussy on a tape? Middle-aged white men.

  The peanut gallery: "White men, yeah. They buy all of it. They're spending way more."

He also states that music cannot be good unless it sells.

• Yeah, it's hard to imagine Ghostface is going to stop cursing, especially considering his last couple of records.

  The peanut gallery: "Nobody even cares what he does." "Who's listening to him, anyway?" "That was the '90s, B. Kids don't even know Ghostface anymore." "The streets are different now," says Yayo. "Guys like Ghostface don't matter. They don't. They had a run, but it's over."

  But can't he just make a great record, even if it doesn't sell, and we can appreciate it as listeners, as hip-hop fans?
  No, because a great record is embraced and enjoyed by the public. And it's played in cars and clubs.

  What if it sells a couple hundred thousand copies, isn't that valid? Or does it have to sell millions for you to take it seriously?
  In my camp, a couple hundred thousand records is a failure. From my perspective, if I sell 200,000 copies, after selling 12 million records, it's considered terrible.

  But maybe he's trying to make a different kind of record?
  What, the kind people don't buy?

  No, one with incredible, detailed storytelling that's moving and powerful, and isn't dependent on some obvious hook.
  Look, I understand all that. But if you're on a major record label, and he [Ghostface] is, and you sell a couple hundred thousand records, that was a failure. Your fuckin' photos and videos aren't recouped with 200,000 copies sold.

By that logic all popular music is good, all top-selling books are art and the highest grossing movies are the true classics.

Bad Boys 2 > Donnie Darko
Pearl Harbor > Waking Life
Etc...

Thanks for the heads up Curtis.

Meanwhile, Kanye is ready for that ass (pause) on September 11th.
This may be the first year where people might actually be allowed to enjoy September 11th. Unless Guiliani links Curtis and Kanye to 9/11.

In the meanwhile, Chamillionaire's new Mixtape Messiah 3 is better than the last 42 albums G-Unit put out.

Wu-Tang Archive

(Get it...)

Y'all should be messing with Spine Magazine, one of the few hip-hop news sites that finds shit worth your time.

Recently they posted a link to a 215 song list of FREE MP3's from the Wu-Tang clan.

I don't even know what to do with all that or when I'll be able to listen to it.
But that's what external hard drives are for.


- Also, Spine Mag also put me onto Brooklyn Radio Dot Net, which hosts all types of hot radio shows. It's all worth checking out, but the shit that caught my eye was one radio show called The Rub which recently finished making mixtapes for every year of hip-hop from 1979 - 1989. Some years are obviously better than others but the sheer anthropology of it alone makes it worth some of your time.

Let me know what y'all think of this.

Someone should do this for 1990 - 2000. I'd kill for that.


What hidden podcasts and radio stations are worth checking out?
I know y'all are holding out on me...

Kill (C)Rap Music!

(Giving weed carriers a bad name)

By now everyone's seen Karl Rove's little jig rap.


Now keep that Rove video in mind in context of this Coup song from '94, Pimps (Freestyling at the Fortune 500 Club) about CEO's rapping about their corporate conquests.

• "Motherfuckers like me got stocks bonds and securites
  No impurities, straight anglo saxon
  when my family got their sex on
  Don't let me get my flex on, do some gangster shit
  Make the army go to war for Exxon
  Long as the money flow, I be making dough."

The Coup spit that truth.

Anyway, people have been getting up in arms about his MC Rove shtick as being racist and/or offensive. What's the big deal? That shit is less offensive than Ms. Peachez and is no worse than anything on the Billboard Rap Singles Chart.

Listen to the #1 rap song in the country, "This Is Why I'm Hot" if your stomach can take it.



Goddamn that is ignorant. The Village Voice breakdown of the "song" is classic.

Considering that last week was one where 28-year old Tony Yayo struck a 14-year old boy for wearing a Game shirt and Snoop and Puffy had to cancel a tour because Britain wouldn't let Snoop in, it's clear that (c)rap music is damn near indefensible.

While folks like Marbury and Ben Wallace try to fight the disease of materialism that rap music so gleefully spreads amongst the youth, it's getting damn near impossible to proudly ride with hip-hop.

Start Snitching readers, what hip-hop are you proud to be caught listening to in April 2007? (Besides Jesus Price Superstar, which is all types of great.)

I'm about a half step away from buying some tight jeans, a blazer and Bjork's back catalogue and calling it a wrap.

Top Ten Albums of 2006 and Other Shit

(Bringing blacks and whites together, the MLK Jr. of this rap shit.)

Music is becoming so fragmented and niche-oriented that it's increasingly harder music critics, let alone the average listener (and where is the line between those two?) to agree on anything.

This year's collection of Top Albums lists shows exactly how random shit has become. You could pretty much make an argument for whatever album you liked as the best of 2006. Looking at Pitchfork's list, it seemed like that's exactly what they did.
There are only three albums on here I can co-sign and I can't stand "Silent Shout."

Pitchfork's Top Ten of 2006

10. Scott Walker - The Drift
9. Boris - Pink
8. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
7. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
6. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
5. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
4. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
2. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
1. The Knife - Silent Shout


Pitchfork's Out of Wedlock Brother, Stylus Magazine posted their list, which was a step-up from Pitchfork with 5 good albums.

Stylus Mag's Top 10 of 2006

10. Joanna Newsom -Ys
9. Junior Boys- So This Is Goodbye
8. Lil Wayne/DJ Drama - Dedication 2
7. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
6. Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra of Bubbles
5. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
4. TV On the Radio
3. The Knife - The Silent Shout
2. Hot Chip - The Warning
1. Ghostface - Fishscale


Blah to them both.


Start Snitching's Musical Observations of 2006

• It seems like the white hipster obsession with the Clipse and Lil Wayne could not be stopped. Sadly with more albums coming from them in 2007, it seems like this fetish will continue well into 2007.
• Glitchy, unlistenable electronic art-rock is en vogue. If you can listen to someone scratching a chalkboard and looping sounds of plane crashing backwards for 47 minutes you are deep.
• Mixtapes are now on equal footing with albums.
• Reggaeton is dead. Thank the lord.
• Grime is dead. Thank the lord.
• Everyone has seemingly turned against the Arctic Monkeys. Thank the lord yet again.
• Thom Yorke needs Radiohead.
• If your album flopped, you should blame it on the market and not your wack-ass album.
• Kool Keith is over.
• Get shot ain't what it used to be. Ask Proof, Obie Trice, Cam'ron and Beanie Sigel, who all got shot. Forgot already? So did everyone else.
• Ghostface needs to start getting put on those greatest rappers of all-time lists.
  

Here's the Start Snitching guide to Top 10 Albums of 2006.

10. Cat Power - The Greatest

Chan Marshall is the hottest recovering alcoholic in all of indie-rock. Leaving behind her baggage and typical sound, Ms. Power got some soul and recorded her album in Memphis with Al Green's old backing band while exorcising some old demons.
If she's needs a sponsor, I can help.


9. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America



The lead singer has the voice of a bleated goat. If you can get over that, then you'll be able to appreciate lyrics that chronicle the drug-fueled self-destruction of small-town America with the same passion that Bruce Springsteen chronicled hope and small-town escape 30 years ago. Overdosing has never been more fun.


8. Hot Chip - The Warning



Now here's an electronic record that actually deserved the praise it got. Rather than slamming a bunch of keys on their laptop, this band actually made fully structured songs that a human could vibe to, with enough atmosphere and subtle influences to keep you dissecting the album, even after repeated listens.


7. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped



In a parallel universe, Sonic Youth gets their own iPod instead of U2 and the entire 80 GB hard drive is filled with John Cage's 639 year long piece, "As Slow as Possible."
Shitty modern rock bands would pay tribute to them on MTV Icons, instead of honoring Aerosmith and Metallica, and Kim Gordon would stare down from her throne with bored disdain.

But back here in reality, Sonic Youth is still grinding away in its 3rd decade of existence, doing their best to keep the guitar relevant with their most melody-focused album, in a year when shitty unfocused electronic music won all the accolades.


6. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere



Yea I picked Gnarls Barkley as my number 2.
And what?
I've heard people call this album a gimmick record and then praise MF Doom in the same breath.
That is called hypocrisy.

Gnarls is just catching backlash for getting (way too much) radio play, selling a million and getting that platinum plaque.
The production is some of the best of the year and most artists wish they could have pop melodies this strong.


5. TV on the Radio



A black indie rock band!
Huzzah!!!
Dense, intensely lyrical, rhythmic art-rock by a band that's 80% Negro.
If they could just get on BET somehow, I'd be a happy man.


4. Lily Allen - Alright, Still



You wouldn't be wrong for thinking "pikey/chav" when you hear the name Lily Allen.
She is a white girl who makes songs about getting into fights on the line of night clubs.
Social distnctions aside, anyone who digs this deep into the crates to find the classic reggae, ska, blues and dub samples on display here and then overlays them with pop music this subversive is going to make the list.


2 & 3. Ghostface - Fishscale/More Fish



His album scraps are killing most people in the game.
A thrown together project that his label pitched to him ended up being fire and he sounds hungrier than most new cats in the game.
What more is there to say?

No one raps with the intensity, urgency or the creativity of Ghostface.
If you would have told anyone in 1994 that Ghostface would be the most relevant, respected and commercially viable rapper from the Wu-Tang clan you would have quite possibly been slapped.
It's not that he wasn't good. He just wasn't in the forefront like that.

But more than 10 odd years later he put together an MVP performance and people still sit up to hear that new Ghostface.
Remember who started that coke rap kiddies.
A kilo is a thousand grams.


1. M. Ward- Post-War



M. Ward's dusty lo-fi record is based on what he claims is an examination of how a society obsessed with and destroyed by war moves on.
Fortunately there isn't one whiny ass protest song on this record to undermine M. Ward's trademark hazy sound or intimate vocals.
Post War takes the slacker aesthetic of Pavement and gives it enough political context to sneak right under the ambivalence of our lazy ass generation.

______________________________________________________

10 Songs I Played Too Damn Much in 2006

10. Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing
9. Nelly Furtado - No Hay Igual
8. Cham - Ghetto Story
7. Cat Power - The Greatest
6. The Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars - Soda Soap
5. T.I. - What You Know
4. Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down
3. Be Your Own Pet- Bicycle, Bicycle, You're My Bicycle
2. Easy Dub All Stars - Lucky (Radiohead Cover)
1. M. Ward- Right in the Head




Top Ten Albums of 2007 (I'm Psychic Like That)

10. Raekwon - Built For Cuban Linx 2
9. Bloc Party
8. The Shins
7. Radiohead
6. MIA
5. Madvillain 2
4. Modest Mouse
3. The Go! Team
2. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
1. MF Doom/Ghostface - Swift and Changeable


That's it for music in 2006.
Stay tuned for the Top Coons of the year.

Nas Owns Jeezy... There Is A God

(That's Jeezy's career in the grave.)

Nas has never been a commercial powerhouse on the levels of Jay, Pac or whatever new (c)rapper was running the charts. But the dude is a legend regardless of his album stumbles or how many times his production makes you shake your head in disappointment and wonder why Primo couldn't do his beats instead of Christina Aguiliera's.

His career sales and the wackness of his last album "Street's Disciple" are his weakness which allows disrespectful young bucks like Jeezy to say shit like this about Nas,

• "I’ll tell you what, we’ll look at them first week numbers and we’ll talk about it."

Sales and popularity should never be a factor for determining artistic merit.
Is America Idol the best on television because it's the highest rated?
Better than The Wire and The Shield?

Is Creed a better rock band than Sonic Youth?

Was "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" the best movie of the year?

All of this is part of why it was so ignorant for Jeezy to make that statement because his album outsold Nas' last album.

Well it seems the Billboard Gods were also upset by this disrespect because Nas' first week outsold Jeezy's first week.

• Nas scores his third No. 1 on The Billboard 200 this week with his eighth studio set, "Hip Hop Is Dead." The Def Jam effort moved 355,000 copies last week in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Compare that to Jeezy's first week,

• Atlanta rapper Young Jeezy debuts at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 with his second Def Jam album, "The Inspiration." The set sold 352,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Whoops! Wanna talk about it now Jeezy?
Maybe the south ain't running this rap shit as throughly as they thought.
And the realest shit about this whole deal is that all the aspiring cocaine dealers who bought Jeezy's trashbag album didn't pass the good word along because he dropped around 40% of his first week sales and out of the Billboard Top Ten in one week.

It's always refreshing when an artist can have the sales to go along with the respect.
Big-ups to Nas on his resurrection on the back of hip-hop's death.
Something good had to come of it.

The Top Five Tech Things of 2006

(I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that...")

I don't blog about technology often because that is what Engadget and Digg are for.

But not everyone has the time or interest to get find the worthwhile shit out there and appreciate the power that technology has on their lives, so here's the shit you should have been rocking in 2006.


5. Google Earth 4

Link

I don't think people realize how real in the field Google is with their shit and the level they will be on by the end of the decade. I also afraid as to how much more detailed this program can get in 2007.
Tinfoil-hat conspiracies aside, Google Earth is exactly what a country who loves Borat but isn't quite sure if his country is real needs.
Get global fools, before Chinese robots are banging your wife.


4. USB Cell

Link



Batteries that charge through USB.
Quite simple, quite brilliant.


3. TVU Player

Link

Internet TV is some next level shit that won't take off until Verizon DSL and friends stop selling those bullshit "high-speed" Internet connections.
This software lets you rock free TV, Cable and Global Television over the Internet.
Illegal? Probably.
Free cable? Definitely.


2. FairUse 4 WM

Link

Sign up for a two-week free trial with a music subscription service.
MTV Urge, Yahoo! Music Unlimited and Napster are a few of the more popular ones. Urge doesn't ask for a credit card.
Download thousands of protected WMA files to your computer for free and then cry as they expire when your trial ends.
Or use this program to rip off the DRM protection and enjoy them well after your trial is up.

I'm not encouraging you to do that. I'm just saying that it's a possibility.

Shit, you might actually like one of the services enough to sign up after the trial ends.
That's what I did with Yahoo Music Unlimited.
You get tired of shitty quality SoulSeek tracks after a while.


1. Skype 3.0



Link

VOIP is scaring the shit out of the telecommunication companies. How do you run your business when you know that one day all calls will be free?
I don't know and I don't care.
Skype isn't new, it lets you call anyone, anywhere in the world for free as long as they have Skype.
The noteworthy step is the fact that Skype is starting to get common on cellphones with Wi-Fi, which means soon you'll be making free calls everywhere.
I love it.

_____________________________

My 2007 calls.

1) I know y'all are all in love with your iPods but don't sleep on that Microsoft Zune.
No one thought Microsoft would steal the crown from the Sony PlayStation and look what happened. XBox 360 is running the table and I am better than you at Madden.
The next Zune should be fire.

2) Cellphones will get gullier, meaning built-in hard drives, better cameras and such.
Not to mention Apple will release some sort of Apple Phone. Everyone will step their game up after the Apple Phone drops. Competition gets that ass moving.

3) I will acquire some sort of HDTV.
Standard TV is not cutting it for Start Snitching.

James Brown - R.I.P.

There was no way I could celebrate Jesus' Birthday with a clear mind without taking a minute to shout out Mr. James Brown.

When I read he had pneumonia I had a feeling that it was over for him. His age and the gullyness of the disease didn't leave me with a good feeling and unfortunately I was right. He passed away today at age 73.

For better or worse, hip-hop wouldn't exist without JB along with a few dozen other genres.
Listen to any one of his "Greatest Hits" albums and the hear the samples of a million rap songs.

I'm not going to post some long list of James Brown MP3's and the rap songs they created. I'm sure someone with the time has done that already or will do that soon.

I'm just going to put up a few of my favorite JB songs that any self-respecting music fan should already have on computer.
Looking past his incredible influence on a myriad number of artists and genres, he made incredibly rhythmic, soulful and passionate music that should be appreciated for what it is.
Great music.

Top Ten Non-Rap Albums of 2006

(Have you seen me?)

Is the world really as simple as rap and non-rap?
Of course not.

But I'm not going to call this the Top Ten Indie-Pop, Art-Rock, Electronica and Prog-Metal Albums of 2006.
So y'all are going to have to deal.

There was no consensus album for the hipsters to rally around this year like there was for Kanye's overrated "Late Registration" in 2005 or the pretty great Arcade Fire record from 2004, so you could make your case for placing almost any album at any spot.

I'll go into this more when I combine the rap and non-rap lists for the true Top Ten Albums of 2006.

Close calls go to Beck's "The Information," Regina Spektor's "Begin to Hope," LCD Soundsystem "45:33."

Here we go again,


10. Band of Horses - "Everything All The Time"



This is just big, shimmering, straight-forward rock reminiscent of early My Morning Jacket. A solid debut record from a not so new band. It should be interesting to see where they go from here.


9. Espers - II



This is the type of album music critics dream about. Dark, dense, droning and almost to impossible to listen to outside the context of the album. Let the Espers guide you through your next acid trip.


8. Mastodon - Blood Mountain



Mastodon is single-handedly bringing metal out of the 80's and back into the conversation of today's tight sweater and black-rimmed glasses set.
Incredible production to match the ambitious prog concepts that would make Tolkien proud.
It's worth the neck pain.


7. Cat Power - The Greatest

Chan Marshall is the hottest recovering alcoholic in all of indie-rock. Leaving behind her baggage and typical sound, Ms. Power got some soul and recorded her album in Memphis with Al Green's old backing band while exorcising some old demons.
If she's needs a sponsor, I can help.





6. The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America



The lead singer has the voice of a bleated goat. If you can get over that, then you'll be able to appreciate lyrics that chronicle the drug-fueled self-destruction of small-town America with the same passion that Bruce Springsteen chronicled hope and small-town escape 30 years ago. Overdosing has never been more fun.


5. Hot Chip - The Warning



Now here's an electronic record that actually deserved the praise it got. Rather than slamming a bunch of keys on their laptop, this band actually made fully structured songs that a human could vibe to, with enough atmosphere and subtle influences to keep you dissecting the album, even after repeated listens.


4. Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped



In a parallel universe, Sonic Youth gets their own iPod instead of U2 and the entire 80 GB hard drive is filled with John Cage's 639 year long piece, "As Slow as Possible."
Shitty modern rock bands would pay tribute to them on MTV Icons, instead of honoring Aerosmith and Metallica, and Kim Gordon would stare down from her throne with bored disdain.

But back here in reality, Sonic Youth is still grinding away in its 3rd decade of existence, doing their best to keep the guitar relevant with their most melody-focused album, in a year when shitty unfocused electronic music won all the accolades.


3. TV on the Radio



A black indie rock band!
Huzzah!!!
Dense, intensely lyrical, rhythmic art-rock by a band that's 80% Negro.
If they could just get on BET somehow, I'd be a happy man.





2. Lily Allen - Alright, Still



You wouldn't be wrong for thinking "pikey/chav" when you hear the name Lily Allen.
She is a white girl who makes songs about getting into fights on the line of night clubs.
Social distnctions aside, anyone who digs this deep into the crates to find the classic reggae, ska, blues and dub samples on display here and then overlays them with pop music this subversive is going to make the list.




1. M. Ward- Post-War



M. Ward's dusty lo-fi record is based on what he claims is an examination of how a society obsessed with and destroyed by war moves on.
Fortunately there isn't one whiny ass protest song on this record to undermine M. Ward's trademark hazy sound or intimate vocals.
Post War takes the slacker aesthetic of Pavement and gives it enough political context to sneak right under the ambivalence of our lazy ass generation.

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I have no idea what the readership of this blog is because of my own fractured focus, so I don't know what kind of response to expect from this post. Do any people who read this blog listen to this type of shit?
Hollerate.
Let me know what you thought was popping in the "non-rock" category.

Top Ten Rap Albums of 2006

(Why isn't Ghostface in your Top 5 All-Time list?)

I couldn't even find 10 rap albums I liked in 2005, let alone pull together enough albums to make a Top Ten, so I didn't even bother.

2006 had some signs of a turnaround, especially earlier in the year, although as a whole rap was still pretty shitty. But at least there was enough decent to good shit to throw together a Top 10 without cheating like most people do and adding a mixtape to the list.

You can talk me out of number 9 and 10. Those are my affirmative action picks. In fact please talk me out of them. I like those albums but I'm not married to them.

Before we start, no year should end without Skillz's Rap-Up.

Not as hot as it used to be, but no one else does it.

"Lil Kim came home from doing a bid
Is it me or when she came out she was looking like Big?"

Damn.



Let's go.

10. AZ - The Format



Here is what you are supposed to say about AZ.
He is a very good rapper.
He is underrated.
He keeps putting out solid albums under the radar.
He cures cancer.
Etc.
AZ is a formalist whose albums I respect and like but he doesn't exactly knock my socks off.
He makes the list.

9. Rhymefest - Blue Collar



The thing with joke rappers is that they spit so many punchlines that some are bound not to work and when they don't, it's corny.
Rhymefest is not above this trap. But in another year without a Redman album, I'll take whatever fun rap I can get.

8. J Dilla - Donuts



I approach the albums of the deceased with an extra fine comb. Too many times they get the posthumous praise award while releasing crap.
I gave Donuts a hard time after its initial release but so many songs from this album ended up as great rap songs that I gave it another chance and was able to appreciate it for what it was, a great snapshot into the mind of one of rap's great producers.

7. T.I. - King



T.I. flows with the kind of care free confidence that makes his "King of the South" claim hard to argue with.
He makes Lil Wayne sound like the anxious closet case he is.

The greatest slap against the tirade of shitty southern dance songs came with the line,

"She asked me can I do the Laffy Taffy?
I said I do the 'Make the pussy happy'"

Truer words have never been spoken.
I think.


6. The Coup - Pick a Bigger Weapon



The Coup don't like capitalism.

They want you to applaud shoplifters, tell your boss to go to hell, piss on the graves of the robber barons, sneak into functions you weren't invited to and raise little Marxists.

With the wit of the lyrics and the funk heavy beats you might just do it.

"I Love Boosters" is essential. Sing it during your next trip to Macy's.




5. Lupe Fiasco - Food and Liquor



This may be the worst album cover of the year.
Is that a Nintendo DS on the left?
We get it Lupe, you're Muslim, you skateboard, you watch Pokemon and drink soy milk.

I can forgive some of his forays into that Kanye brand of self righteousness for simple fact that it's his first album and most rappers are so over the top with their studio gangsterism that he's just trying to respond with equal force in the opposite direction.

But the main reason he is forgiven is because he's spitting fire about shit no one else is really kicking.
That's what caught my ear this year, hunger and believable lyrics.
It's getting really old for everyone to act like The Wire was based on their life.


4. Nas - Hip-Hop is Dead



Nas damn near started the Civil War of rap with the title of this album alone.
Southern rappers all caught feelings when Uncle Nas shitted on the what they've done with rap since they became the dominant force in sales. East Coast rappers are far from the flawless embassadors of hip-hop that they would like to be (Ja Rule... ahem) but there is some relevancy to the claim that rap quickly devolved into shit after the South took the reigns.

With Jay-Z stepping out of the CEO booth to drop the dud of the year in "Kingdom Come" and Nas returning to form lyrically with "Hip-Hop is Dead" (bring back DJ Premier) the debate over whom is the better rapper will resume with force this summer at a weed spot near you.

And for the record, I like "Who Killed It."
Fuck the voice, listen to what he's saying.


3. Ghostface - More Fish



His album scraps are killing most people in the game.
A thrown together project that his label pitched to him ended up being fire and he sounds hungrier than most new cats in the game.
What more is there to say?


2. Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere



Yea I picked Gnarls Barkley as my number 2.
And what?
I've heard people call this album a gimmick record and then praise MF Doom in the same breath.
That is called hypocrisy.

Gnarls is just catching backlash for getting (way too much) radio play, selling a million and getting that platinum plaque.
The production is some of the best of the year and most artists wish they could have pop melodies as strong as this.


1. Ghostface - Fishscale



No one raps with the intensity, urgency or the creativity of Ghostface.
If you would have told anyone in 1994 that Ghostface would be the most relevant, respected and commercially viable rapper from the Wu-Tang clan you would have quite possibly been slapped.
It's not that he wasn't good. He just wasn't in the forefront like that.

But more than 10 odd years later he put together an MVP performance and people still sit up to hear that new Ghostface.
Remember who started that coke rap kiddies.
A kilo is a thousand grams.

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That's it.

You are a Clipse Stan?
A Game groupie?
Still think Jay-Z can rap?
Let me know.