Monday Mixtape, Vol. 62

Greetings! It's been a while, my apologies. As it has tended to do, life has been quite busy. Lots of really fun events in the past few weeks coupled with business travels and a brutal cold. But it's been far too long since a Monday Mixtape!

There's been a ton of music released in the past month or so, none bigger than A Tribe Called Quest's final album, We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your service. And what an unbelievable final album. You know that Tribe would never dishonor the late great Phife Dawg (who might have seen mortality knocking on the door) by making an album after this, and it's an honor to get something as well done as this album.

I would put this album on par with Beats, Rhymes, and Life. Both Midnight Marauders and The Low End Theory are hip-hop classics located in the upper echelon of rap, so it's silly and impossible to try to compare this to those. But DAMN this first track! My favorite part is when Q-Tip comes back in ("Reputation ain't glowing / Reparations ain't flowing...") in the middle of Jarobi's bars - so sick. Q-tip absolutely annihilates this track, one of my favorites of the year.

Q-Tip produced the entire album himself, pasting one last stamp on his legacy, a man at the highest of heights amongst titans of rap. This man produced some of the best hip-hop albums of all time and was part of the greatest hip-hop group of all time, had one of the most iconic voices, and his influence on rap is monumental.

With all this adoration, I have to include my Best of Tribe playlist which I made when Phife passed away.  

Jim James new solo album is a must hear for any fans of his. "Here in Spirit" is my favorite track on the album, a precious song with James' patented vocals bellowing and bouncing through his mansions of melodies. He bleeds what he sings, I believe it all. 

If you like this track from Horse Thief, 2014's Worst Band Name (says a very well known blog, Layers & Sounds), please check out their debut album from 2014, particularly "Human Geographer" and "Come On."

WHO THE HELL do you compare these guys to?? They sound a little bit like another bit of an unknown band (that I saw open for Radiohead years back) that's also pretty out there, Other Lives. I always like to compare weird and unique bands to Radiohead, but I just don't hear it here. Anyways, I'm excited for a new album as their new track "Another Youth" is pretty badass.

Jai Wolf is some sort of DJ I heard about years ago from my buddy who had a really interesting mixtape. I hadn't really heard from him since (I wasn't really looking around though), but this is a pretty catchy tracks, one consistently on repeat for me. 

And we end with Tribe's "Lost Somebody," a tribute to the Phife, the five foot assassin with the roughneck business. For all that Tribe was and all the success bestowed upon Q-Tip as the mastermind, Tribe would NEVER have been what it was without Phife. RIP 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 61

It's time for a mixtape dedicated to all the hip-hoppers out there! I'm not gonna blow your mind with too many new names (though Caleborate counts), but there are some great remixes (see: Black Hippy's rendition of "THat Part" and Ab-Soul jumping on a remix with the super underrated Bas to his great original "Housewives"), a new track from Danny Brown, and some oldies but goodies, namely Ab-Soul's haunting "Illuminate" and my favorite rapper of the moment, Isaiah Rashad, head-bobbing classic from his first album, "Heavenly Father." For goodness sakes, just inhale this guy's discography and don't stop until next week.

Word is Ab-Soul may be coming out with a new album. Needless to say I'm excited to hear what the extraterrestrial professor has to say.  

Not a whole lot from me other than the tracks. Enjoy!

Monday Mixtape Vol. 60

Sadly, another short post from me - I just got back from Cabo and have to get back on a flight to Dallas in 10 hours, so time is limited tonight!

Anyways, in the near future I'd like to post something about Bon Iver's new album since I saw him at The Fox in Oakland recently. It was just one of THOSE concerts. One I will remember for a very long time because it really showcased his brilliance beyond even my lofty expectations. His reinterpretations of songs from albums are crazily complicated and stunning to hear live because some are such huge deviations from the originals. Others have slight changes that are memorable. He even reinterpreted his new songs!

I started watching a ton of live Bon Iver videos thereafter to see any more of Justin Vernon's patented falsetto. I'll get to those in another post. 

In the meantime, please enjoy my favorite hilarious song of the year, "Shoes Off," a song about taking shoes off at various airports. Heems - from Das Racist - is one part of this wacky duo along with another British rapper, Riz MC, propel the floozy beat and flow in style. Just love blasting this song. I also included my favorite Das Racist song as well because it's another ridiculous beat and song.

Pond is an offshoot of some members from Tame Impala - mainly their drummer, Jay Watson. I loved their last album and this song gives me some serious hope for their upcoming one.

G Perico is an up and coming West Coast rapper bringing back that 90s G-Funk type of sound, reminiscent of Dre's debut he Chronic. 

Amber Coffman was in the Dirty Projectors and made this dreamy solo track which provides some anticipation for what she has in store for her solo album. Should be good!

I'll get back to the new Bon Iver album soon and some really really cool live performances by him. If he is ANYWHERE near you, GO SEE HIM! 

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 59

I'm going to try to write this in five minutes. I'm exhausted. Here goes. 

I'm seeing Bon Iver on Tuesday at the Fox. I've never seen him. It's going to be an epic show, in part because he tends not to play a ton of shows, so I'll really savor this one. Hearing his falsetto live, playing his beat up guitar while singing "re:Stacks" (my favorite Bon Iver song right above "Beach Baby") will be a memory I hope I can have. Coming in third place of my favorite songs by Justin Vernon might be "33 God," it's just that good. 

Three minutes.

Ark Patrol is some weird DJ who lives in Berkeley and has made some very chill and spacey songs. This one is a bit more catchy. Check out "Tokyo" for another!

Alex Frankel is from the very talented duo, Holy Ghost! To date, I still think their debut is one of my favorite Electro-Pop albums I've heard, and I really don't think they get the respect they deserve. They're better than Chvrches yet get one tenth the love. 

One minute!

Night Moves FOR GOODNESS SAKE LISTEN TO THEIR ALBUM.

Temples! Tame Impala lite. Maybe Tame Impala wanna bes, okay Tame Impala wanna bes. Particularly on this track the lead singer's voice is even more Kevin Parker-ish. BUT their debut album was really really good. So there's that.

I did it! Seeya!

The 2016 version of "1Train" - Really Doe by Danny Brown feat. Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul. and Earl Sweatshirt

2013's "1Train" was a Royal Rumble of the hottest rappers at that time: A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf. Danny Brown, Action Bronson, and Big KRIT. The production by Hit-Boy explodes and never lets go. It was my favorite rap track of the year (looking back at my Top 100 Songs of 2013, I listed Kayne's "On Sight" higher as a rap song which I still stand by because it's one of those Kanye as Radiohead comparisons I tend to make - no one could make that song but Kanye, no one could envision something like that): 

So now it's 2016 and we need another 1Train! This beat is filthy, first off. In comes Danny Brown, the shrill rapper, with a track off his new album, Atrocity Exhibition, with a who's who of the hottest rappers: Kendrick Lamar, TDE label-mate Ab-Soul, and the reclusive Earl Sweatshirt.

No surprise that the best rapper alive, Kendrick Lamar, KILLS the hook and then kicks his verse down the stairwell. Ab-Soul's verse is a bit too Watch the Throne-ish with his Balmain and BAPE talk, but I find it hard to hate on the man, I love his flows. Danny Brown is an acquired taste. 

Then there's Earl Sweatshirt, who finishes in a tie with Kendrick, mainly with the closing line, "Well it's the left-handed shooter / Kyle Lowry the pump / I'm at your house like / "Why you got your couch on my Chucks?"

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 58

Apologies for my absence, life has occurred in the memorable month of September. I proposed to my girlfriend (she said yes!), went to two weddings, worked my butt off for my real job for a deposition and other crazy fraudster shit, moved into my finance's apartment, saw my fiancé get a killer job cuz she's a rock star. It's been one to remember. 

THAT BEING SAID, we still need to listen to music. Fortunately for you, I've got what you need. There are two human beings who are broadcasting over my entire musical bandwidth: Frank Ocean and Isaiah Rashad. 

I'll start with Frank. First off, I need to write a review for his album. There are gorgeous tracks amidst some other messy, less perfect ones. But the gorgeous tracks are symphonies to the ears, a treat of epic proportions. I' still debating what my favorite songs are - it's down to four - but I included two of the contenders. 

Isaiah Rashad, a rapper I've loved going back to Monday Mixtape, Vol. 5 (!)(in May 2015!!)(Can't believe I've been doing this so long!!!). I can't stop listening to what would either be called his major label debut or his second album. I call it his second album because his first - Cilvia Demo - was so well arranged and unique that it would be a disservice to call it a mixtape. Rashad is on the TDE label - along with luminary Kendrick Lamar and his disciples Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock - but the only one from the east coast.

His sound is like A Tribe Called Quest meets ATLiens-era Outkast with the serious separating factor of his own damn talent and vibe. I love this guy and his music only gets better and better. You may not like or love it the first time around, but it just grows and grows on you = the mark of an amazing album.

I imagine October may be a bit less wild than September, so I hope to be a bit more active on the blog. Enjoy!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 57 (and Local Natives album review)

My most anticipated album of the year was released on Friday: Local Natives' Sunlit Youth. 

There are albums where the first track completely takes hold of you - as LN's opener "Villainy" did for me - and the next track does the same - again as LN's "Past Lives" did - and again and again until I begin to say to myself, "Oh man, this could be a REALLY great album."

If I get through an entire album like that, it's a joyful experience for me hard to replicate in any other form. A couple albums this year have come close to that. I think of Anderson Paak's Malibu and Sturgill Simpson's release. 

SO DID THIS HAPPEN WITH LOCAL NATIVES, you ask, pleadingly. It did and then it didn't. 

As I got through the first four tracks, I was starting to get very excited. "Dark Days," their best song on this album, is track three. "Fountain of Youth," one of their most anthemic songs to date ("WE CAN DO WHATEVER WE WAAAAAAAANNNNNTTT!"), a sing-along to experience live I'm sure, is track four. 

But then the albums starts to drift. The album is buoyed a bit by the mysterious and delicate "Jellyfish" - track six - the remainder wades without much direction. "Coins," an almost John Mayer-ish intro, is a weird direction and sounds misplaced on this album.

I'm not really sure what the majority of the lyrics mean either. There are all sorts of first names of different women of which no thread or theme I could deduce. There are vague references which may be specific to them but are lost on me. A few, like "Fountain of Youth," are a bit more straightforward, but overall I've never really understood their lyrics throughout their discography.

"Mother Emanuel" the other highlight on the back half of the album, soars on its catchy hook (which made me realize their singers don't really rely on catchy vocals but instead thrive on multiple vocal harmonies and lots of long "ooooohhhs" and "ahhhhhhs"), but I just haven't been able to find the rest of the album memorable.

Granted, I've only listened to the album all the way through a handful of times. I hope my feelings change on the end of the album, but I wish I got a warmer feeling from start to finish. 

It's a world apart compared (and this just isn't fair, really) to the quality and ingenuity of Tame Impala's third album. But Kevin Parker is the rock genius of this decade, the Thom Yorke of today, what Kanye has been to rap.

So those comparisons just aren't fair. Though I think I make it because I've always placed my love of both Tame Impala and Local Natives at the same heights. Now those heights are changing because Tame Impala is in the stratosphere, cementing what is probably my second favorite band ever behind Radiohead.

I STILL can't get over how amazing Currents is as well as Tame Impala's preceding two albums. It helps that I just saw them live at the beautiful Greek Theatre in Berkeley where they were the best I've ever seen in the four times that I've had the pleasure seeing them. They were light years ahead of their performance a year ago at Outside Lands right when Currents was released. And they were even better, tighter with the perfect mixing/level of sounds, than my previous favorite set of theirs at Austin City Limits back in 2013.

ANYWAYS, there's a ton of other music on this mixtape. If you haven't listened to Isaiah Rashad, whose debut, Cilvia Demo, was a favorite of mine, please see if he's your type. I love him and think his new album is pretty damn great. Though as is par the course, Kendrick absolutely steals the scene in "Wat's Wrong," as he spews,

I told them, the best rappers is 25
Been like that for a while now, I'm 29.
Any n**** that disagrees is a fuckin' liar.
Pardon me see my alter ego was gemini.

Finally, I'll leave you with the great "Leave Your Light On," from the enjoyable new album from Night Moves. Now THAT'S a hook! 

Local Natives New Album Out Today!!

As I wait in an airplane headed to the sunny shores of Malibu for a wedding, I am listening to the LA natives, Local Natives. I haven't really listened to any of the singles released in anticipation other than Past Lives because I think listening to a new album of a band you love is a unique experience that cannot be replicated.  

Anyways, I'll let you know what I think. A lot riding on this album in terms of their ability and talent - I've said all this stuff many times before about third albums of super talented bands (like Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, and Radiohead). 

ENJOY  

Kendrick Lamar and Childish Gambino Mashup by Gibberish

I'm a big fanboy of Donald Glover in part to his role on what use to be the hilarious sitcom Community and in part to his rap alter ego, Childish Gambino. The guy's a talent and I wrote about a really great interview with him and Rembert Browne in the now defunct Grantland :(  WHICH * TANGENT ALERT *  was so much greater than Bill Simmons newer iteration, The Ringer, a poorer millennial's version with short (it identifies how long it will take to read for all the too-busy-to-do-one-thing-at-once-like-read-an-article-that's-longer-than-three-minutes-while-checking-your-Snaps-every-minute-while-reading people) reads, slightly click-baity titles, and a larger glut of talent now that the likes of Brown, Zach Lowe, Wesley Morris, etc., are gone.

I think I get it, in Grantland they tried to provide amazing content in a ridiculous array of matters in sports and entertainment with long form articles of substance which was subsequently shut down by the powers that be at ESPN for reasons maybe more political than money-driven. Articles around the interwebs alleged that Grantland was not making that much money for ESPN but many more articles detailed the fractious relationship with Simmons and ESPN.

Who knows why it all happened, but Grantland was the best website I'd ever seen and may ever see. I wrote my obit on them a while back in which I had described the site: 

There were too many amazing articles to list, too many talented writers to mention all of them, but the site warped around an orbit of - gasp - journalism. It was journalism, not click bait, not profits, not sex and skinniness, that provided substance in a universe of trolls and tirades...

The site was created to inspire the young. It was created to breed writers and provide a lens into what driven, brilliant, and hard working people can accomplish.

I don't know if I would have started this blog without Grantland's push. I don't know if I would have started writing like a layman without Simmons' journey from stoner to savant. But I know it helped. 

SO LIKE I WAS SAYING, I'm a big Donald Glover/Childish Gambino fan. Glover has a new series on FX Atlanta debuting September 8 which looks to be very interesting and will be even more so considering Glover had complete control and hails from Atlanta himself. 

Which leads me to this very cool mashup with the beats to Gambino's album Because the Internet with lyrics and flows from Kendrick Lamar. Very, very fun listen.