#LIKE ITS THE CORNIEST SHIT IN THE WORLD BUT I FELT IT. THAT SHIT WAS GENUINE.

[earlyspringtranscendence]

the things that are generally wrong with the volstovic cycle are made (naturally, by virtue of the setting and pov characters) so much more egregious in shadow magic but like. kouje & mamoru are unfortunately still the only prince/retainer dynamic i’ve ever read like nothing else compares. sorry. forever.

[pinelife3]

Music I Can’t Understand

Getting into hip hop in my late teens was like learning a new language: slang, cars, food, drugs, brands, gangs, locations. For example:

What does it mean to be sitting on 44s?

44 inch rims on your car - highly coveted, a desirable rim size.

What about coming from the 504?

The area code of Hollygrove, New Orleans: the neighbourhood Lil Wayne grew up in.

Please double cup me?

Kindly serve me lean in two double stacked Styrofoam cups.

Ice cream paint job?

Cars again - clean exterior with creamy white leather interior.

Finna hit a lick?

Fixing (intending) to rob a liquor store.

Wavy Brazilian?

Human hair grown from the scalps of the fine people of Brazil, harvested, treated and then sold to be used in wigs and weaves. The hair has a natural wavy texture and is typically long and dark.

Cop dome? 

Receive a blow job. Confusingly, I’ve also heard ‘domed’ to mean shooting someone in the head. 

Chopper?

You might be thinking of a helicopter or a motorcycle, but in hip hop a chopper is almost always a fully automatic weapon - I guess because it cuts people down?

A bird?

A kilo of drugs, typically cocaine.

Beyond the slang, I also found some of the accents difficult to understand. Lil Wayne speaks in a hoarse, treacly voice, he’s usually fucked up, his word association is crazy, he loves puns, and he rapidly jumps from topic to topic. So, initially, listening to Wayne was like trying to speed read Shakespeare. It took me a while to be able to properly tune in and listen to the lyrics - but when I did, I found hip hop so rewarding and fun. This is all from one song:

‘Cause I’ll serve anyone like a blind waiter

I work out in my office, guess I’m fit for business

Your flow never wet, like grandma pussy/ I’m always good, like grandma cookies

You niggas best not slip, Ice Road Truckers

I also appreciate the trite but appealing throwaways:

felt like rockstar, might die later idk

(Music critics under the misapprehension that rappers didn’t glorify hard drugs and depresso partying before Future need to go back to school.)

I have memories of rapturous repeat listens of Good Kid, Maad City, trying to decode the story. Falling in love with the mythology of Kanye. Digging through forums. Listening to famous classics and thinking I was the first to uncover an unknown treasure, like an oblivious archaeologist. The golden age of Big Ghost’s blog. MF DOOM super fandom. Discovering old artists online and stuffing my ears with their back catalogs. Visiting country towns and thinking ‘I bet no one here has even heard of Aesop Rock’ like a smug fuck. Pouring over lyrics on genius.com. Sweating profusely at gigs. Hoarding mixtapes from DatPiff. Weirdly, I associate a lot of my fondest hip hop memories with being by myself on my laptop. 

The interface hasn’t changed one bit:

Over time, though, I’ve gotten bored with hip hop. I feel like I haven’t really fallen in love with anything released since ~2014. Piñata might be the last hip hop album that really worked on me (exception: the Hamburger Helper album Watch the Stove from 2016). Even To Pimp A Butterfly has serious issues: listen to “Mortal Man” and tell me it’s not the corniest shit ever. The extended butterfly/chrysalis/caterpillar metaphor throughout the album is like bad high school poetry. For a while, I thought my cynical outlook on modern hip hop was just a product of getting older and being wistful for the music I liked when I was younger. But now I’ve decided that this is a problem solely between me and hip hop, because I still find music that I get obsessed with. But that music is exclusively Celtic.

I would timebox my Celtic music obsession to the past year or so, but Spotify went to great pains to inform me that Enya was my artist of the decade, so this must have been latent within me for some time. 

When initially dipping my toe in the Celtic genre, I started with instrumentals and songs sung in English, but I’m waist deep now and have started listening to Gaelic music. It’s like birdsong: I don’t know what they’re saying, but I like the way it sounds. Throaty, clear. Choking, sweet. Windswept, warm. Profound, unknowable. Ancient, important. Echoing, intimate. They could be singing about stale muesli bars and stubbed toes for all I know. 

(If you don’t listen to these songs - especially the one below - I don’t think this blog post will work on you. See please listen.)

Take the song “Thig An Smeòrach As t-Earrach” (above). Obviously ‘Thig An Smeòrach As t-Earrach’ sounds like something Gollum would hiss under his breath, but I find the song itself practically spiritual. Gaelic is so foreign - the words bear no similarity to words I’ve ever heard before - but I feel like I still understand what’s being said. It’s like a fiery angel has appeared at the foot of your bed and is telling you something important: but the angel is so beautiful and bright, your eyes are watering. You can hardly look. And you certainly can’t listen. But the message is burned in your brain. You didn’t understand a word, and wouldn’t know how to repeat what the angel said - but you understand their meaning perfectly.

Do you think the past or the future is more important? And not in terms of your own life (e.g. will your retirement be better than your time in high school) - that’s chickenshit, that’s two turns in early game Civ V, that’s low stakes table. No, I mean in terms of the whole timeline of the planet: neolithic magic in stone circles, valleys where no human has ever walked, unturned stones beneath deep water, dead languages. Should we protect the physical remnants of history or privilege the possibilities of the future? Would we crush Grecian pottery if it unlocked clean, sustainable power which allowed us to create AirPod batteries which never lose their charge? Without even asking, I will tell you that anyone making Celtic music thinks the past is more important than the future. And while you listen to Celtic music, you will agree. 

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

Celtic music is humanist, but ancient humanist. It is not interested in what Elon Musk is doing, it doesn’t care what shirt you’re wearing, or whether you’re an Episcopalian vegan, or if you can finish The New Yorker crossword puzzle, or really any modern concerns - at least, I don’t think it cares. In a way, I don’t care what they’re saying, because I like the way it makes me feel: peaceful and romantic and connected to something eternal and profound. Like when a huge rock is warm to the touch. These are underrated feelings.

[musicyearinreview-blog]

Worst Hip-Hop Projects of 2017

I figured I would start with the worst projects of 2017. Always start with the bad news before the good news. I guess I’ll get right into it.

2017 was a pretty good year for music. I think that 2016 was a better year overall, but I got new music from almost all of my favorite artists in 2016, so I may be a little biased. Plus 2017 was just a shitty year overall but it’s almost over.

So let’s get this started. I’m not gonna put myself in a box by calling this a “Top 10″ or better a “Not Top 10″ list, but rather a collection of albums and mixtapes that I thought were just poor.

NAV - Nav

Look, I guess some people out there like Nav as a solo artist, but I am definitely not one of those people. Nav is like a side dish that’s good, but only every once in a while. Kinda like, I dunno, maybe cranberry sauce? It’s great at Thanksgiving, but it’s not something you go looking for any other time of the year. So yeah, let’s roll with that metaphor. Nav is Cranberry Sauce and Beibs in the Trap and Wanted You are Thanksgiving. And the Cranberry Sauce is only really great when its paired with stuffing... so to further the metaphor... Travis and Uzi are stuffing. Bottom line, Nav sucks on his own, and the album NAV was just further proof of this point. Oh did I mention Nav fucked your girl... cause he’s Nav? Oh, he said that already like a million times on the album? Nevermind then.

Shine -Wale

I’m one of the biggest Wale fans out there, and have stood behind him year after year, usually looking forward to whatever material he puts out. I was excited for Shine too because it had been a while since Wale had put anything out (aside from a few features here and there). But man this was just a really underwhelming project. He keeps trying to use this flow throughout the album that just does not sound good. He first uses it on the chorus of Running Back with Lil Wayne, and there it was charming, but it got annoying as the album went. Running Back was the feature track of this album, as it was released a single prior to the album release, but it just really wasn’t a standout like previous Wale tracks have been to me (see Lotus Flower Bomb, Chillin’, Slight Work, etc.). Even a Travis Scott feature couldn’t really save this album for me, and that’s tough. The best track on this album is My Love with Dua Lipa, Major Lazer, and Wizkid, and the three of them really carry the track more than Wale does himself. Overall, just a disappointing album from one of my favorite artists. Hopefully Wale redeems himself in the near future.

Humanz - Gorillaz

(*sighs*) What could have been. The rest of the world and I have all been waiting patiently for new material from the Gorillaz for 6 years, and after waiting such a long time... This is what we got? The singles released prior to the album were spectacular and had me so excited for the actual album. But when Humanz came out, I listened about halfway through it and got bored. 20 songs is so long, and about half of them were interludes or just garbage filler music. I was pretty upset with this project initially, so I went back in for a second listen. And things didn’t get any better the second time around. I guess at least I have those couple singles to enjoy for the next six years until the Gorillaz put out some more new material. 

Everybody - Logic

Logic is another artist that I fanboy pretty hard for. I loved the Young Sinatra mixtapes, I loved Under Pressure, I loved The Incredible True Story, I love Bobby Tarantino, so things were shaping up pretty well for his third studio album. But I was let down yet again. Its not that Everybody isn’t good, it’s just trying waaaaay too hard to be an album about equality. I’m all about Logic’s “peace, love, and positivity” message, and I love that he’s using his mixed race background as a bridge to try to solve some of the racial rifts between white and black people. But on this album, he just tried to jam it down my throat a little too much. It just felt a little too preachy and not music-y enough. This album isn’t really a necessity on this list, I just didn’t like it that much. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t what I, personally, was expecting from Logic’s third album. I loved message of 1-800-273-8255 also, but cmon, you gotta admit that “Who can relate? WHOO!” on a song about suicide is just the corniest fucking line you’ve ever heard. But, if this song has saved even one life, I can live with the corniness. Good for Bobby for making this one. Again, not necessarily a hate from me, just a meh.

Teenage Emotions - Lil Yachty

Songs I Liked: Bring it Back

Songs I Did Not Like: Everything Else

Nuff Said.

Grateful - DJ Khaled

This album was just a hot mess. Waaaay too long, waaay too many features, waaaaay too much DJ Khaled yelling. Like WAAAAAAY too much DJ Khaled. There were songs on this project that weren’t really bad until DJ Khaled just came out of nowhere and started yelling random, stupid shit. God he’s annoying. I’m actually getting angry sitting here and thinking about DJ Khaled yelling “WE THE BEST” and “ANOTHER ONE” over and over again. Ugh. Wild Thoughts was cool, I’m the One got played into the god damn ground by radio stations... OH HOLD ON. Are we gonna talk about how there’s a Chance song on this where this man literally just sings the ABC’s? Wtf is that? Get it outta here. I want Pusha Man level Chance, not this garbage. There were a bunch of really forgettable Travis features on this too, as well as an extremely underwhelming Migos feature. Pusha T and Jadakiss both had really hard verses on Good Man, so I guess I’ll call that and Wild Thoughts the highlights of the album. Overall, just an unorganized rollercoaster.

Perfect Timing - Nav & Metro Boomin

Okay I really just hate Nav tbh.

The Booty Tape - Ugly God

“I drip on your bitch like water” I guess in hindsight, I don’t really know why I expected a decent debut mixtape from some one who’s most popular song features that line. This mixtape was just garbage to me, really unfocused and all over the place. I mean he made a diss track about himself on this project. I guess that’s like some kind of reverse psychology or something? Idk, it didn’t work on me, I just found it to be stupid. But what do I know?

Gemini - Macklemore

One hit wonder. Next.

Heartbreak on a Full Moon - Chris Brown

Okay look. I’m a fan of Chris Brown’s music. I have listened to all of his projects that he has released, and have generally liked all of them. All of the singles from this project seemed to point to the same thing for this album. High End with Future and Young Thug absolutely goes, and I was expecting the same for the whole album. Until the tracklist released. 45 songs man? For real? I’ve had the album for a month and a half now and I still haven’t even gotten all the way through the album. Trying to work around and scheme the streaming rules for more revenue is such a whack thing to do, but I guess I shouldn’t have put something like that past a guy like Chris Brown. I’m gonna think twice about his albums now in the future.

There were some other albums and mixtapes that I wasn’t too crazy about, but these couple are definitely the worst of the worst. It takes a lot for me to decide how I feel about an album, so the above listed are definitely not that great to me. But this is all just my own personal opinion. Luckily, 2017 was a year where I had to look back and try hard to find the bad albums. I have a feeling with the good albums of 2017, I’ll have so many that I won’t be able to choose my favorites. I look forward to seeing what interesting music 2018 will provide me with, both for the good and for the Nav.

I’m going to be doing my favorite singles of the year up next. Stay tuned.