#matt pernicano | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sinceileftyoublog · 5 years

Text

Live Picks: 10/29

Kishi Bashi; Photo by Max Ritter

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Two sides of hip hop, baroque pop, and a disco jam.

Sex Cells tour, Thalia Hall

Marc Almond (Soft Cell) headlines as part of the Sex Cells tour for an In The Round performance. Also performing are Andy Butler disco project Hercules and Love Affair, leather band Plack Blague, DJ Matt Pernicano, and Danny Lethal.

JPEGMAFIA, Bottom Lounge

Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks is still getting used to verified life, but he’s not retreating. On his third studio album All My Heroes Are Cornballs, a highly anticipated follow-up to 2018 breakout Veteran, rapper JPEGMAFIA doubles down on what made him stand out: darkly humorous and direct socially aware lyrics, products of an intimate knowledge of both alpha and beta toxic masculinity, combined with production that switches on a dime between aggressive and dreamy.

Peggy’s ability to put himself in various mindsets is partially responsible for his lyrical success. He sings from a female perspective on opener “Jesus Forgive Me, I Am a Thot” and “Thot Tactics”, comparing the upfront nature of sexual promiscuity to his take-no-prisoners mentality; “Your shit don't bump, you was not proactive / Sneak dissin', that is not attractive,” he explains on the latter. More difficult, he inhabits and subsequently destroys incel culture. “Shitpost, n**ga / When I die, my tombstone’s Twitter, Twitter,” he raps on “Beta Male Strategies”, referring to the various all-talk online threats he faces on a seemingly daily basis. Really, Peggy’s lamenting his appeal to these types of people. “I made rap my job, it’s sacred,” he declares on the title track, decrying white America’s inability to understand where he’s coming from. On closer “Papi I Missed You”, he’s brutally honest, rapping, “Ha, I'm a terrorist (Yeah), I don't spit raps, bitch I spit rhetoric / And I be in your kid's mind, gettin' leverage / I hate old white ni***s, I'm prejudiced (Yeah).” He’s not an alpha himself, he admits on the Helena Deland-featuring, self-reflexive “Free the Frail” (instead comparing himself to Carly Rae Jepsen), but when it comes to defeating the enemy, he’ll call upon his army training. “One shot turn Steve Bannon into Steve Hawking,” he quips in admittedly bad taste on “PRONE!”

Yet, it’s not just white supremacy that Peggy’s fighting against. It’s the whitewashing of culture in general. “They want me Kevin James, bitch, pay me like Kevin Hart,” he differentiates on “Rap Grow Old & Die x No Child Left Behind”. The “Black Brian Wilson” he labels himself elsewhere, a fitting title considering his production and curation prowess. Only half of a song is NOT produced by Peggy here, and he even goes so far as to include a “JPEGMAFIA TYPE BEAT”, alternating between pummeling drums and lilting synth lines with embedded hand claps. It takes Peggy’s self-aware black excellence--a creative and intelligent mind like his combined with his life experiences--to combine so many disparate elements into a cohesive, forward-thinking, Internet-conquering album that’s punker than most punk and bangs harder most rap.

Album score: 8.8/10

All My Heroes Are Cornballs by JPEGMAFIA

West Baltimore rapper and producer Butch Dawson opens.

Kishi Bashi, Metro

Kishi Bashi’s Omoiyari project centers around Japanese incaceration during WWII, something he was inspired to explore in the context of white supremacy rearing its ugly head yet again. There’s an upcoming documentary (due out early 2020), but for now, he’s released the music, his fourth studio album, and his best because it provides some weight to the usual indie pop preciousness to which he succumbs. Listen to any previous record of his, and you’re bound to think of the usual touchstones, Sufjan Stevens, The Shins, and Andrew Bird, and more recently, Bon Iver, Local Natives, and Darlingside. This time around, you hear those bands in the Laurel Canyon breeze of “Penny Rabbit and Summer Beat”, layered vocals and violin plucks of “Marigolds”, and whistling and cooing of “A Song For You”. But much of the album avoids spot the influence because it’s so personal.

For instance, the lush instrumentals of “Summer of ‘42″ soundtrack an improbable love story at an incarceration camp, while the sweeping cinema of “Violin Tsunami” and non-lyrical singing of “A Meal For Leaves” provide emotional heft. On the string, piano, and banjo-laden “Theme From Jerome (Forgotten Words)”, Ishibashi sings of “forgotten words from Japan”, a possible reference to the fact that Japanese literature was banned in the camps; his inclusion of Japanese in the song feels like a rekindling of heritage. Perhaps most stirring is “F Delano”. It starts out portraying a friend’s bad experience at the Delano hotel in Las Vegas but takes a turn, ultimately critical of a President heralded as a true bastion of progressive policies who nonetheless oversaw Japanese incarceration.

Yet, criticizing FDR would be too easy. “Angeline” centers around the Jim Crow practice of convict leasing, which wouldn’t be that notable of an inclusion on its own. But convict leasing was ended by FDR, and in context of “F Delano”, it reads not as Ishibashi’s attempt to upend who we think of as progressive, but his attempt to stand up for the freedom of all. Taken as a whole, Omoiyari is a truly noble effort.

Album score: 7.4/10

Atlanta pop artist Pip The Pansy opens.

Skyzoo, Promontory

Okay, this is the complete opposite of JPEGMAFIA on the rap spectrum. The decidedly old-school Skyzoo teamed up with Pete Rock last month for an album called--wait for it--Retropolitan. Pete Rock takes beats from his Illmatic sessions on “It’s All Good”. Nas’ “The World Is Yours” is sampled on Griselda crew posse cut “Eastern Conference All-Stars”. “Glorious” starts with a recording of a Miles Davis interview segueing into an old soul sample; “Eastern Conference All-Stars” ends with a snippet of MLK’s Selma speech. These are tropes well-done but well-worn.

Thankfully, as with most Skyzoo records, it’s the lyrics that cement the album’s various times and places. “You couldn’t take the Brooklyn outta me,” he declares on “Glorious” before swiftly describing life as an upwardly mobile, socially aware black man in two rhyming couplets: “Moved out of the Stuy and bought yard space / But still dressed like I'm outside ducking a car chase / Still a black fist in the air quick as a heart rate / Nikes over Yeezys, Kaepernick over Kanye.” He opens “Homegrown” with a depressingly timeless line: “I’m America’s worst nightmare, huh / I’m young, black, and too intelligent to be cared.” On “One Time”, which features an indelibly smooth vocal hook from Raheem DeVaughn, he harks back to 1997 with swiftness and simultaneous nostalgia and exhaustion. “One time we was being followed by 12 / Quoting ‘Ready to Die’ so we was probably twelve / Boys pulled us over like we had product to sell.” If the somewhat stubborn classicism of the production frustrates, it’s the clarity with which Skyzoo illustrates the social ills that continue to pervade America that provides a worthwhile connection between the past and the future. Ultimately, he and his friends keep on keepin’ on however they know how. Benny the Butcher gets rich off of selling dope on “Eastern Conference All-Stars”, even richer talking about it on rap songs. The Obama-referencing title of the final track on Retropolitan speaks for itself: “The Audacity of Dope”. Your move, Pusha T, because our elected officials certainly won’t make any to improve people’s lives.

Album score: 6.7/10

eLZhi opens (and presumably joins Skyzoo for “Eastern Conference All-Stars”, on which he, too, is featured).

0 notes