January 2011
11 posts
“To draw once again on the always-relevant Fred Jameson: perhaps we’re facing an...”
– An excellent article by Bernard Snowy on Lil B and exactly he’s up to with this whole based thing. Maybe. Sort of. Not really. But possibly. A good read, nonetheless.
revenue retrievin' (e-40)
I do think that Night Shift is a little bit better than Day Shift, but my opinion about this changes often. Either way, both deserve all the praise I can give them, like this blurb for Weiss’ (still continuing) year-end extravaganza:
“The kind of career I’m having at this age defies logic,” says E-40 on Revenue Retrievin’ (Night Shift), but the Bay area legend’s continued relevance in a...
Tower of Sleep: Interviewing Dan Bejar →
towerofsleep:
It’s a lot of fun! Since we did it by email, I overstuffed my questions a bit (they’re longer than any editor would ever approve of), and I was rewarded with really long answers. I’ll post the whole thing here after the issue comes out, but here’s the longest single question and answer in the…
pazz and jop 2010
Here’s my Pazz and Jop ballot; this was my second year contributing.
Only seven votes for the two Revenue Retrievin’ discs? Only 11 votes for Real Life Is No Cool? For shame.
Further commentary and (pseudo) insight when my lungs are not so infected.
best rap songs of 2010
Passion of the Weiss put together on heckuva list of good rap songs that came out last year. These were just two of them:
“ROSE GARDEN” (shad)
For those who prefer boom-bap to the poon-bap of certain other Canadian rappers, Shad fits the bill nicely. While his latest album, TSOL, suffers occasionally from limp, toothless production, “Rose Garden” is one of the few tracks that does...
swim (caribou)
I raved about Swim when it first was released last year, and I only fell harder for the album as the year progressed. It clocked in #3 on the Passion of the Weiss best albums of the year list, and I was entrusted with the job of explaining why. Here’s my best attempt:
Swim sounds like a break-up record, even if it’s not. It’s an album where attempts to work through complicated emotions are...
the day the turf stood still (davinci)
Over the holidays I had a chance to contribute to Weiss and the gang’s year-end lists; here’s my blurb on DaVinci’s classicist debut:
A cursory listen to his debut The Day the Turf Stood Still would probably have you guessing that DaVinci is the latest in a long line of underground rappers to hail from New York. That’s not the case — DaVinci reps San Francisco through and...
