July 2011
32 posts
“I couldn’t get a good read on the demographic. Sure, there were the girls in...”
– Jeff Rosenthal, from a live review of Kreayshawn for the Village Voice. A few days late, but those last couple of lines are too good. (via dalatu)
"i'm on one" (dj khaled ft. drake, rick ross, and...
The Noah “40″ Shebib beat is the definition a slowburner, a hazy, expansive thing, all wide-open spaces and seared guitars with the stickiness of an imminent thunderstorm. It’s the kind of track that 40 does better than anyone these days, constructing canvases that are more malleable than blank, more graceful than empty. Drake’s choruses just chew these things up, and this one is another...
“None of them could rap, but it didn’t matter. Jon had decided that rhyming...”
– Ben Westhoff, from his excellent new book Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop.
"pumped up kicks" (foster the people)
Never has a murderous shooting spree sounded so funky, and rarely has wisp sounded so substantial. The verses are almost rendered useless by their lazy megaphone delivery (although they do mimic the sun-soaked lethargy of sizzling July afternoons nicely), but the walking-the-dog bassline and massive stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth-sweet chorus more than make up for this. [7]
"give me everything" (pitbull)
Tom Breihan once (half-)jokingly wrote that Pitbull > Nas. One area where Pitbull bests Nas without question is crossover smashes, mostly because Pitbull doesn’t do anything but crossover smashes. He pulls off the sleazy-but-still-endearing rapper persona better than anyone these days, and it’s because he embraces his sleaziness. Pitbull knows the sleaze factor of the old ...
