video review: 'stoney' by post malone (4th year anniversary!)

Well, I should have seen this coming... but really, this was a slog and honestly a bit of a letdown when it comes to anniversary episodes. I was hoping for more from you guys, especially if you're just going to troll with a bad record from one of the worst years in modern pop culture.

But we're STILL not done here...

album review: 'stoney' by post malone (fourth year anniversary)

...I would say I'm surprised about this, but the truth is that I'm not. When it comes to YouTube after all, if you say you're not going to do something  - as I did - and then you give an option to the fans - as I did - you all will take the opportunity to watch me suffer. 

But here's the truth: I think any sort of conversation surrounding Post Malone that I'm having now is very different that if I had reviewed his debut record several months back, because his position has evolved with regards to popular culture. He's not entirely the guy that seems tailor-made by record executives to capitalize on mumble rap with a white artist, but instead more of a character who can accept jokes and criticism with good humor and shows up on a podcast with h3h3productions. It's led to a bit of a weird situation, and something I've noticed with a lot of white rappers: they either try to go hard with real hip-hop credibility, or they look to cash in with dumb party rap that's so disposable that the punchline for this guy's career has already been written. And while there is a part of me that feels it's a little twisted and wrong and says a lot about hip-hop audiences that black artists making more lyrical or interesting music - or even other mumble rappers - have been ignored in favor of someone appropriating that style that they can relate to because they're often white, I'm also very much aware that Post Malone has a shelf life. Frankly, I'm surprised he's had as much success into this year as he has, especially with 'Congratulations' being a top ten hit.

All of that being said, while the cultural apparatus and impact of Post Malone is kind of fascinating, his music isn't. To put it bluntly, while 'White Iverson' is terrible and deserves its spot on my worst hits of 2016, what makes it more exasperating is how boring and lifeless it felt, combining the worthless tedium of a Jack Johnson song with the shallow monotony of most mumble rap, and let's be real: 'Congratulations' is not much better. In short there was a very real reason why I didn't want to cover Stoney... but you all insisted, so now, beating all other possible options by a nearly a two-to-one ratio, I'm reviewing this: so what did we get?

video review: 'bloom' by machine gun kelly

So this blew - but thus far the reception to the review has implied that everyone already expected this. Eh, no surprise there.

Next up... ooh, this'll be a big one, so stay tuned!

album review: 'bloom' by machine gun kelly

So let's talk about selling out, because while I've opened up reviews with this topic before, I think a refresher is in order. To make this abundantly clear, going 'pop' or changing your genre and style isn't in and of itself 'selling out' - just because an act goes for what be deemed is a more accessible sound isn't inherently bad if the core of what makes a specific act unique and special remains, instead of just nakedly following commercial trends less because you're going to do anything interesting with them and more because it's guaranteed to produce a hit of dubious quality. And even then, it's not inherently a bad thing for an artist to want to cash in and make money, and some acts only discover their pop appeal when they try this. My point is that 'selling out' is often a misused term, it's not always a bad thing.

With Machine Gun Kelly, it was a bad thing. Look, I'll admit right now I was never a huge fan of this Cleveland MC: I always tended to slot him in the Tech N9ne mold of cranking out impressive flows and delivery but saddled with production that was too thin or flimsy to back up its pretensions to bombast, and could also slide towards corniness or some utterly wack bars. But even then, I was a sucker for a good flow, and while his full-length debut album Lace Up was pretty far from great - it's was overlong, his reliance on crass party bangers that he didn't have the personality or wordplay to back up - there were definitely moments of flow and energy I could appreciate. Most of this went out the window for his second album General Admission, which aimed to play darker and more personal but also did so by compromising the delivery and much of the intensity that made his early work at least likable. There are a few choice tracks and stories being told, but when you factored in the production, he wasn't doing anything any number of more aggressive, insightful, and honest MCs didn't do already, and that's before you get to the Kid Rock collaboration!

Then 'Bad Things' happened - which is apt in referring to both the godawful duet with Camila Cabello and the likely trajectory of Machine Gun Kelly's career. Because thanks to 2016 giving a pass to entirely too many boring white rappers in the mainstream, MGK got his breakthrough with his most pop-accessible flows and least interesting content to date. In other words, I was expecting Bloom to suck, and I'm only covering it because at least it looks shorter than his last two albums and because I need it off my schedule on Patreon so I can cover Perfume Genius. So on that promising note, what did I find off of Bloom?

video review: 'a girl, a bottle, a boat' by train (ft. the lp club)

So this album completely sucked. No real way around it, it's a stinker and it deserved to be called out. And after a great deal of pain and frustration, me and Ethan did just that, and good riddance to it all.

Next up, though... Lauren Alaina, this could be interesting. Stay tuned!

video review: 'collage' by the chainsmokers

Well, this was junk - but to be fair, I wasn't expecting this to be good. But on the other hand, I wasn't expecting something this cynically mediocre, so I'm not exactly surprised here...

Next up, though, something great that I missed from earlier this year, so stay tuned!

album review: 'collage' by the chainsmokers

There will be no way to talk about pop music in 2016 without talking about The Chainsmokers - even if you desperately don't want to talk about The Chainsmokers.

And here's the funny thing: I'm starting to get the impression that the people who don't want you talking about The Chainsmokers in deeper detail includes the duo themselves. They'd probably prefer that you don't reference their atrocious faux-ironic sketch comedy beginnings, or the fact they were responsible for inflicting that viral marketing trash 'hit' '#SELFIE' on the world in 2014. In other words, right from the start I had a certain distaste for these guys, especially in their attitudes towards pop music, which can be aptly summed up in a quote they made in an interview with Billboard: 'even before success, pussy was number one'. Fantastic, all the proof that the attitudes typically associated with the 'white guy with acoustic guitar' stereotype can cross over: the guys who never made music out of any sort of artistic impulse, just to pick up chicks. Follow it up with an awful live performance with Halsey at the VMAs, their slagging of the band Weezer as 'thirsty', and their much-covered insults at Lady Gaga and Rihanna for either sucking or having 'no work ethic', and you can see why legitimate artists both in and outside of EDM treat The Chainsmokers with at best disinterest and at worst outright contempt.

But look, we've had assholes in music forever, I'm not holding The Chainsmokers to any sort of moral standard. No, what I find more corrosive is how it feels like so much of their music feels like an extended con run on the mainstream public, abusing the pass that's now common for pop in the cultural conversation to make some of the most cynical and hollow music imaginable. You might not like Lady Gaga's artifice or The Weeknd's nhilism, you might think Taylor Swift is thin-skinned and vindictive and Drake is overexposed and creatively stagnating, that Meghan Trainor can't back up her ego and Shawn Mendes is way over his head, but when I listen to their music, there's an artistic impulse that I might not like but is at least there. Even will.i.am, who I used to loathe for his 'music-as-marketing savant' approach at least took the music with artistic integrity - even if he couldn't always execute, there was at least something. The Chainsmokers, meanwhile, freely admit in public to being inspired by Jeremy Piven's character from Entourage and seem to treat music more as a marketing gimmick to enable hedonism rather than any sort of art - so no wonder they've said they've never considered releasing a full-length debut album, because that would enable critics to drag them into a serious conversation they aren't prepared or willing to have. And that's the reason why I'm covering their second EP Collage in detail - call it a review, call it an expose, what did this Collage deliver?

album review: 'cosmic hallelujah' by kenny chesney

I don't think I've entirely been fair to Kenny Chesney.

Granted, there's a limit to how fair one way or another I can be about this guy, because for as long as he's been a consistent presence in country, he's not exactly been an artist that sparks a lot of attention, critical or otherwise, even despite a considerable number of hits. Outside of your average Jimmy Buffett fan club, I don't see many country fans in the mainstream or otherwise saying their favourite artist is Kenny Chesney - hell, he's got a crossover 'hit' right now with an artist I otherwise like and yet I can't really be bothered to care about it all that much - it's breezy, lightweight material, often at the beach, the sort of sedentary music that flows in one ear and right out the other.

So when I started getting requests to cover this... well, suffice to say I didn't have high expectations. I may have been overly harsh to Kenny Chesney's last record The Big Revival, which did have a few songs that ended up growing a bit on me in time, but I wasn't holding out a lot of hope for Cosmic Hallelujah. For one, the lead-off single was 'Noise', the sort of non-country track complete with some of the most gratuitous pitch-correction I've ever heard in the genre - whatever that song was, it certainly reflected a change in instrumental direction, perhaps even a point where Kenny Chesney had decided he wanted to blaze his own experimental trail! And while a part of me had no expectations this was going to work well at all - he's only got two writing credits on this release - I will admit that it's a bit of an interesting spectacle to watch Kenny Chesney, seventeen albums into his career, decide to venture out of an extremely well worn comfort zone? So okay, what does this mean for Cosmic Hallelujah?

video review: 'illuminate' by shawn mendes

So this was terrible. Already some people are getting peeved, but look, writing this bad needs to be taken to task, especially given the audience it's directed. Miserable listen, and when my backlog is so long, there's no excuse for something like this wasting my time.

On that note, How To Dress Well is next - stay tuned!

album review: 'illuminate' by shawn mendes

Oh, I haven't been looking forward to this.

Hell, anybody who has been watching Billboard BREAKDOWN or my last review already knows that, but let's skip back a year to chart out how we got here. Believe it or not, when I covered Handwritten last year I was going in with some high expectations, or at least a hope that Mendes could rise above his Vine star origins to flesh out actual songs. For the most part, that didn't really happen, which is why Handwritten fell below a pass for me, as he tried emulating Justin Timberlake by way of Ed Sheeran that lacked the interesting instrumentation or witty writing to get there. But still, a part of me wanted to root for this kid, and I still hold that 'Something Big' is a damn good song.

But ever since then, my opinion on Shawn Mendes has been plummeting in record time, as more singles have exposed flaws and issues that I was hoping Mendes could avoid. His writing was slipping perilously close to the self-aggrandizing douchebaggery that is symptomatic of the 'white guy with acoustic guitar' moniker, and the increasingly sterile production and delivery was not helping, all the more evidence Mendes was being pushed by his handlers in that direction. And from what I had heard going into Illuminate... well, suffice to say I was gearing up for a real disaster, even if I had some hope this fellow Canadian might be able to pull something together on his sophomore project. So what happened?

video review: 'sremmlife 2' by rae sremmurd

This review has already gotten more hits than the past three reviews I've posted combined - and will probably go on to get even more, because apparently people like it when I get pissed. Well, except the comments section which have devolved into something of a shit-show, but that was to be expected.

And to continue that streak, Young The Giant is coming up next, so stay tuned!

album review: 'sremmlife 2' by rae sremmurd

There's a lot that needs to be unpacked before I even start this review - and no, not just because I'm almost certain some of you will have seen what I said about Rae Sremmurd over eighteen months ago when I covered their debut album. To put it mildly, I wasn't kind to it - to put it bluntly, it was easily one of the worst records I had the misfortune of covering in 2015, a badly written, shoddily performed, disastrously produced slog that I disliked more with every listen - and that included going back to relisten to it for this review. But like with most atrocious music that gets popular, I had a lot more contempt for the attitudes surrounding the album and the critical pass it got, which has cascaded down further to the mostly lousy state of mainstream hip-hop in 2016, where lyrics have even been further marginalized in favour of bass-heavy clunkers and MCs who have nowhere near the charisma or flows to save them. Sure, Sremmlife was intended as dumb, over-the-top party music and was only intended to be judged on that standard - but on that standard it was bad dumb party music, with clunky flows, ugly tones, and some truly atrocious lyrics, none of which was given the tempo and impact to match its inspiration, either from trap or the equally stupid crunk music of the mid-2000s, which at least had energy and impact to match its mindless hedonism.

And yet, eighteen months later going into the sequel Sremmlife 2, I found myself unable to get all that angry or worked up about it. I think a fair bit of my anger was fueled by the fact that the mainstream and critical press had given Rae Sremmurd a pass, but it didn't look like that was happening for the follow-up. Despite some guest stars like Gucci Mane, Juicy J, up-and-coming and all around awful MC Kodak Black, and even Lil Jon of all people, none of their singles had cracked the Billboard Hot 100, and the album had been delayed to mid-August. And I have to admit, I was curious why: perhaps the waning star power of Mike Will Made It as a producer had further marginalized the group; perhaps hip-hop had moved so quickly to the next 'turnt up' rapper that Rae Sremmurd's emptiness had been prophetic... or perhaps we had another real turd coming and everyone was looking to clear out of the blast radius. Well, that wasn't going to stop me, so against all of my better judgement I checked out Sremmlife 2 - is it at least better than the first one?

Well yeah, it's 'better', I guess, in that 'tedious, incompetent, and occasionally unlistenable' is a step up from 'all-around atrocious', but none of that means I want to recommend this record, or will in any way get behind some of the more ridiculous critical appraisals of this record. And like with the last review, I'm going to try and frame this as a rebuttal to many of the people who are giving it a pass. Because again, I can't really get that angry at two kids who are trying to make fun music for dubious definitions of music or fun - but I can get a little pissed at the critics who are trying to defend this by saying how 'innovations in character, texture, and presentation are just as important as those in lyrical dexterity and punchlines' and 'maligning Rae Sremmurd for prioritizing the extra-lyrical portions of the genre reveals only how nostalgia leaves unfillable holes in people's hearts, and taste'. To put it another way, if you expect basic competency in structuring bars or content, you're a nostalgia-blinded hater without taste who can't appreciate the stylistic flourishes of Rae Sremmurd.

So for the purposes of this review, let's first establish that I'm not expecting depth in terms of lyrical content. This isn't Kendrick Lamar or Aesop Rock or Death Grips or Doomtree or Run The Jewels, and even while all of these artists have delivered hard-hitting bangers than can match content with experiments in style and delivery which proves you can have both and this is a non-excuse, let's only consider this record by terms of MCs who are looking to play to the more ignorant, nu-crunk side, who really have been around since the dawn of the genre. Even by that standard, I'm not impressed by these guys - there may have been a lot of terrible crunk back in the mid-2000s, but when it worked there was commanding presence in the vocals that let the MCs drive the beats. It's very telling that when both Juicy J and Lil Jon show up on this record they immediately attract more attention because there's enough bass in their voices to match the production, whereas Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi just don't have the same weight, no matter how much pitch correction is used. At their worst, their cackling nasal sneer doesn't even have the pretensions to melody that gave Young Thug the pass he barely deserved - hell, right from the very first track 'Start A Party' both of their voices keep cracking audibly and I'm supposed to like this, especially as they talk about drugging my girlfriend with lean? And it completely undercuts their party anthems for me as they squeal through the tracks - there's no punch to 'Shake It Fast' until Juicy J shows up and is pretty damn disgusting, or to 'Set The Roof', which only puts Lil Jon on the hook and then compresses his vocals - you know, because we want to hear more Rae Sremmurd! Probably the worst example is 'Over Here', where even by interjecting a pitch-shifted voice they can't give the sleazy elongation of syllables and outright sloppiness compelling - and on that note, one of the big vocal shifts on this record is Swae Lee piling on the autotune to croon his way through 'Look Alive', 'Came A Long Way', and 'Take It Or Leave It', with it being at its 'best' on the brighter 'Just Like Us' and at its absolute worst on 'Swang', where he goes into his gutless upper range and it sounds atrocious. And that's when they care at all, as we also have songs like 'By Chance' where it's clear everyone phoned it in that day..

And nowhere is that more apparent than the content, where apparently I'm supposed to give these guys a pass because of their style and enthusiasm. Well, since the latter is considerably damped compared to the first SremmLife, and the former makes me think we could weaponize these vocals against ISIS, the content is open season! Let's start by saying that these guys can barely stay on topic or message - if they're not throwing out some of the most bewilderingly awful punchlines between dropping rhymes, rhyming words with themselves, or dropping the mix out to disregard the flow entirely, they sure as hell aren't bothering with making sense. Again, right on the first song we have Swae Lee saying the girls he screws - which again includes your chick - are dying, and that's the sort of thing for which you'd ask an explanation! Go to the next track and Slim Jxmmi is talking about big diamonds in his mouth as he burps, which is such a non sequiteur that it immediately renders everything on the song irrelevant - including Kodak Black's verse, but we were doing that already. Or then on 'Look Alive', where Swae Lee is taking his girl shopping before breakfast, which I do not understand, and that he's going to rock her 'like a baby', which is all sorts of creepy! 

Now I could go on here listing the myriad awful lines... so I will, because on 'Black Beatles', Rae Sremmurd and Gucci Mane try to compare themselves to the Beatles and 'living like a geezer' - because the Beatles are old, get it? Then there's 'Shake It Fast', where Swae Lee says he's afraid of pot and drops a 'new phone who dis', all the while Juicy J tries to pay for strippers by swiping his card in her ass while he assures her the cameras are off - why don't I remotely believe you? Then there's 'Set The Roof' where during the prechorus they show exasperation the waiter screwed up their order three times only for the final line of 'now let's fill up her head and see if she chokes'. Oh yeah, the casual disregard for women of all types runs rampant here and even by hip-hop standards it's pretty pathetic, between the 'My X' reprise of 'Now That I Know' where he already has a side bitch ready to replace her to the girls he's stretching out, front and back, on 'Do Yoga'. But if we're looking for two songs to capture this record's content in a nutshell, they're 'Over Here' - with the failed Charlie Sheen punchline from Slim Jxmmi to the bungled Superman reference from Swae Lee, it's clear they roughly have an idea what they want to say, but not only is there zero subtext beyond mindless hedonism, the text barely even connects! That's why I find all of the claims of greater emotional depth on this record completely bogus, because if you're relying on barely connected subtext when the text doesn't even work, you've got no legs to stand on. Want more proof? The other song is 'Came A Long Way', which if I'm being charitable seems to be showing them wanting recognition for their come-up - but the problem is that the actual text doesn't tell any of that story, just all the more bragging about sex, drugs, and money that without even distinctive brand names becomes unbelievably tedious!

But I'm probably missing the point here, right? As long as the beats and melodies are good with solid production, nobody is going to care about anything these guys say? Well, I could refer you to the list of MCs who have great, hard-hitting production and something to say again, but that's missing the point that a lot of the production here just isn't very interesting, or go in directions that don't help the vibe. A prime example is 'Set The Roof' - forget the compression on his vocals, the most hard-hitting beat you could get to back up Lil Jon is a collaboration between Mike Will Made It and DJ Mustard, something that might have been interesting in early 2014 and already sounds stale and completely lacking in muscle? And that's before we get into production that's trying to sound way too creepy for its own good with blended theremins and chilly synths against your standard trap snares, like 'Real Chill' or 'Set The Roof', or the half-assembled walls of synth on 'Take It Or Leave It', or that hideous blended tone on 'Do Yoga'. I'd say this record tries for a little more grit like on 'Start A Party' or 'Over Here', but then whatever synth you get is either one-note or clashes terribly with the uglier vibe - and again, I don't know why you want that on party songs! Now to the production's credit, there are a few beats that did come together: 'Look Alive' actually sounds pretty lush before that too-thin synth dropped on the hook, and both 'Shake It Fast' and 'Now That I Know' could have actually connected if the keyboards weren't chopped to ribbons and barely on-key. Hell, I actually really liked the pseudo-darkwave vibe of the low roil on 'Black Beatles' - the production probably stands out the most, even if Mike Will Made It felt the need to add audio watermarks to the beginning and end of the track, or the pretty synth line that led to a more tropical vibe on 'Just Like Us', which was more in a major key and actually fit with the content better. And even though the blurry pianos driving 'Came A Long Way' sounded like they were imported from an alternative metal ballad in 2002, they fit the melancholy of the content and actually worked for me!

But folks... okay, let me let you all in on a little secret: while there will be people who will genuinely like this music and make excuses to the end of the world about the delivery and content - and keep in mind if it's your thing, i don't agree but I do get it - a fair number of people giving stuff like this and its descendants infecting mainstream radio a pass are doing it because they're terrified of being branded as 'out-of-touch' or 'irrelevant'. They make excuses to high heavens in order to justify issues that if the artist was less popular they'd delight in exposing - and I don't have these concerns, because this is garbage. Horribly written, terribly performed, and with production that only connects to a larger 'turn up' vibe in fragments, I can only hope that the rest of the public follows with current patterns and continues to aggressively ignore it. But otherwise, it's a solid 2/10 and no way in the Nine Hells can I recommend this. Folks, hip-hop might not be having a good year overall, but when you have Flatbush Zombies, Denzel Curry, SchoolBoy Q, DJ Khaled, YG, even Drake and Gucci Mane dropping better party jams, there's no excuse for this.

special comment: #kimexposedtaylor & pop culture authenticity (VIDEO)

I'm actually a little amazed I got this out on time, but I'm definitely happy I did - fair amount to deconstruct her, and it did lead to a nifty little punchline at the end about our role in enabling this sort of drama. A little less dramatic now, thanks to the legality of it all being stripped out the picture, but eh, it happens.

Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

special comment: #kimexposedtaylor and pop culture authenticity

I started to feel physically ill when I started drafting this Special Comment. It's the same sinking feeling that happens whenever I have to even mention the Kardashians in anything I create, acknowledge how so many people find their utterly brainless TMZ-baiting trash so damn captivating. Even though anyone with a functioning brain stem can tell you that none of it is remotely close to real or has produced anything beyond cheap gossip and ruining the lives of people who should rightly know better at this point. Oh, don't get me wrong, I get the attraction to it - people like vapid drama, especially when it seemingly comes at the expense of the rich and famous - but even without seeing a single episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and contributing to the downward slide of humanity towards Idiocracy, at this point it should be blatantly obvious to everyone that they're more shrewd than that and are making millions off of the public not knowing any better - or caring, which is arguably even worse.

video review: 'peach panther' by riff raff

Well, this album sucked. I know, should have expected it, but still, this was a miserable listen.

Next up, though... case/lang/veirs and then the midyear review, so stay tuned!

album review: 'peach panther' by riff raff

Okay, originally I was expecting this weekend to be a lot worse in terms of releases. I think I mentioned it on Billboard BREAKDOWN that there were also new albums from Rae Sremmurd and Iggy Azalea, which promised to be two records of continuous migraine, but since their lead-off singles have flopped, they've both delayed into later in the summer. And this leaves us with only the most courageous hip-hop artist to drop a record this past weekend... and I can't even finish that sentence.

Hell, I don't even know why I'm reviewing this. In the pantheon of joke rappers, I don't tend to have a lot of respect for Riff Raff, who basically has one joke in being an over-the-top caricature/parody of modern hip-hop, which becomes less of a joke when you realize that most of modern hip-hop is already there! And let's be honest, thanks to the Internet we've got no short supply of rappers who have better bars, production, and jokes than Riff Raff does, from The Lonely Island to Epic Rap Battles. That is unless you're taking Riff Raff seriously in a Lil B vein, but if we're going by 'so weird/bad it's good', Riff Raff isn't that far away from conventional hip-hop that I can use that excuse. As to whether Riff Raff takes himself seriously... well, there's a part of me that thinks he does with zero self-awareness and that's more sad than anything, but at the end of the day the music has to deliver, and it rarely does.

So why talk about this? Well, call it morbid curiosity more than anything. Somehow Riff Raff keeps getting guest stars that you wouldn't expect a rapper of his status to bring on, and I do hold that when it comes to stupid-as-hell bangers 'Kokayne' is ridiculously fun. In other words, even if he's on the edge of pop culture, he keeps popping up. So I figured what the hell and I checked out Peach Panther - was it any good?

video review: 'hopelessness' by anohni

By the nine hells, this record was unbearable, only salvaged from being lower thanks to one or two good songs. Let's hope that our next record will be better...

Oh, wait, it's Blake Shelton. Eh, whatever, stay tuned!

album review: 'hopelessness' by anohni

If I were to ask you what are the genres that bring up politics the most, what would be your answers?

Well, if I were to guess, you'd probably start with punk, and then follow with hip-hop. Maybe you'd bring up folk or funk or soul, or in a pinch you might mention alternative country or metal. Odds are you would not mention electronic music or synthpop, and there's a reason for that. In the latter case, it's fairly obvious: if you look at the historical legacy of synthpop, most of it tended towards weird abstraction or flighty dance floor jams, and while of course there were exceptions, they were not the rule. With electronic music... okay, you can make more of an argument when you consider certain underground scenes, particularly in inner city Detroit and Chicago where you'd find acts like Jlin, or you might mention acts like The Knife, which got very political on their 2013 album Shaking The Habitual to very mixed results, at least for me. 

So what about an artist like Anohni? If you don't recognize the name, don't worry, she's only been performing under it for this record, previously leading the band Antony and the Johnsons. Now keep in mind that Antony and the Johnsons are a baroque pop group that's received a ton of critical acclaim - mostly for good reason - but this is also her first album in six years and her first real venture into electronic music. Fortunately, she pulled in some heavy hitters to help her, the first being Hudson Mohawke, who is most well-known for working with Kanye West. The second is Oneotrix Point Never, a critically acclaimed experimental electronica musician who, yes, I know i need to hear more of his stuff, it's in my ever-expanding backlog. In other words, we could very well have another situation like Anna Meredith, the fusion of electronic and classical music... but on the other hand many of the statements Anohni made before this record implied this was to be a much more political work. Okay, that's a loaded implication, but I figured it'd probably be worth a few listens, so I checked out Hopelessness - what did I find?

video review: 'nine track mind' by charlie puth (ft. ARTV)

...no, I couldn't do this on my own. I needed some help here.

And yeah, Billboard BREAKDOWN is going to run a little late. Computer issues on my end, plus feeling absolutely drained from work isn't helping either. Either way, Dream Theater is coming up too, so stay tuned!

video review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

God, I'm not a fan of this review. It's a mess, my hair looks terrible, and the bitterness really does sour me on it - even though it was like the fifteenth take and I really wasn't feeling pretty well. It's me pushing myself too hard in one night - all the more evidence I need to better manage my time.

Okay, Billboard BREAKDOWN next - stay tuned!