video review: 'big k.r.i.t. iz here' by big k.r.i.t.

Alright, another mild disappointment, it happens I guess...

Anyway, next up... well, I had plans for something, but they might have to change for tomorrow, we'll see - stay tuned!

album review: 'big k.r.i.t. iz here' by big k.r.i.t.

So I'll be very honest, folks: when I heard where Big K.R.I.T. was planning to go with this new project, my level of surprise was split between "greatly" and "not at all". 

Because on the one hand, hearing that Big K.R.I.T. was trying to make a mainstream-accessible trap album seemed like the last thing you would have expected from him - I get that Def Jam royally mismanaged your deal and promotion and your music has always had crossover potential, but why in the Nine Hells would you go independent to just release the same style of music in an over-saturated subgenre of rap? Especially coming off of 4eva Is A Mighty Long Time, you'd have thought that Big K.R.I.T. would delve further into experimental territory that the label would balk at, not release another album for the pile that would wind up getting overshadowed by acts in the same subgenre with better distribution and publicity!

But on the other hand, I do get it - trap is a variant of southern hip-hop, and Big K.R.I.T. has always been one to point that out in how the style has been co-opted by other regions and even genres time and time again. So in essence if he was going to try and make the definitive trap album to put everyone else to shame, frame it as a sequel to his 2010 mixtape... well, it wouldn't be how I'd best push his talents and versatility, but I'd understand the appeal, especially if he was looking to flesh out his setlist for any festivals ahead. I was a lot more alarmed that it didn't look like he had any production credits this time around and had included a few songs from earlier mixtapes here - seemed like a questionable move for a guy whose projects always ran long - but fine, what did we get from Big K.R.I.T. Iz Here?

video review: 'no.6 collaborations project' by ed sheeran

Hmm, a little surprised by how well this is getting received... guess the benefit of low expectations will take something a long way...?

But on the flip side, speaking of expectations... yeah, that's coming tonight, stay tuned!

album review: 'no.6 collaborations project' by ed sheeran

So I brought this up originally on Billboard BREAKDOWN a month or so ago and I think it's important to state it here to provide some context: sometimes if you're an artist and you finally get the clout, popularity, and influence to create your dream project, it's worthwhile going back to when you first conceived of this dream and ask whether it was a good idea to begin with. I'm not saying this is an easy task - it demands self-awareness, the willingness to acknowledge your roots but also how far you've come, and will likely not be helped by the crowd of enablers you've accumulated thanks to your success - but it's one worth doing.

Now if you're an Ed Sheeran fan at this point you're probably a bit scandalized - he's proven himself time and time again that he can work with other acts, from writing to singing alongside them, why shouldn't he be allowed to curate a massive collaborative venture as a natural expansion from the EP he self-released in 2011? And if me saying that out loud didn't highlight at least some level of ridiculousness to this whole affair, it should come in understand what No.5 Collaborations Project was, an independent fusion of his brand of pop folk with a slew of grime acts that are not common names stateside. And while it becomes abundantly obvious that Ed Sheeran's writing has tightened up considerably since the beginning of the decade... well, it's leaner and darker and surprisingly cohesive, something that I didn't expect at all would be the case for this new album, which spans from Justin Bieber to Eminem, Stormzy to Skrillex, Chris Stapleton to Young Thug and Cardi B! And given that I've had kind of mixed results with the singles he's released thus far... look, I expected this to be a mess, or at the very least nowhere close to his best - when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, that happens. But okay, what did we get from No.6 Collaborations Project?

video review: 'veteran' by JPEGMAFIA (6th year anniversary)

A little late posting this, but I will say that I'm grateful for all of y'all who have stuck around to read and follow this - thanks again!

Next up, let's knock something out of my backlog before I start with the week ahead, so stay tuned!

album review: 'veteran' by JPEGMAFIA (6th year anniversary)

Well, this won by a landslide this year. Seriously, it was not very close whatsoever, the only close competition had about half as many votes and that was Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest - don't worry fans, I'll be handling the next Will Toledo album when he puts it out, I've just never been all that interested in covering a remake of a project I heard years ago.

But in a sense, I'm a little baffled why I didn't cover JPEGMAFIA early in 2018. I think part of it might have been rooted in how the Patreon scheduling got out of hand and I just couldn't find time to tackle it - one of the reasons I did shelve it for 2019 but may bring it back in the future with a little more containment and structure - but for another, what I did heard of JPEGMAFIA I was more wary of than outright positive. Because I actually did go back to his earlier projects and my issues weren't due to the experimentation - taking a slightly more jagged, offkilter approach to slightly more conventional tones adjacent to an act like clipping - but more to the content, which seemed to land in a strange sort of very Internet/meme culture political provocation, which meant that certain points of insight and transgression struck some weird notes, at least for me; definitely an acquired taste. And that's not even getting into the messy controversy surrounding his now infamous song 'I Just Killed A Cop Now I'm Horny', in which actual audio of a policeman being killed was mixed into the song and which requires a pretty layered conversation surrounding transgression, art, and the modern cultural role of police that probably deserves to come up at a later date. And when you factor in some structural issues and a hit-and-miss record for hooks or groove, I can see how his first two projects - Black Ben Carson and The Second Amendment - might not have gotten the same universal acclaim that Veteran did two years later, although I would say Black Ben Carson has a certain nightmarish, amorphous quality that reminds me of B. Dolan's The Failure - and I intend that as a compliment, I do think it's a surprisingly compelling and pretty great album. But from the outside, Veteran did look to be the most streamlined project to date and certainly getting the most critical acclaim in experimental hip-hop, so I was open to this kicking ass: so how about it, going back to 2018, was Veteran worth it?

video review: 'revenge of the dreamers iii' by dreamville

Well, this was a mess... but if you had heard the past two compilations from this label, it shouldn't be that surprising.

Anyway, I've got my sixth year anniversary come up on Wednesday, but first, Billboard BREAKDOWN - stay tuned!

album review: 'revenge of the dreamers iii' by dreamville

So I don't tend to cover label or posse collaborations projects, and believe it or not, I actually do have a reason. They're rarely focused or well-curated, the spread of talent isn't all that consistent, and it can be tough to pin down the exact mood of the thing, especially if you've got a collaboration with a bunch of bonafide spitters. Because on the one hand, they're trying to go bar-for-bar and there's some level of intensity... but on the other hand, it's all supposed to be casual and making a few moments of magic in the studio while you pass the blunt around, which can lead to some real tonal dissonance.

And if anything, I expected that to be all the more pronounced on the newest Dreamville collaboration. Now full disclosure, I did go back to hear the first two, and while they both had some striking moments, it was exactly what you'd expect from a label headed up by J. Cole, where in addition to my other issues, the early criticism is that a lot of his acts either sounded like him or were R&B singers - not always the best thing when the songs started losing focus. And given that I'm not the biggest J. Cole fan by any metric, I didn't have high expectations for Revenge Of The Dreamers III - yeah, J. Cole is in a very different space than he was in 2015 and he has a more diverse and well-rounded group around him, but I hadn't been impressed by the song that had charted and I wasn't really buying into the hype. Sure, it's longer - have to get those streams somehow - but isn't the point of a label collaboration to emphasize and promote that talent, not bring in guest appearances from over a dozen other acts?

But fine, this is going to be one of those overblown collaborations trying to simultaneously create hype and sound relaxed and creative, so again, low expectations... but what did we get out of Revenge Of The Dreamers III?

video review: 'bandana' by freddie gibbs & madlib

Well, this was... frustrating to some extent? A great album, to be sure, but with the sort of expectations it had, I'm not surprised why it felt a little disappointing overall.

Anyway, next up is something that has no expectations and is bound to be fun to talk about - stay tuned!

album review: 'bandana' by freddie gibbs & madlib

I'm genuinely curious how many people remembered the narratives surrounding Freddie Gibbs five years ago.

Because while he was respected by those in the know, you could make the argument his profile had suffered or been marginalized by the split with Jeezy and his debut album ESGN not really hitting as strongly as it should after a string of well-received mixtapes. And while there had been some build-up for his collaboration with Madlib through a couple of scattered singles, there was considerable skepticism, because Madlib does not make easy beats to ride, and his sample-heavy, claustrophobic, and occasionally lo-fi production did not match anything close to the trap for which Gibbs was known.

And while hindsight is 20/20 and in the wake of Pinata being one of the best rap albums of the decade it's easy to say that Freddie Gibbs had just been criminally underrated, I think it's important to highlight how much he has stepped up his skills in the past five years. Not only did his lyricism improve by leaps and bounds but so did his flow and structure and command of melody, and while his past couple projects I've been lukewarm to positive on - the one I didn't review was Fetti and while I was cool on that, it's more because I'm not really a big fan of Curren$y - the hype for his return to working with Madlib was considerable, especially considering the guest talent he was recruiting along the way. Pusha-T was obvious - they play in the same lane and the combination was bound to kick ass - but getting Killer Mike, Anderson .Paak, Mos Def and Black Thought too? As I had to say in my midyear review, the fact I had not covered this album was a considerable asterisk I had to add to the list, because I just hadn't heard enough of it in time to process and think it over. But now I found the time, and the moment is here: what did Gibbs and Madlib deliver on Bandana?

resonators 2019 - episode #018 - 'bourgiebohopostpomoafrohomo' by deep dickollective (VIDEO)

So yeah, you won't believe how much work I put in behind the scenes to get this done properly, but I'm happy it turned out well.

But next up... Billboard BREAKDOWN, a bunch of albums on my backlog that'll fit close to the Trailing Edge, and then Freddie Gibbs - stay tuned!

resonators 2019 - episode #018 - 'bourgiebohopostpomoafrohomo' by deep dickollective

So last year by sheer coincidence, during Pride Month I wound up talking about the Dicks on this series, one of the first notable queercore acts and widely cited for pushing gay themes in hardcore punk. And that got me thinking: why don't I do the same thing for this series this year, but for underground hip-hop, find one of those LGBT acts that might be long-forgotten?

Well, if anything this was as challenging of an effort to track down as it was discovering The Dicks, because if you thought queer themes in punk were transgressive in the 80s, they were damn near heretical in underground hip-hop near the turn of the millennium. Just like underground hip-hop we're talking about a male-dominated scene, but it was also a space where the homophobic flowed freely - they'd have a hard time accepting women into the party, let alone queer acts, and that tended to be a common prejudice be you black or white. In fact, it was often framed as a defensive projection of masculinity, not just by young guys scared of catching 'the gay' but also by black men who perceived society's fetishization of them as boiling them down to their sexual traits and nothing else, and if that sexuality was not emphasized, he might be coded as 'gay'. And that's not even touching the pseudo-spiritual and religious dimensions that had no tolerance for queerness.

So I honestly didn't expect to find any acts who came out of this era who openly identified as gay or bi or trans or queer... and yet I did. In the year 2000, a few PhD students at Stanford met and expressed frustration with the spoken word poetry community's ostracization of their blackness and queerness. And while the core trio - Juba Kalamka, Tim'm T West aka 25Percenter, and Philip Atiba Goff aka. LSP - had experienced some solo success in the community, they were annoyed at the lines a presumably "conscious" community was drawing, and they saw the opportunity to push buttons on masculinity, colour, and sexuality in their music, and take a harder, deconstructionist tone to the homophobic content that was cropping up in hip-hop, mainstream and underground. So they began creating compositions that would become the groundwork of their 2001 breakthrough, recruiting a few other guests and producers along the way, a project widely considered as one of the genesis points of queer hip-hop - it might have started as a parody but it morphed into something more. That's right, we're talking about BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo by Deep Dickollective, and this is Resonators!

video review: 'ZUU' by denzel curry

So yeah, this was fun - I'm a little pleased that I didn't really get much backlash to this one, but we'll see where that goes...

Anyway, Billboard BREAKDOWN is up next and then probably some country on the docket, so stay tuned!

resonators 2019 - episode #017 - 'doom' by mood (VIDEO)

Okay, this probably won't get a ton of traffic, but I'm pretty pleased I was able to show some light on this...

Anyway, now for something completely different...

resonators 2019 - episode #017 - 'doom' by mood

So last month when I covered Slum Village, I made sure to highlight how much of that project was a springboard for legendary producer J. Dilla, who had started to pick up traction in a few years before but really launched into major cult prominence off of that project. And while that success would cascade down somewhat into the other members of Slum Village, both present and future, today we're going to be exploring a similar launch point in underground hip-hop, but one that time might have forgotten if you didn't know where to look.

So, it's 1997 in Cincinnati, a city which has never really been a hotbed for hip-hop in any era, but things are moving for an up-and-coming group called Three Below Zero, featuring rappers Main Flow and Donte and producer Jahson. More to the point, they've also got a connection to future big name producer Hi-Tek, who hit it up well with an up-and-coming Brooklyn MC named Talib Kweli, who we covered on an earlier episode of this show. They had released a few singles over the past couple of years - the one that tends to be recognized the most is 1996's 'Hustle On The Side', which is a pretty terrific forgotten gem in its own right - but they had changed their name and had ventured up to New York to record their debut which would be released in 1997... and depending who you talk to, is mostly known as the launch-pad for Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek, or is a forgotten underground classic in its own right... and it would take the group as a whole until 2011 to release a non-compilation follow-up. So okay, let's get into Doom, the debut album from Mood, and this is Resonators!

album review: 'ZUU' by denzel curry

I'll admit I wasn't expecting this.

Granted, I'll admit that might as well be a tagline for most of my experiences with Denzel Curry - from a smoked-out, nerdier brand hip-hop to the hyper-aggressive but potent as hell bangers of Imperial to the more stylized and diverse TA1300, his sound has only expanded and shown deeper wells of potential to grab a bigger and bigger following, so I guess I'm not averse to the 'coming home party banger' project that plays closer to a mixtape feel. Hell, one of my issues with TA1300 was that the experimentation felt a little undercooked, so maybe streamlining on a 'back to basics' mold could connect, and he's got a penchant for melody and hooks that puts many of his peers to shame. And considering how much I've really been looking for a "fun" hip-hop project over the past couple of weeks if he's going to drop something looser and overloaded with summer bangers, I'm be intrigued - I'm not sure I've heard Denzel Curry sound like he's having fun on an album in recent years, and I'm always conscious of the depth he'll slip between the lines. And while I'm not expecting him to give Sage Francis or B. Dolan a run for their money given how they came off This Was Supposed To Be Fun, I wanted to hear this regardless, and it was short enough to go down easy - so what did Denzel Curry deliver with ZUU?

video review: '4REAL 4REAL' by yg

Well, this was better than I expected - and I'll admit I was close to calling it really good, but it did just fall short at the end.

Anyway, I'm thinking I'll have my Sonic Temple wrap-up video today (just need to add in my b-roll footage and some music, and in the mean time I've got Resonators, Billboard BREAKDOWN tomorrow, and Flying Lotus, so stay tuned!

album review: '4REAL 4REAL' by yg

Believe me, it was not my plan to start liking YG's music.

Because for the first half of the 2010s, I didn't - he had some singles to start the decade and I still don't really like My Krazy Life. Not really a bad hip-hop album, but it was a project drilling into the bare bones in production courtesy of DJ Mustard at his peak and the content... and little else. I understand the everyman appeal, don't get me wrong, but it didn't nearly stand out as much as it could, and I'd argue that you could put any number of more capable MCs in the same spot with the same production and you'd probably get a better album.

But then Still Brazy came out in 2016, and YG took west-coast revivalism with more expanded production, a genuine sense of humor, and a blunt political angle that actually packed a wallop in a generally underwhelming year for mainstream hip-hop... which might be why that album didn't produce notable singles on the charts to my vast irritation. And thus I can't blame him that much when Stay Dangerous returned to a similar formula to My Krazy Life and actually got some singles success - the only problem was that it was lazier and generally worse, but it did make sense he'd be able to turn around a follow-up more quickly. Hell, it would have been released earlier than even this if it hadn't been for his friend Nipsey Hussle's tragic passing. And I'll be blunt, I didn't have high expectations, mostly because the production team hadn't changed much with singles like 'Go Loko' it looked like things were getting even worse... but hey, maybe it'd work out on 4REAL 4REAL?

video review: 'fever' by megan thee stallion

Okay, this turned out a bit more interesting than I expected - wish there was a little more to the project as a whole, but it happens, I guess...

Anyway, now onto something legit great!

album review: 'fever' by megan thee stallion

So I'll admit I was a little surprised to even consider this review - it's not like there aren't other albums I could cover on my schedule, so why this? Why review a project for which you're fairly certain you won't have much to say and if you do might be best suited for the Trailing Edge?

And then I immediately questioned why I thought any of that - yeah, Megan Thee Stallion might have gotten her initial traction off of Instagram twerk videos and being hotter than hell, but she could spit her ass off better than a fair few of her male counterparts, her mixtapes had some genuine sizzle over pretty solid trap production - again, better than a lot of her competition - and it wasn't like Cardi B hadn't surprised me with the longevity and flair of some cuts from her debut album; I might be the only one who still genuinely thinks 'Money Bag' is a great song, but if Cardi is settling into a comfort zone, I wanted to find someone where the fire was still lit. Sure, the content wasn't about to be all that deep beyond flexing, sex jams, and taking guys for all their worth, but her meteoric rise did prove there was an audience for that sort of material, and my general liking for 'Big Ole Freak' proved that she had the charisma and command of her mix to make it work. So I figured why not give that debut a listen and ignore that mess of a new DJ Khaled project, what did we get from Fever?