The Arcade Fire have been compared to lots of different artists by lots of different people, but I'm pretty sure that Blondie was never one of them. Despite its ten members, Arcade Fire can often come off as the Win Butler show, as his distinct, defiant whine graces most of their tracks. However, "The Sprawl Pt. 2 (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" sees his fiancé Régine Chassagne take center stage, emoting over "Heart of Glass" synths. "The Sprawl" is likely the most "pop" song that Arcade Fire have ever recorded, trading in the churning guitars and dramatic organ that populate Funeral and Neon Bible for the synthesizer and drum sounds from Duran Duran's Rio, and combining them beautifully with their chamber pop aesthetic.
"The Sprawl" represents a welcome change in direction for the band, as there are only so many neo-Springsteen, adolescent anthems about missing your parents that a band can write before repeating themselves. I haven't heard much from The Suburbs (out Tuesday, August 3), but I can't imagine that the rest of the album will wholeheartedly embrace electronics like "The Sprawl," or like fellow Indie Rock titans the Yeah Yeah Yeahs did with Show Your Bones. What I have heard from the rest of the album, so far, is a more logical progression, and would be far more familiar to Arcade Fire fans. However, "The Sprawl" is Arcade Fire at their best: anthemic, moving and beautiful, and it shows that the band is willing to work outside of its comfort zone and write a fantastic pop song.
Hot Chip have proven to be the most reliable creators of dancefloor anthems since Daft Punk in the early 00s. One Life Stand is full of inventive electronic tracks that work equally well outside of a club as inside. “I Feel Better” is marked by grandiose strings and liberal usage of a vocoder, and even some steel drums in the background. Though the backing track could be cheesy in the wrong hands, Hot Chip usually manages to straddle the line between the embarrassing and the sublime like no other, and “I Feel Better” falls squarely in the latter category.
4. "Go Outside" - Cults
Most of the bands on this list are established artists with at least one great album to their name, though it's often more fun when a great song comes out of nowhere. It's safe to say that "Go Outside" came out of nowhere. Cults doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. Riding a glockenspiel intro and a melody so simple and beautiful it seems impossible that it's never been recorded before, "Go Outside" is a beautiful summer anthem with airy, boy-girl harmonies and a gorgeous chorus/bridge.
3. "Round and Round" - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
"Go Outside" came out of nowhere and "Round and Round" blindsided me in a similar way. Apparently, however, Ariel Pink has been around for over a decade, making some pretty good music. When did this happen? Ariel Pink is a man? When Before Today (great album by the way) came out critics hailed it as a prodigious talent finally making good on his ability (sorta like when Kevin Garnett finally won a title). I approached Before Today without hearing any of his previous work and "Round and Round" stuck out immediately. Though some of Ariel Pink's work is a little rough around the edges, "Round and Round" is almost creamy, hearkening back to New Wave ballads of the early 1980s, or more recently to M83's Saturdays = Youth. Everything about this song is fun, from the xylophone or marimba (or whatever percussion instrument it is) that accompanies the drums, to the synthesized voices in the background of the verses and chorus and the falsetto harmonies in the chorus. "Round and Round" is the culmination of an entire life's work and of an artist appealing to his most basic pop instincts to create something wonderful. (The Youtube video I found, matching the song to an 80's John Travolta aerobics movie called Perfect, which is awesome.)
2. "I Can Change" - LCD Soundsystem
"I Can Change" is the best song on the best album of the half-year. No one in the history of pop music has had such a great ear for an irresistible groove as James Murphy. The key to LCD's success is that Murphy combines these grooves with fantastic lyrics that manage to poetically summarize the modern condition in five-minute slices. Here, Murphy attempts to fix a broken relationship over bouncy synths and churning guitar. Though the beat and lyrics are great, it's Murphy's voice that steals the show on "I Can Change" bending words to his will, high and low, turning repetition into an art form.
1. "Cousins" - Vampire Weekend
Everyone knew that Vampire Weekend could write a catchy, layered, 2 and a half minute pop song with tongue-twisting and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. "Cousins" certainly delivers on that front. What people didn't know: these guys can flat out PLAY! "Cousins" is a sonic assault, with machine gun drums, a ridiculously demanding bassline and rapid-fire streams of guitar. The music video does a pretty good job of breaking down just how complex the song is: more detail and invention is squeezed into these two and a half minutes than many bands have put on record during their entire careers. The idiosyncratic drum beat, with its snare rolls and what sounds like a washboard is fantastic to behold and gives the song a ferocious energy that does not let up until the very end. Just when it seems like the song is going to go into overdrive, in come the church bells, providing a perfect capper to one of the most ambitious and breathtaking songs of the past few years.
I’m a little late to the draw on this one, but here are the best Indie songs of the first half of 2010:
Note: The definition of Indie Rock is particularly broad nowadays – it’s more of a state of mind than a musical genre. I consider Hot Chip and LCD Soundsytem to be Indie bands, even though they do not make rock music (in the strictest sense). Gorillaz is even harder to define, as it has many elements of Hip-Hop, but is the brainchild of one of Alternative rock’s icons (Blur’s Damon Albarn). For these purposes, I consider Indie Rock to be anything that is widely covered by the alternative music press, spearheaded by Pitchfork and Stereogum (and other blogs of that nature). So, M.I.A. and Robyn would fit that broad category of Indie Music, along with disparate acts such as The National and The Hold Steady or Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird.
Honorable Mentions: “Tell ‘Em” – Sleigh Bells “Wild Winds” – Free Energy (“Dream City” would have easily cracked the top five, but I first heard it in Early 2009) “Fast Jabroni” – Surfer Blood (“Swim” was a similar case to “Dream City,” as it might have topped this list, but it was released in late ’09) “Friendly Ghost” – Harlem “All I Want” – LCD Soundsystem “King of Spain” – The Tallest Man on Earth (really, this is a stand-in for all of his songs on The Wild Hunt, which are equally excellent and almost indistinguishable from each other)
The List:
10. “Rhinestone Eyes” – Gorillaz
I should say here that I could probably substitute this song with three or four songs (“Some Kind of Nature,” “Superfast Jellyfish,” “Sweepstakes,” “On Melancholy Hill”) from Plastic Beach and I would be just as satisfied. I had to choose “Rhinestone Eyes,” however, because it best creates the type of danceable apocalyptic dread that Gorillaz does so well. Though lyrics don’t really make much sense when you see them on paper, they paint some vivid images when you’re listening to the song (“your rhinestone eyes are like factories far away”) and overall reflect the album’s main theme of industry corrupting nature. There are all kind of weird, twinkly electronics that echo throughout the song, turning what would be a pedestrian, yet haunting, song into a symphony of synth. The synth breakdown that acts as a chorus is particularly effective, framing Damon Albarn’s verses and giving them a significance that they wouldn’t otherwise have. “Rhinestone Eyes” is the centerpiece of one of the year’s best albums and manages to combine all the best elements of the band’s sound into three minutes.
If I were to break down the sound of Titus Andronicus, it would look something like this: the booze-stained Celtic Punk of the Pogues mixed with the epic Jersey rock of Springsteen, the anthemic pop-punk of the Thermals and the hardcore sound and story-telling sense of Husker Du. These are all bands that I love, and Titus Andronicus manages to fuse their sounds into an ambitious form of prog-punk-bar band hybrid that’s exhilarating to listen to. “A More Perfect Union” is the opening track of their latest album, The Monitor, and it is as good an entry point as any to the world of the band. It contains all the hallmarks: the snarling vocals, furiously strummed power chords, a great “oh oh oh oh” part, and lyrics stuffed with references to history, literature and rock music (Sample lyrics: “I don’t wanna change the world/I’m just looking for a new New Jersey/Because tramps like us/baby we were born to DIE!” and “Glory, glory Hallelujah, his truth is marching on!”). The song kicks into gear about halfway through, when an Irish guitar lick gives way to an entirely new melody for a few minutes, and then returns to its main riff at the very end. It’s always good to hear a straight-up rock song that still manages to surprise you, but Titus Andronicus seem to do it every time out.
8. “Norway” – Beach House
The first line of “Norway,” represents the trajectory of Beach House as a whole before the release of Teen Dream earlier this year: “We were sleeping until you came along.” On "Norway", instead of merely sleeping (as, honestly, I was before the end of their last album, Devotion), Beach House are dreaming, lending all of their songs an otherworldly and magical feel. I’m not sure what instrument they’re using at the beginning of “Norway,” but it’s entrancing and when meshed with the ethereal female backing vocals, it’s transcendent. Despite the multi-layered track and the large number of instruments used in the song, “Norway” still feels wonderfully delicate and understated.
7. “Bloodbuzz, Ohio” – The National
The key to listening to “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” the most straightforwardly anthemic song on High Violet, The National’s latest, is to pay attention to the performance of the drummer, Bryan Devendorf. Notice how much more active he is than the rest of the band. It’s a great performance that adds a sense of urgency to singer Matt Berninger’s contemplative monotone, as well as kicking what could have been a standard rock song into high gear. When the rest of the song finally catches up to the drums in the final minute, it’s a revelation. While it seems as if some of the virtuosity has left rock music, it’s great to hear a showcase like this, especially from a band as normally laid-back as the National.
6. “Excuses” – The Morning Benders
“Excuses” starts off in a fairly similar manner to Beach House’s “Norway,” but instead of building on the slow intro, the Morning Benders change gears entirely, morphing “Excuses” into what a 50’s-style ballad would sound like if performed by The Walkmen (this is a big compliment). “Excuses” is essentially a doo-wop ballad, but mastered with a George Martin-esque studio sheen, even mixing in a “dum-da-da-dum” vocal section in the middle eight, mixed with 60’s strings and a modern Indie sensibility. If all of that seems like a jumble of musical references, it’s because I can’t exactly find the right one to describe “Excuses,” a song that I heard for the first time in April, but feel like I’ve known my entire life. It’s one of those songs that draws so deeply and successfully from music’s past that it sounds achingly familiar even at the first listen.
Rashômon (1950) -It's sorta hard to approach this one with fresh eyes. Rashômon isone of those cinematic classics where much of its classic nature comes from its originality and innovative film-making technique, namely the use of conflicting perspectives in flashbacks, which has been co-opted by so many films since then that the initial thrill that film-goers must have felt coming out of the theater 60 years ago has largely worn off. The storytelling innovations in Inception, another film that I saw this month, make the plot of Rashômon seem pretty quaint. All of this makes it pretty hard to judge the film on its own merits, but I have to say that I enjoyed it. The performances were over the top, but effective and the message about how people will always distort the truth is moving and still relevant. This is only the second film by Akira Kurosawa that I've seen, but I'll be sure to check out more.
Hannah and Her Sisters - Though Annie Hall is still my favorite Woody Allen film, it now has some fierce competition from Hannah and Her Sisters. Hannah and Her Sisters is warm, funny, sad and filled with fantastic performances, especially by Michael Caine as Elliott, who is married to Hannah (Mia Farrow), but is in love with her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey). Allen himself is Hannah's ex-husband, who is the showrunner for for an SNL-like sketch-comedy show and experiences an existential crisis where he considers converting to Catholicism, Buddhism and Krishna after a cancer scare. The real star of the film is Hannah's other sister Holly, played by Dianne Wiest (who won an Oscar for her performance, as did Caine), a plucky drug-addicted single woman who works for a catering company. She's probably pretty similar to a younger version of Jane Lynch's character in Party Down. I feel ashamed for sleeping on this one for so long.
Lone Star (pictured) - Lone Star is an under-seen classic from 1996, directed by John Sayles. For some reason, movies and TV series that take place near the US-Mexico border are inherently interesting to me, probably because it's sort of the last region in the United States that seems to have a sense of lawlessness, reminiscent of the Old West. Rio County, where Lone Star takes place, is a melting pot of African-American, Texan, Mexican and Native American cultures, and the central mystery of Lone Star, about the 30-year-old murder of a loathsome sheriff, draws from all these traditions to create a compelling story. The film is richer and deeper than almost any other film that I've ever seen. Sayles creates over a dozen compelling, well-drawn out characters and drafting a self-contained arc for pretty much all of them. Sayles seamlessly intertwines the two subplots, creating a real relationship between past and present events, fleshing out the town with a comprehensiveness that writers and directors rarely attempt to achieve. Chris Cooper provided a calming presence throughout the movie, helping the audience make sense of the action and connecting the past to the present. Matthew McConaughey is wisely not given very much to do except for act Texan, which is pretty much all he can do. Kris Kristofferson is not his typical gentle self, but a snarling, smug, racist and evil presence as the murdered Sheriff Wade. I wish more films were like Lone Star.
Inception - Oh man. Where to begin? Let me start by saying that Inception's plot is so intricate that at one point in the film, Nolan weaves together FIVE different levels of reality (yes, reality) without it being confusing to the attentive viewer. It's a breakthrough in storytelling technique and in visual effects. Lately, it seems like special effects aren't so special anymore. Anyone can make things explode and create giant CGI monsters (I wasn't impressed by Transformers or Clash of the Titans). Inception, however, was almost Matrix-like in its ability to manipulate the laws of physics and present the visual effects in a way that it both satisfy the eye and serve the story. The stretch of Inception near the end with Joseph Gordon-Levitt battling enemies in an environment with shifting gravity, and then with zero gravity is among the most visually arresting sequences I've seen in years. Though the first hour was largely expository, Inception deserves points for setting some ground rules for the fantastical world and sticking to them throughout the film. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a heartfelt performance that emotionally ground the movie, and Tom Hardy is immensely entertaining as the token British guy and deserves bigger roles elsewhere. Christopher Nolan has proven himself as one of the best directors working today, combining the commercial appeal of Spielberg with the mind-bending nihilism of Stanley Kubrick, with a little Hitchcockian tension thrown in for good measure.
This film was made for about $200 million more than Joe Gordon-Levitt's breakthrough Brick
Ahh, Summer. To most people, Summer means that it's time to go outside, go to the beach, swim in the pool, play golf, etc. To music journalists, however, Summer signifies that it's time to make a summer playlist. Here goes one of mine. It's CD length and I tried pretty hard to vary the genres, and make a good mix of old and new.
We're in a Golden Age of Television and I do my part by watching as much as I can. The central conceit of this series was stolen pretty much wholesale from Andrew Unterberger of Intensities in Ten Suburbs.
In a recent podcast, Bill Simmons said that Timothy Olyphant would be a great male lead in a romantic comedy, except for the fact that it always seems that he is about two wrong words away from killing everyone else in the movie. While I don't know if he'll ever try to lose Kate Hudson in ten days, there's no doubt that Olyphant can carry a TV series, and Justified gains a lot of mileage out of the anger that always seems to bubble under the surface.
Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a United States Marshal who is forced out of a comfortable job in Miami to return to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, after he shoots a drug lord, after giving him 24 hours to leave town. Raylan Givens was born in the wrong century: he would have been much more comfortable in the Old West, where the local sheriffs could take justice into their own hands. Raylan never leaves his house without a six-shooter (or a sawed-off shotgun if the situation calls for it) and his trademark Stetson hat. Instead, hampered by modern regulations, in order to sate his itchy trigger finger, he has to goad his mark into drawing first, thereby making his killings justified (hey, that's the name of the show!). Though he mostly keeps his cool, Raylan's tendency to shoot-first and ask no questions gives the show a natural sense of suspense. In season 1, Raylan encounters deals with a series of interesting fugitives and ghosts of his past, such as his deadbeat father and his ex-wife.
Justified is unquestionably a star vehicle, but it's real success is to build an expansive cast of supporting and recurring characters. Nick Searcy plays Raylan's supervisor, Art, and is very convincing as a down-home, friendly Southern official who still means business. Raymond J Barry plays Raylan's scumbag of a father with an infectious sneer. M.C. Gainey (aka Lost's Tom Friendly) provides a worthy antagonist in druglord Bo Crowder. The show also lines up a worthy array of guest stars. Creator Graham Yost must have made a bet with his writing staff about how many Deadwood alumni he could fit into the season (Johnny Burns (Sean Bridges), Dan Dority(W. Earl Brown), Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon), not to mention Olyphant). My two favorite guests were Alan Ruck as a dentist who goes all Marathon Man on a guy in a parking lot and Stephen Root, one of the great character actors working today, as The Hammer, a Judge who wears nothing under his robe but a speedo and always gives convicts the maximum sentence.
Season one's biggest weakness is the lack of development of female characters. While Joelle Carter is initially very engaging as firebrand, shotgun-toting Ava Crowder, who starts a relationship with Raylan, as the season goes on, she is outacted by pretty much everyone on the screen. Natalie Zea fares slightly better as Raylan's ex-wife, but as the season goes on, she loses most of her complexity and relevance to the plot.
Though this is all well and good, the crown jewel of this supporting cast is Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder, one of the most interesting and unique characters to show up on TV all decade. Boyd is a violent, charismatic, lunatic who uses his ability to speechify to worm his into the ranks of the local Neo Nazi clan, using the ideology as an excuse his love for blowing stuff up. Goggins is alternately magnetic and repulsive, playing a character who is so full of shit that it's amazing that it's not coming out of his ears. Boyd and Raylan have a past: they "dug coal" together in the mines in their youth (not a gay sex joke). Boyd represents a dark flipside to Raylan's violent self, showing what could happen if Raylan were to follow his father in a life of crime. Boyd uses white supremacy (and eventually his born-again Christianity) to serve his destructive nature much like Raylan hides his anger behind his job with the US Marshal service.
Despite its eclectic and interesting supporting cast Justified ultimately lives and dies with Olyphant, and he does not disappoint. Raylan is a complex character and in the wrong hands he could have been too broad, but Olyphant is a monster, finding the perfect reading for each one of his lines, maintaining a dry sense of humor to go along with his intimidation factor. Creator Graham Yost and Olyphant have created an all-time great character in Raylan Givens, and I'm curious to see what they'll throw at him next year.
Best Episode: "The Hammer," guest starring Stephen Root as a hard-nosed judge who always gives criminals the maximum sentence and sees Raylan as an ally in dispensing a more personal form of justice.
Standout quotes: Raylan saying grace at Boyd's "Christian" camp: “Dear Lord, before we eat this meal, we ask for forgiveness for our sins, especially Boyd, who blew up a black church with a rocket launcher and afterwards shot his associate Jared Hale in the back of the head on Tates Creek Bridge. Let the image of Jared’s brain matter on that windshield not dampen our appetite but may the knowledge of Boyd’s past sins help guide these men. May this food provide them with all the nourishment they need, but if it does not, may they find comfort in knowing the United States Marshals Service is offering $50,000 to any individual providing information that will put Boyd back in jail.”
Boyd(justifying his white supremacist views): "Just read your bible, as interpreted by experts"
My personal favorite - Raylan to a thug who stole his Stetson: “Mister, that’s a 10-gallon hat on a 20-gallon head.”
Well, t-minus two and a half hours until I find out if the last decade I spent suffering with the New York Knicks was worth it. It increasingly looks like it won't be. Amare is a very good player, but he can't carry a team, especially without anyone to give him the ball. The only thing I can do now is cross my fingers and hope that Lebron is throwing everybody for a loop by saying that he plans to party away the weekend in South Beach.
The NBA...where the devastation of the League's largest fanbase happens
Yeah, this may be cheating, but I really couldn't decide between these two songs, so I decided to group them together, as they both share a common theme (hats off to whichever genius can figure this one out). The first, "Personal OG," was released on 4/20, and features reverb drenched guitar and an inspired performance by Gibbs. My favorite things about this song: 1) The entrancing slow-mo intro; 2) "UH!"; 3) The awesome and catchy chorus which finds Gibbs singing about different strands of chronic and harmonizing with himself in a pretty hilarious falsetto.
The second track, "Supply" is the closing track off Wiz Khalifa's Kush & OJ and is a master class in the art of simplicity. The song begins with a drum beat, soon accompanied by the dulcet tones of Nesby Phips. About 20 seconds into the song comes a sublime two-chord keyboard riff which repeats throughout the song. That's it. Wiz is wise never to overshadow the echoing riff, which elevates a pedestrian rap to fantastic heights.
4. "Tightrope" - Janelle Monáe ft. Big Boi
A highlight from her massive, sprawling epic concept album The ArchAndroid, Janelle Monáe's "Tightrope" is an endlessly inventive and remarkably catchy track that both echoes soul hits of the 60s and 70s and paves new innovative ground. Monáe's voice is a powerful and versatile instrument and she uses almost her entire vocal arsenal on this one track. Featuring "the funkiest horn section in the metropolis" and a guest appearance from Sir Lucious Left Foot himself during the irresistible guitar-driven bridge, the track is an absolute winner. "Tightrope", like the rest of the album, is impressively layered, rewarding repeat listens by revealing new sonic elements each spin. It's a damn shame that this song isn't more well known.
3. "Nobody" - DJ Quik ft. Suga Free
There's no producer like DJ Quik. He combines Dr. Dre's G-Funk with Timbaland's Asian-influenced electro. "Nobody" falls cleanly on the Dr. Dre side of the spectrum, with its laid-back guitar driven groove combined with a falsetto chorus and some DJ scratches. Similarly, there's no rapper like Suga Free. Free's rapid fire free-associative flow is completely unique. He doesn't ride the beat, but merely treats the beat as a suggestion, fitting as many syllables into each measure as he deems necessary. Free is also frequently hilarious, rapping about John Mayer, Michael Jackson and the Dos Equis guy. Quik fits Suga Free like a glove, providing the perfect backdrop for his ramblings, using staccato synth stabs to accentuate Free's eccentricity and to give his somewhat arrhythmic flow a leg to stand on, tacking an interpolation of "It Takes Two" to the outro for shits and giggles. It's unlikely that any song released this year or in the near future will be as delightfully funky and deliciously weird as this one.
2. "Shutterbug" - Big Boi
The shorter half of Outkast has been making great music for fifteen years, but has come into his own recently, as every single released in advance of his new album (finally getting a release this week) has been unique and brilliant, proving that Big Boi could flourish without his more famous partner, Andre 3000. 2008's virtuosic "Royal Flush" and trippy 2009 jam "For Yo Sorrows" were classics in their own right. "Shine Blockas," featuring Gucci Mane, may have been the best Hip-Hop song of last year. "Shutterbug," however, may be the most creative and best of them all. Big Boi rides an impressively layered beat (produced by Scott Storch, of all people) featuring a vocoder and a Soul II Soul sample. While in lesser hands, the song could be cheesy and the chorus could be forgettable, but in the sure hands of Sir Lucious Left Foot, "Shutterbug" is a fantastic summer song, even if it never catches on with the masses. Bonus points for the trippy and hilarious video.
1. "Gangsta's Glory" - Bone Thugz-N-Harmony
Passion of the Weiss said that "Gangsta's Glory" sounds like it could have been released any time in the past 20 years. This is true, but the song's brilliance runs deeper than that. "Gangsta's Glory" is the first song in over decade to feature the original Bone Thugz lineup, and they've never been better. Every member of the Cleveland collective jumps on the track, using their trademark rapid-fire delivery to wax poetic about the dangerous life of a gangster, advising a young wannabe to really consider whether he wants to adopt their life. The beat is simple, driven by a two chord piano hook and an Eazy E sample in the chorus, but the chorus is as poignant as it is catchy, reflecting the short lives of ordinary gangsters, but also echoing the career lifespans for most rappers. The sheer quality of the verses and old-fashioned production gives this song a slight advantage over the futuristic "Shutterbug" to take pole position in Hip-Hop this year.
“You’re an emotional fucking cripple! Your soul is dogshit! Every single fucking thing about you is ugly!” – Bad Santa
“It looks to me like the best part of you ran down the crack of your momma’s ass and ended up a brown stain on the mattress!” – Full Metal Jacket
“You are a sad strange little man, and you have my pity” – Toy Story
“What you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard…everyone in the room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul” – Billy Madison
“If you look up the word ‘idiot’ in the dictionary, do you know what you’d find?” “A picture of me?” “No! The definition of the word ‘idiot,’ which you fucking are!” – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
“How would you like to go to the principal’s office?” “How would you like to SUCK MY BALLS?” – South Park
“It’s an inanimate fucking object!” “YOU’RE AN INANIMATE FUCKING OBJECT!” – In Bruges
“You are the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you!” – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
“Kiss my sweaty balls you fat fuck!” – In the Loop
“I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberry!” – Monty Python
Like I was gonna leave this song off the list. The past couple years have found Raekwon in the midst of a second career renaissance, kick-started by the release of best friend Ghostface Killah's landmark Fishscale and continuing through last year's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Pt. 2, one of the best Hip-Hop albums of the decade. It's great to see Rae at the top of his game again; he released a damn good mixtape, Cocainism 2, a couple weeks back. This is my favorite thing he's released all year. A slight 2 and a half minutes and two verses, Rae spits wildfire, revisiting his Lex Diamond persona and finding several creative ways to tell the world that he sells crack. The real story here is the beat, which melds smooth jazz horns, a slinky bass groove and a glockenspiel to give what would have been a minor track a cinematic scope.
9. "Bet I" - B.o.B ft. T.I. & Playboy Tre
Though The Adventures of Bobby Ray was a slight disappointment as a whole, it works pretty well on a track-by-track basis. "Bet I" is the best showcase for the man's sheer rapping ability, as well as the most straightforward rap song on the record. B.o.B's greatest strength is his voice, and his ability to emphasize and stretch out individual words and syllables for maximum effectiveness in his flow, and he attacks the "b" sounds in his verse with a fervor that's absent in the rest of the record. As an added bonus, Bobby Ray brings along two of his ATL buddies, including label-boss T.I., fresh out of jail. Though T.I. grabs the headlines, Playboy Tre steals the show with his trademark drawl in the anchor spot, placing an exclamation point on an excellent song.
8. "As We Enter" - Nas & Damian Marley
"As We Enter" starts off Distant Relatives with a bang, diving straight into the good stuff and providing a succinct distillation of the album's ethos. "As We Enter" is the most purely collaborative song on the entire disc, with Nas and Jr. Gong trading off lines and finishing each other's sentences over a beat sampled from a song by Ethiopian guitarist Mulatu Astatke. While Nas and Marley attempt to combine political Afrocentrism with streetwise rhymes throughout the album, this song marks the only time when the contrasting styles are not remotely distracting or self-indulgent. The result is infectious and unmistakably the product of two distinctly great artists, that manages to exist outside of the shadow of Exodus or Illmatic.
7. "The Ghetto" - Freddie Gibbs
Much has been said about this song in blog circles, but I need to add my two cents. Gary, Indiana native Freddie Gibbs is one of the best up and comers around. He released one of last year's best mixtapes and has contributed some great songs and guest verses so far this year. "The Ghetto" is probably the best representative of the Gibbs aesthetic. Though less hardcore than most of his work, "The Ghetto" paints a vivid picture of his neighborhood and his childhood, as he reminisces about the small details about growing up in the hood, such as Sunday dinner at his grandmother's house and how his mother chose to ignore Freddie's drug abuse and dealing. In a just world, this would be a hit.
6. "Power" - Kanye West
(can't find a good youtube video)
Oh Yeezy. Yes, the man's an egomaniac and a headcase, but he's fucking talented. I don't really expect "Power" to reflect, too much, the overall sound of Good Ass Job!, but it's a damn good song. Kanye (or rather, co-producer S1) combines soulful handclaps and chants with King Crimson's classic "21st Century Schizoid Man" to create a unique and powerful (sorry) song. I'm a particular fan of the last minute or so, when all the elements of the beat come to a thrilling head, with a synth arpeggio thrown in for good measure. I await this album with open arms.
Some big names have dropped some big albums so far this year, but you won't see many of them on this list. Most conspicuously absent is Eminem, who released an album that I don't like very much at all, but I'll touch on that another time. First, here are some honorable mentions:
"All Talk" - Kid Cudi - Cudi samples LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yrself Clean" and Christian Bale's rant to call out his haters.
"The Product" - Freeway - My favorite song from one of my favorite albums of the year so far (The Stimulus Package), but it didn't make the cut.
"Thank God" - Danny Brown - Detroit rapper Danny Brown raps about Bridge Cards and food and various other Michigan-related topics over a intense, guitar-heavy beat.
"Light Up" - Drake ft. Jay-Z - If only the rest of the album had beats like this one - a slick piano intro gives way to droning synths and heavy percussion as Drake goes on about the usual suspects (life of the rich and famous) and a reverb-drenched hook. Lil Wayne apparently shares my enthusiasm for this track, as he contributed a guest verse to the remix over the phone from Rikers Island.
"Stylo (Remix)" - Chiddy Bang - Producer Xaphoon Jones strips Gorillaz' "Stylo" to its essence and and rapper Proto kills it.
"Massive Attack" - Nicki Minaj ft. Sean Garrett - Completely unrelated to the trip-hop group. This is among the most sonically inventive productions released all year, and when it's combined with Nicki's trademark insanity, it creates an irresistible earworm, reminiscent of Missy Elliott's work with Timbaland.
Most Honorable Mention: "Al Bundy" - Intuition It was very, very hard for me to leave this song off the list. Intuition is a clever wordsmith, weaving his flow through Dibiase's backing track with a sort of liquid cool, dropping references to Tom Petty, Jim Jones and, especially Married...With Children. Intuition has a style that could easily translate to the mainstream, but it looks like he'd rather remain underground, so he can have the freedom to explore his preferred artistic avenues. More power to him.
