In honor of Daft Punk breaking up, 1 let’s all2 take a look back at their movie, Electroma.
I love this whole thing, but if the credits had rolled after 13 minutes or so, it would have been perfect. Like the first part of Electroma might be my favorite movie ever made. It’s shiny robots in a cool car driving through a beautiful landscape! What more do you want?
And the rest of it is also great!
There were strong contenders for jam of the year this year. Strong contenders. Let’s do a top 5. A top 5 which won’t feature A$AP Rocky, who was on the jam of the year 2 years running. So that’s a surprise.
#5 – Aminé – “Shimmy”
Let’s be clear: 2020 wasn’t anyone’s year.
But despite that, “Shimmy” sounds like the most fun anybody had on a single this year. And it’s on Limbo, an album that sounded like it was wild fun to make.
2020 should have been the year that Aminé splashed onto the mainstream scene. But it wasn’t. It was the year we all stayed home and tried hard as hell to stay sane with varying degrees of success. “Shimmy” is an anthem for a year that should have been, but never was.
#4 – Khruangbin – “Time (You and I)”
I’ve said before that Khruangbin is what happens when you make a whole band out of “Genius of Love.” Which is maybe the best possible impetus for starting a band at all. “Time” is the purest distillation of that sound so far.
This came out like right after we all went home. 7 days after they canceled the show I had tickets for, I think. Ugh. I get it, but I hate it. I’m hoping that bands everywhere treat 2021 like a 2020 do over and just tour the shit out of their good records.
#3 – The Cool Kids – “Super Smash Bros”
Shout out to the whole Griselda movement, but “this the smile Scar had when he smoked Mufasa” was the hardest bar of 2020.
#2 – Shintaro Sakamoto – “Don’t Tinker With History”
Look, man. If your shit sounds even remotely like “Special Delivery (and, by extension, “Uproar”), it’s got a good chance of ending up on this list. This song has that sound and makes brings to mind a future that sounds like the funky, groovy 70s. What else do you want out of music even, you know?
#1 – Run the Jewels – “Ooh La La”
As if there was ever any doubt.
2020 was built for these dudes. As a year, it was the culmination of exactly the type of dystopian misery that RTJ luxuriates in and laughs at to keep from crying. This was their moment, and they knew it, and they rose to the occasion with their album RTJ4.
On “Walking In the Snow,” Killer Mike drops a verse that might be the purest distillation of what it was like to live through this year.
On “Ju$t,” they put Pharrell together with Zack De La Rocha and manage to make paranoid, literary verses sound catchy as hell along the way.
But on “Ooh La La,” like in the video, they set fire to the racist, capitalist structure that gave rise to 2020 in the first place. It’s the sound of 2 journeymen making the best music of their careers and using their new, bigger platform to say some real shit and shout out their heroes. When El-P says “DJ Premier,” and Primo starts scratching? I get those goosebumps every time. It’s the jam of the year.
So, yeah. This post is culled from a few weeks of quarantine listening.
I waited till “The Steps” by HAIM came out to publish this post, because they might be the best band in America, and P.T. Anderson directs their videos. Like can you imagine if music videos existed in a real way and Stanley Kubrick directed all of Bowie’s videos? But, alas. “The Steps” ain’t it.1 So let’s get into some jams.
It’s hard out here for a Drake apologist. You always know you’re on thin ice. Like what was Pusha saving for a third diss track?2 But if your friend asked you on Wednesday to DJ their wedding on Friday, you’d put at least 7 Drake songs on your playlist. You’re never going to make it through the reception without “Nice For What.” And, honestly, why would you want to?
Here Aminé, whose name is not “Anime,” continues the tour Drake started through late-90s / early-aughts rap nostalgia. But instead of visiting iconic hip hop shooting locations, he instead runs us around iconic Portland locations.3 Aminé is from Portland, you see. And since he’s the only rapper ever to come out of Portland, he’s seizing the opportunity to make himself his city’s Drake, and he just might pull it off. If he ever does that thing where he develops his own weird sound reminiscent of his surroundings, he could really get there.4 For now, shout to Aminé for recognizing a vacuum in the market he could exploit.
This was on one of the playlists people make at work. And, I don’t know. I am a straight up sucker for an obvious sample paired with hip-hop beats. It’s why I love DJ Smokey. It’s why I love The Heatmakerz. And it’s why I love this shit.
“Tuesdays used to matter. Now the only thing that happens is you, you, and you say ‘shit, I been had that,’ ‘shit, I been heard that.'”
Wale, The Perfect Plan, 2008
You have no idea how hyped I am on this song. I mean. Either “you probably pay fifty for a gram from a Rasta” or “this the smile Scar had when he smoked Mufasa,” one of them, is already the Bar of the Year for 2020. These lines seem like they would be in the same verse, part of the same rhyme pattern. But they’re not! Sir Michael Rocks is just that dope! The other Cool Kid, Chuck Inglish, has often said that if he felt like it, Sir Michael Rocks would be the best rapper alive. He’s not wrong. Take it from Old Man Ebro: The Cool Kids is back.
Honestly what do you want out of a pop song in 2020? Because if it’s not here, I don’t know if you can be helped.
There was kind of a lot riding on this when I heard about it, because, most of the time, these supergroup remixes end up like that shit Miley and Ariana and LDR did for the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack.1 But then sometimes a supergroup remix is more like “Lady Marmalade”2 with Xtina or “Ghetto Supastar” 3 with Mya. This is more like the latter than the former. even though it’s not from a soundtrack. Listen. Anything Kero Kero Bonito on it is going to be fun.
You know how hard it is to make joke rap? That anyone would ever want to listen to? Like if you were like, ‘yo, I’m thinking ab0ut making a joke rap album,’ I’d be like ‘while you are a humorous person, and rap music does rely on many of the same formal structures as joke-telling, I would very much advise against this.’ There’s been a lot of joke rap. From Joe Pesci to Lil Dicky. The results are, uh. Uneven. I think Das Racist4 were the last guys to do joke rap well. Joke rap is hard to do, you see, because there’s a lot going against you. For one, you have to be good at rapping. And then you’re up against actual rappers, most of whom are already very funny. But if you’re going to do it, you might as well get rap’s reigning mystery man Spark Master Tape on the shit, lending it some credibility and a dope ass verse.
Rap. Rap rap rap. I feel like I write a lot about it. I think a lot about it. For a lot of people, I’m the guy they go to with their thoughts and questions about it. Rap. Yes. Love it. Love rap.
But then lately I’ve been going through a shift. It started when I started enjoying the samples as much or more than the rap songs made out of them. Then I started in with the kind of “funky jazz” Ricky Powell was walking around NYC with his little transistor radio.5 And now I’m like a full blown washed jazz dad. So, in my day to day, what I’m listening to is a lot more like Makaya McCraven’s “reimagining” of Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here6 than, like, “Dr. Birds.”
Actually, usually I’m vocal-free. Like have you heard McCraven’s Universal Beings album? Wooooo.
Welcome to a Valentimes-themed edition of “Loosies,” which is a name I inadvertently stole from blog hero turned dance music impresario Nick Catchdubs.
I relate to The Free Design because they’re a talented bunch of also-rans who ended up doing marketing work.
I don’t know a lot about Margo Guryan. She showed up on a list of suggested tracks for a playlist I was making, and I ended up loving this whole 27 Demos project. And this song in particular is very sweet.
The one from the GOAT. Maybe “Cupid” is more on-theme. But come on. “You Send Me” is untouchable forever. It’s the slow, languid, sound of swooning.
Remember when D’Angelo came back and everybody was like holy shit D’Angelo is back can this possibly live up to my expectations of what a D’Angelo album should sound like and then it did and we all felt like assholes for ever doubting the god? It’s crazy that that was 6 years ago.
Valentimes isn’t just about earnest professions of love. It’s also about having fun with your special person, you know?
I made this playlist for work, as part of kind of a getting-to-know-you mixtape series. But it’s super dope, so I wanted to put it here, too. Click that picture for the Spotify playlist, but don’t clown me for my username. It’s supposed to be a reference to this satirical piece from the 1960s, but it sucks as a name, and I know it, but Spotify won’t let you change your username for some reason. I hate it. Honestly, I should switch to Tidal.
The concept of “Loosies,” which was originally a newsletter, but which will now live on this blog, was simple: 3-5 of the best songs I was listening to in a given week.
A lot of the time, there was some kind of thematic through line. But the name “Loosies” suggests that the songs themselves would come from various sources. From all over.
This week, all three songs come from the same album. It is a compilation album, if that helps, but even then I think all three songs share at least two artists. So. Maybe not “Loosies” exactly. But, in my defense, one of these songs is already my jam of the summer for 2019.
“Down Bad” by JID, Bas, J. Cole, EARTHGANG, and Yung Nudy
And it is this one. “Down Bad” goes. The way JID supplies the hook but also incorporates the hook into his verse? That’s Matrix-level rapping from a newcomer with a shocking degree of authority in his delivery. JID, man. He’s in that spot where it’s not that everything he does is flames,1 but the shit that he does that is flames2 is like instant-classic status.
Put “Down Bad” on repeat. Roll the windows down. Marvel at JID’s phrasing. Shake your head at J. Cole’s unfortunately-timed Warriors reference. Say the “y’all had a year” part along with the rapper Bas. Enjoy yourself. But be careful. It’s hot out there.
“Wells Fargo” by JID, EARTHGANG, Buddy, and Guapdad 4000
Atlanta. JID is from Atlanta. And “Wells Fargo” would not exist were it not for the A. This “Wells Fargo” shit might not be the jam of the summer, but it does have that Outkast ft. Killer Mike “The Whole World” energy. While that song, “The Whole World” was and remains a guaranteed party starter, “Wells Fargo” is something you throw on when the party is on the brink, and you need something to make it pop.
Also shout out to Guapdad 4000 for having the best rap name since Hoodrich Pablo Juan.
“1993” by J. Cole, JID, Cozz, EARTHGANG, Buddy, and Smino
It’s not the song of the summer. It’s not the hypest piece of music this side of “Swag Surfin’.” But it is a little fun as hell “I love that they went to the trouble of making this at all and then put it on the album” kind of thing.