Young Thug - Quarterback

I don't think I posted this before but it's a toss up between this and the previously posted Best Friend for best tune of the year for me I think. Young Thug should do a whole album of tunes with the vibe of those two tracks, that'd be the best LP of the 2010s don't ya reckon? Barter 6, Slime Season 1 & 2 have 53 tracks. I've made a mixtape featuring the best 29 songs from those three releases called 2015 THUG, if he'd released that it would have been an all time classic. Then there's all his features including 5 on Gucci's Brick Factory 3 and that Metro Thuggin mixtape bootleg and so many more I didn't include. You could probably make another classic mixtape of the best of all those, I'm sure I've missed a bunch too. Does anything recorded go unreleased? Beatking on his closing monologue from 3 Weeks calls it 'the mixtape grind'. I kinda don't get it. Do the rap guys feel they have to keep pumping out so much stuff just to remain constantly visible? Anyway over 29 top choonz in a year is pretty bloody impressive. 

Beast Mode - Future

Future reasserts himself on this mixtape as one of the kingpins in weird Atlanta rap. Like Rome Fortune's Beautiful Pimp 2 last year, Future uses just the one producer here and keeps it short at 28 minutes. It all adds up to a wining combination. Perhaps other rappers need to take note of this. Everything's just way more cohesive and it's probably the best thing Future has done since his Pluto LP. The producer Zaytoven (great name huh?) is keen on jazzy piano and mournful strings sprinkled amongst the trap beats. It never comes across as backwards though, sideways maybe? The keyboards are sometimes minimal and sometimes they reach Aladdin Sane levels of absurdity. Lay Up's production is fine like a mini minimal symphony with a violin loop and a spooky piano. Future's trademark vocal slur, original flow and vocal effects are all present and accounted for. Some of this is experimental in a way that certain things have not been juxtaposed like this before. Hood raps over really baroque type of pop piano with brittle drum machines on Just Like Bruddas. That's really fucking strange. Real Sisters has really mental old school synthesisers played like I've never really heard before. They kind of swarm and swirl eerily. The centrepiece of the mixtape is the final track Forever Eva. Future's vocal is so slurred and a fucked with he's often incomprehensible. This is fine trap with great synth, abstract samples, choice beats and melancholy strings. I think this is about him being an ATL hood forever no matter what. He's a true bother forever. Well he's definitely keeping it strange for now and that's a good thing.

Rap Avalanche

A Quick Squizz At Recent Rap and R&B

Just when I was starting to think 'gee it was all happening earlier this year in the rap, ratchet, trap and R&B zones, but what's happened?' I was going back to hardcore, jungle and speed garage etc. (Reynolds has more on breakbeat garage here, loving that Ruff Da Menace track 2 F In Ruff (So What)). Then a bunch of new releases appear! Mostly free mixtapes but some albums too.

Now this is something to get excited about. Houston's Beatking, creator of 2014's best mixtape Gangsta Stripper Music 2, teams up with Three Six Mafia's Gangsta Boo for Underground Cassette Tape Music. Who would have expected this collaboration? Gangsta Boo & Skinny Pimp did feature on Gangsta Stripper Music 2 though. Gangsta Boo along with The Scarecrow aka Lord Infamous were my favourite 666 Mafia rappers. Female rapping really suited that 90s Memphis style. It's funny because Beatking is one of the few rappers who sonically doesn't owe an obvious debt to Triple Six Mafia like so many current artists do. This is like Beatking goes on a 90s Memphis ghostride with Boo as his guide ie. this is some creepin shit. It's more Boo's game this one. Beatking's rave-esque Club Godzilla side is toned down slightly here but it shows he's versatile and willing to experiment. Gangsta Boo is in fine form here and hey I'm a sucker for anything reminiscent of the Memphis rap underground from the mid 90s.

Next is Ain't Nothin Bigger Than The B. King Kev turns up with Bread Winner Kane on this collaborative effort. Kevin Gates plays the sidekick to Kane on this mixtape which is weird and a bit wrong as he's the King. It's a bit like Elvis playing sidekick to Barry Mannilow. I don't think Kane is Kev's heir but there's plenty of kicks here although this tape is long and I mean bloody long like a Swans album. I was thinkin gee this tune MYB is great and a little familiar and it turns out it's from Kev's very own classic Stranger Than Fiction from last year. I don't really understand how mixtapes work, like how do they get paid, why are old songs reused? Who are these hood rich people? etc. Perhaps we could all edit this one down by about half.

Tinashe's album proper has dropped (what I'm sayin that now?!) after last year's mixtape Black Water. Aquarius contains the choice hit single 2 On. The thing is there aren't any other DJ Mustard productions here which was initially disappointing but I'm gettin used to it now. We've got some luscious tunes on this album and some that stray a little too close to the overtly but slightly bland pop side. She's at her best when it's post-millennial R&B, better than Beyonce and almost up there with Cassie. Tinashe's still at street level and is givin us the real edge that we want on All Hands On Deck which is v Mustardy ratchet. On one tune it sounds like Dave Gilmore shows up doing an absurd guitar solo(?).

Rome Fortune's back. He has the best album/mixtape covers in the game and this cover is probably his best so far. I'm totally lovin that beard too. For this mixtape he takes an opposite approach to his previous tape Beautiful Pimp 2 where he used only one producer, Cito, for it's entire 11 trax. On Small World he's got every man and his dog on production duties including Fout Tet(?). It's a testament to Rome's vision that this all hangs together so well and might even be as good as Beautiful Pimp II. A metal riff shows up on one tune and strangely doesn't seem that out of place. The pace has picked up a notch or two on this tape. There's even a song, ie. with singing not just rapping, Friends Maybe, which is a collaborative jam with I Love Makonnen. Rome Fortune is Atlanta's most intergalactically smooth dude, still doin his own thing, you know, haunted, intimate and whispered raps combined with trippy future hip hop.

*Haven't checked out the new ones for Gunplay, Lil B(?), Rich Gang, Key! & FKI, Que & Mike Fresh, The Church or Billy Idol yet. They all came at once! Well maybe I wasn't paying attention.

Rome Fortune - Beautiful Pimp II

I wrote this a while back but forgot to post it. This was released earlier this year.

Rome Fortune's Beautiful Pimp II is a great little mixtape. It's 11 tracks at just 30 minutes so there is no filler here and Fortune leaves you wanting more, which is rare in the rap cd/mixtape game. There are echoes of idylltronica, electro (remember the hip hop variety?), post-rave comedowns, trip-hop, ambient jungle, soul and vibraphone action. There are even hints of the jazz fusion end of drum and bass as well as downtempo soundz not unlike Throbbing Pouch era Wagon Christ. Beautiful Pimp II's got so much synth goodness you end up inside this smooth album's vortex and you don't wanna leave. It's digital like glass with no dirty samples. This aural soundworld is so crisp you feel it might crack at any second. This is one space age trip. Cito is on the beat throughout the entire mixtape making it so coherently flowing, like a proper album release and not just a bunch of tracks thrown together. Even when some scratching shows up it's so digital you don't end up in past hip-hop zones. Fortune's from Atlanta but he's definitely cutting his own path with his unique intimate laconic style. This is progressive future hop of the highest order.

Books That Should Be Written

After reading David Stubbs Future Days I was left with a feeling of "Is that it then?" Perhaps it wasn't a book for me, I mean I knew all the records mentioned and the bands. I'd read most of what was in the bibliography. I didn't find out much new. This is not to say it's not a worthwhile book but maybe it's for new comers. Why didn't he write it in the 90s when Krautrock was Tres Hot? Perhaps he saw a gap had opened up in the market due to the never to be reprinted Krautrocksampler by Julian Cope. What it did make me wish for was a comprehensive book on German Post-Punk aka Neue Deutsche Welle like what Simon Reynolds did for British and American Post-Punk in his great Rip It Up And Start Again book. Stubbs covered a little bit of the NDW scene in a slight chapter towards the end of Future Days. Come to think of it there may be a German book on this topic from maybe 15 years ago (I have a vague recollection of this, maybe) but obviously it hasn't been translated into English, unless I missed it.

It got me thinking of some other books on music that are yet to be written. A definitive book on Australian Post-Punk would be a prime example of this. I'd also love to see a book on the mid 90s Memphis Rap scene. Information on that topic seems thin on the ground and somewhat confusing. There was an incredible amount of excellent music made in Memphis at this time, so shedding some light on it would be great. Is there even a book on 80s underground New Zealand music? Surely there'd be a market for that. I mean there's been like 3 books on the No Wave scene. A book covering Japanese music post Julian Cope's Japrocksampler would be great ie. Noise, Merzbow, the P.S.F milieu, Otomo Yoshihide, The Boredoms and whatever else happened. I could go on - Italian Soundtracks and composers, Belgian electronic dance music, a guide to Library Music or like a top 100, Gabber, Sweden's 1960s experimentalists Parson Sound and their following web of groups into the 70s etc. I always thought Simon Reynolds could expand his chapter from Rip It Up & Start again on San Fransisco's proto-post-punk scene and turn it into a whole book

Remember they used to do books on current cultural activities? Someone could probably do something on the topic of Atlanta Rap or the current state of music in general. Anyway just a thought......

Young Thug

4 Eva Bloody - Young Thug & Bloody Jay

Hang on a minute....now this could be my favourite trak of the year. It's a demented anthem to god knows what! What a coupla of crackpot legends!

Florida Water - Young Thug & Bloody Jay

This could be my favourite track of the year. It's like something from a crappy lo-fi experimental art rock band that only put out tapes in like the mid 80s (that's not a bad thing in my book). I dunno if Thug and Jay are just lazy, bored wasted or just fucking funny. Probably all of the above. Florida Water is from Young Thug & Bloody Jay's 2014 gem Black Portland.

Young Thug & Bloody Jay's Florida Water made me wanna listen to this. I dunno if there's a connection or if my brain's just on random. Anyway this is an Ariel Pink classic from Mature Themes, I wish this song would go for an hour. I just can't get enough.

Sex, Drugs & R&B, Ratchet, Trap etc...With Cassie, Young Thug & Gucci Mane

Wow, I haven't heard the word heroin or been around it since the 90s. That was probably the last time it was fashionable, but hello it's one of Cassie's drugs of choice along with cocaine. This tunes got a bassline straight out of a 90s Metalheadz tune don't you reckon? Or maybe a No U Turn tech-step track. Maybe heroin's makin a comeback. I mean they're all into codeine so I don't see why not.

It's pretty clear here what Young Thug wants. He'll have a spliff and two cups stuffed with Lean. He be from Atalanta. Is there something in the water down there? I mean apart from cough mixture?

Well this one's pretty self explanatory. Weed & Lean be the drugs of choice here. You can really get inside this track's luxuriant wasted vibe, even without the weed & Lean. But they would help.

Great beatz from my main man DJ Mustard. It's a shame Mane didn't write a good song on top of it. More references to lean and not being able to feel your face. They're still on about gettin some pussy even though they've had so much lean they feel like they're "from outer space". That 'Hmm' bit is so irritating it ruins one of the best beats Mustard ever put down. What a waste.