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Skinny
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- #61
- Posted: 02/17/2016 17:33
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Out My Feelings (In My Past) by Boosie Badazz
My current AOTY, posted here in the (probably vain) hope that somebody who hasn't checked my year chart will notice this log entry and check it out.
Since being released from prison, no rapper has released as much excellent music as fka Lil Boosie (sorry, Future), and Out My Feelings may just be his best effort yet. It isn't as intentionally heavy as Touch Down 2 Cause Hell or In My Feelings (Going Thru It), but its personal, poignant moments are sharper and carry more impact, and he seems to have found a perfect balance between the cheap synth bounce of his early career and the dark, robust trap he's been putting out since his release. His storytelling here is thoroughly immersive, and his thoughts on the current state of the world (whilst often silly, and occasionally abhorrent) are filled with a fire and a passion that pretty much no other rapper currently working is capable of mustering. His tales of his pre-rapping days are a joy to listen to, even at their most depressing, and he's still more than capable of coming up with an effortlessly memorable hook. I'm struggling to think of a rapper, past or present, whose music feels quite as authentic as Boosie's, and when he's rapping with as much energy as he is here, over beats that completely suit him, he feels like one of hip-hop's most vital voices. Nothing in rap has made me happier in the past couple of years than Torrance Hatch's renaissance, and this record proves that he's only going from strength to strength. Long may it continue.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason
Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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- #62
- Posted: 02/17/2016 18:18
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| Skinny wrote: |
My current AOTY, posted here in the (probably vain) hope that somebody who hasn't checked my year chart will notice this log entry and check it out. |
Still need to check this one out, but your chart did lead me to discover that Chimurenga Renaissance LP, which I'm currently digging and is more likely my kind of thing.
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Skinny
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- #63
- Posted: 02/17/2016 18:41
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| meccalecca wrote: | | Skinny wrote: |
My current AOTY, posted here in the (probably vain) hope that somebody who hasn't checked my year chart will notice this log entry and check it out. |
Still need to check this one out, but your chart did lead me to discover that Chimurenga Renaissance LP, which I'm currently digging and is more likely my kind of thing. |
Oh, almost certainly. I'm struggling to even think of even one user I could recommend it to who would definitely enjoy this Boosie record, which saddens me a bit, but crude, somewhat antiquated, Southern gangsta rap is a relatively niche taste round these parts, especially considering some of the things he says on it (one line about how many gay people are on TV these days and how our children shouldn't be subjected to it is utterly unforgivable, and I wouldn't begrudge anybody hating the record for that alone without even listening to it - it's a truly harmful opinion to hold, and I'd obviously prefer my favourite artists didn't think like that or promote that sort of hatred). But, in a world of Drakes and Futures and Kanyes, Boosie does feel like a beacon of honesty and authenticity and feeling. He's lived a life that nobody should ever have to endure (poverty, innumerable deaths to family members and friends, stints in prison, almost facing death row on a bullshit charge, his own recent struggle with cancer) and his rapping is as painful and as weathered and as bullshit-free as only somebody who's lived that life could produce. Some of what he says is indefensible, but his appeal lies in the means of expressing himself as opposed to message itself.
All of that said, I still don't blame anybody for hating this.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason
Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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- #64
- Posted: 02/17/2016 18:47
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| Skinny wrote: | Some of what he says is indefensible, but his appeal lies in the means of expressing himself as opposed to message itself.
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Yeah, it's such an interesting situation. Like where is the line in this sort of situation? I was talking about it yesterday in regards to the line possibly being the difference between glorifying shit and stating it, because it's definitely important to have voices that show you the ugly sides of reality.
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Skinny
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- #65
- Posted: 02/17/2016 19:10
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| meccalecca wrote: | | Skinny wrote: | Some of what he says is indefensible, but his appeal lies in the means of expressing himself as opposed to message itself.
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Yeah, it's such an interesting situation. Like where is the line in this sort of situation? I was talking about it yesterday in regards to the line possibly being the difference between glorifying shit and stating it, because it's definitely important to have voices that show you the ugly sides of reality. |
It's a really difficult one. I felt personally offended the first time I heard the line (my sister's gay, I have plenty of gay friends, and here is one of my favourite musicians basically saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed on TV in case children see it), and it's still extremely uncomfortable for me to listen to, but it is a fairly widespread view among large parts of various religious communities worldwide, and is a particularly prevalent view amongst poorer Christians in America (and, as many rappers come from impoverished, largely church-going communities, it's a prevalent view in hip-hop). It doesn't make the view any less wrong, but it is important to view it in context. I actually find it less offensive coming from Boosie's mouth than I would, say, from Brian Eno's - the latter has obviously had access to much better education, whereas the former was almost certainly brought up in a homophobic neighbourhood, surrounded by homophobic family and friends, even going to jail in an inevitably homophobic environment, where it is often a person's faith that keeps them going. It doesn't make the view itself any less abhorrent, or listening to it any less uncomfortable, but I do feel that it makes the holding of said view more understandable.
I don't know, it's a tough call. It has affected my enjoyment of the album (I skip the song in question, even though, offending lyric aside, it may be one of the strongest songs on the record), but not to the point where it isn't my AOTY. I dunno, I'm not gonna try and defend the opinion (first and foremost because I don't want to), and it won't be the first time that one of my favourite artists turns out to be a spiteful, horrible person - and when opinions like those leak into the music, it even takes away the ability to try and keep the art and the artist as separate entities in my mind - but I'm still gonna listen to his albums and enjoy them (unless, of course, the presence of such lyrics becomes widespread and utterly unavoidable across all of his music, which seems unlikely given how much he has to say on so many other subjects).
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason
Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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- #66
- Posted: 02/17/2016 19:16
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Totally get what you're saying. It's far easier to be empathetic towards his worst traits because of where he's coming from. The ignorance is likely less willful and more of a result of cultural/environmental surroundings.
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Skinny
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- #67
- Posted: 02/20/2016 17:38
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Blood by Paint
Been listening to this all day. Short EP cribbed from Gabe's 2016 chart, and it's a stonker. Psychedelic, sample-heavy trap music, that recalls The Avalanches' happy-go-lucky layering in its calmer moments, and Rashad's soulful juke in its more hectic ones. Refuses to stay in one place for any real length of time, even within songs, which generally helps to breed a really joyful sense of abandon, to the point where the EP acts as a really cool (and far more enjoyable) counterpoint to last year's Future Brown album, which also saw various electronic producers come together for an experimental take on trap, but left me feeling a little too cold with its hyper-detached demeanour and workmanlike precision. This is hazy, brash, human. It manages to fit so much into its twenty minutes, but none of its sharp left turns ever feel unnatural of forced (or, perhaps most importantly, deliberately oblique; it's very accessible stuff). For those looking for a brief sugar-rush that still holds up to repeated listening (possibly because of the sheer density of sounds and ideas), this comes highly recommended.
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- #68
- Posted: 02/20/2016 21:44
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ayy glad you dug the Paint EP. Yeah been keeping quiet about that on the forums for now seeing as I'm heavily considering it for my ALC pick, but yeah you definitely echoed a lot of my same thoughts about the thing. A lot of it does indeed sound like what I always felt like Future Brown weren't quite grasping right. On a somewhat stylistically related note, you might be wise to check out Mssingno's Fones EP from earlier this month
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Skinny
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- #69
- Posted: 03/20/2016 11:18
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Lead Poison by Elzhi
This is a bit of a strange listen, even at the third attempt. It's weirdly dated... it just sounds like a conscious hip-hop record from the mid-to-late 2000s, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's sorta unexpected in 2016. Like, this album could've come out eight or nine years ago and would've sounded right at home, but in 2016 it sounds oddly quaint. Even Elzhi's style of rapping, with his staccato flow and backflips in the name of internal rhyming, brings to mind an era that (although relatively recent in terms of actual timespan) feels like a lifetime away when you consider how much hip-hop has branched out and progressed since. He's quite a conceptual rapper in a sense, a throwback to the days when the likes of Nas or Pharoahe Monch would wow fans with their excessively extended metaphors, and occasionally feels like he's overreaching with some of these songs (the constant references to outer space on 'Alienated' feel very forced, for example), but for the most part he manages to pull off these concepts without it feeling too corny, largely because there's a consistent thread running throughout the album which deals with his own loneliness and insecurity and recent isolation (which is reinforced by the production, painted in deep blues and muted reds, largely made up of subtly soulful, meditative boom bap that Elzhi sounds very comfortable over). I think I like it, but I'm not sure how much. There's definitely something very admirable, however, in Elzhi's refusal to conform to any modern trends whatsoever, even at a subtle level.
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Norman Bates
Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France
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- #70
- Posted: 03/20/2016 15:52
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^ Interested. I'm a sucker for some good Elzhi, and passé might be the new ultra. Will listen for sure.
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