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TOP 20 MOVIES

I STILL HAVEN’T SEEN SHOPLIFTERS BUT I BET I’LL LIKE IT

honorable mentions to Halloween and Unfriended: Dark Web

40 GREAT MUSIC RECORDINGS FROM 2018

MOVIES TO FOLLOW

Some writing from 2017

A fairly random assortment, all for Spin

Steely Dan’s Aja: Remembering the Band’s Trailblazing Moment 40 Years Later

Randy Newman Stages the Most Ambitious Production of His Career

Big Thief’s Endless Journey

The Very Real Ghosts Are the Least Unsettling Thing About the Masterful Personal Shopper

David Crosby Is Making More Noise Than Ever

Twin Peaks Ended, Once Again, With a New Beginning

A Requiem for The Young Pope, The Craziest HBO Show of All Time

Review: Bob Dylan’s Sprawling Standards Album Triplicate Highlights His Idiosyncratic Charms

Norm MacDonald Is a Cosmic, Empathetic Goof in His New Netflix Special Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery

Review: Flutes Lead Björk Into Paradise on the Stunning Utopia

In Season 3 of The Leftovers, Everyone Is Waiting Around to Die

Review: Young Thug’s Beautiful Thugger Girls Is His Strongest, Most Unified Project In Years

Terrence Malick’s Frustrating Song to Song Is a Music Movie Without Songs or a Point

In Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Well-Meaning White People Are the Scariest Monsters of All

The Last Jedi Turns Star Wars Into Something Fun, Funny Again

Review: It’s Worth Listening to the Rest of Migos’ Culture, Too

Murder On The Orient Express: A Mustache in Search of a Film

some favorite stuff of 2017

Rats Only Rat Awards 2016

just one clown’s opinion

‘BUMS

1. Solange - A Seat at the Table 2. The 1975- I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it 3. David Bowie - Blackstar 4. Kevin Gates - Islah 5. Esperanza Spalding - Emily’s D+Evolution 6. KING - We Are KING 7. Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker 8. Maxwell - blackSUMMERS’night 9. Tyshawn Sorey - The Inner Spectrum of Variables 10. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool 11. Rihanna- Anti 12. A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service 13. Kodak Black - Lil B.I.G. Pac 14. Young Thug - Jeffery 15. Wadada Leo Smith/Vijay Iyer - A Cosmic View With Every Stroke 16. Boosie Badazz - Out of My Feelings In My Past 17. Miranda Lambert - The Weight of These Wings 18. Lambchop - FLOTUS 19. Mary Halvorson - Away With You 20. James Ferraro - Human Story 3 21. Maren Morris - Hero 22. Luke Temple - A Hand Through the Cellar Door 23. Vic Spencer/Chris Crack - Who the Fuck is Chris $pencer? 24. Bon Iver - 22, A Million 25. Ezale/DJ Fresh - The Tonite Show with Ezale 26. Beyoncé - Lemonade 27. Cate LeBon - Crab Day 28. Bruno Mars - 24k Magic 29. 21 Savage / Metro Boomin - Savage Mode 30. Steve Gunn - Eyes on the Lines

MOVIES

1. Manchester By the Sea* 2. O.J.: Made In America 3. Moonlight 4. Love and Friendship 5. The Invitation 6. Elle 7. The Handmaiden 8. 13th 9. The Witch 10. The Nice Guys 11. Weiner 12. Hail, Caesar! 13. Hell or High Water 14. The Witness 15. Always Shine

Some runners-up: The Childhood of a Leader, Everybody Wants Some!!, The Shallows, Keanu

*Update: After this writing, I saw Toni Erdmann, which is far and away my #1 of 2016. The whole list, then, should be pushed down one slot retroactively.

[[[ADD’L AWARDS Most Relevant: The Purge: Election Year Most Haunting: Nine Lives Worst: Suicide Squad, Jack Reacher 2, The Forest Should have been called Brahms: The Boy #0/#69: Dirty Grandpa]]]

TV SHOWS

1. Happy Valley 2. The People vs. O.J. Simpson 3. The Girlfriend Experience 4. The Americans 5. Billions 6. Mad Dogs 7. Atlanta 8. Mozart in the Jungle 9. Channel Zero: Candle Cove 10. Insecure 11. The Night Of 12. Divorce 13. Marcella 14. Search Party 15. Dice

#best of 2016 #movies #tv #music #nine lives #dirty grandpa

Goodbye Inverse Link Dump

Today is my last day writing for Inverse, where I have been working since right before the site launched a year ago today. I learned a lot, made amazing friends, and wrote a ton of crazy things. For posterity and future reference, I compiled my favorites here. Thank you, Inverse.

Rehearse for Release: Inside the Fight for a Maximum Security Prison Theater

'Southland Tales' Is the Greatest (Cult) Film of the 21st Century

‘Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole’ Is Zack Snyder’s Best Movie

Lola Kirke, Jason Schwartzman, and More Talk 'Mozart in the Jungle'’s Magnetic Season 2

'Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll' Ep. 10 Recap...I Mean, an Epilogue, a Short Memoir #NothingMatters

The Dirtiness of Robert De Niro in 'Dirty Grandpa' Must Be Witnessed

On the Set of AMC’s 'Feed the Beast' with David Schwimmer and Clyde Phillips

Why Dean Strang and Jerry Buting Are Not the Heroes of Netflix's 'Making a Murderer'

Savages Only On 'the Strip': Breaking Down ABC's 'Wicked City' (w/Corban Goble)

'Wicked City' Goes Full 'Phantom' (w/Corban Goble)

What Does J.J. Abrams’ 'Gone Fishin’' Tell Us About '10 Cloverfield Lane'?

'The Ridiculous Six' Is a Poop-Filled Beginning to Netflix's Run of Adam Sandler Movies (w/Sean Hutchinson and Corban Goble)

A Day in Fort Tryon Park: New York's Biggest Medieval Festival, Endured

The Pine Barrens Episode Marks 'The Sopranos''s Enduring Legacy, 15 Years Later

How Adam Sandler and David Spade Cured Cancer in Netflix's 'The Do-Over' (w/Sean Hutchinson and Corban Goble)

'Jinx' Director Andrew Jarecki on His KnowMe App, 'Making a Murderer,' and True Crime

T.I.'s 'KING' Is Still a Masterpiece, 10 Years Later (w/Corban Goble and Erika Ramirez)

'Fargo' Season 2 and Its Flying Saucer

Every Moment of Young Thug's "Drippin," Analyzed

Old Person-Core in Film: 'The Intern,' 'Five Flights Up,' Judi Dench and Beyond

#writing #wicked city

A playlist featuring YG, Vince Staples, Miguel, and others

For posterity, I am posting this drunkenly arranged and re-arranged partially crowd-sourced playlist from a shindig I had at my house on NYE. This will evidence what I and a group of other people dancing in a small room wanted to hear around balldrop time. It will serve as a little capsule of where I was at this time of life, and if you’re looking to catch up on some great uptempo 2015 songs to put on shuffle here they are! There were a bunch of Young Thug songs from my own computer on this list -- unfortunately, you will have to add your own. So add like 3 Young Thug songs of your choice and you’ll get something closer to the intended experience. Bless you!

#best of 2015 #spotify playlist #music #new year's eve

YEAR END 2015

“Oh yeeaaah, life goes oo-on...” -Sappho

I am still trying to figure out what happened this year, because it was too busy, I never posted on this blog, and I’ve forgotten who I am. This is a first step toward remembering and moving on. One thing I know: it was an exceptionally good year for music. Forgive the density. Hopefully you’ll get something out of this!

I wrote about a lot of these things, or things closely related to them, so most of the links go to writing about those things.

MUSIC

Here are 30 of each thing that I liked. I didn’t repeat artists within a list though I easily could have.

Some people have D’Angelo and Starlito’s Black Sheep Don’t Grin on their lists but I left those off because they came out last year.

ALBUMS

1. Vince Staples: Summertime '06

2. Young Thug: Barter 6

3. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly

4. Julia Holter: Have You In My Wilderness

5. Holly Herndon: Platform

6. Ty Dolla $ign: Free TC

7. Earl Sweatshirt: I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside

8. Future: Dirty Sprite 2

9. Miguel: Wildheart

10. Carly Rae Jepsen: E•MO•TION

11. Joanna Newsom: Divers

12. Mozzy: Bladadah

13. Dawn Richard: Blackheart

14. Björk: Vulnicura

15. Janet Jackson: Unbreakable

16. Floating Points: Elaenia

17. Dr. Yen Lo: Days With Dr. Yen Lo

18. Oneohtrix Point Never: Garden of Delete

19. Vic Spencer: The Cost of Victory

20. Cereal: King Wimp EP

21. Rae Sremmurd: SremmLife

22. Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment: Surf

23. Ty Money: Cinco de Money

24. Matana Roberts: COIN COIN Chapter Three: river run thee

25. Destroyer: Poison Season

26. Lana del Rey: Honeymoon

27. White Gzus: Stackin’n’Mackin Vol. 2 and 3

28. Cool Uncle: S/T

29. Bankroll Fresh: S/T

30. Denzel Curry: 32 Zel/Planet Shrooms

SONGS

1. Young Thug- “Constantly Hating” (feat. Birdman)

2. Jack Ü- “Where Are Ü Now” (feat. Justin Bieber)

3. Future - “March Madness”

4. Bjork - “Stonemilker”

5. Kendrick Lamar- “King Kunta”

6. Nef the Pharaoh- “Big Tymin”

7. Carly Rae Jepsen- “Emotion”

8. Mozzy- “Ain’t Shit Happen”

9. Chris Spencer- “No Biggie”

10. Rich Homie Quan- “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)”

11. Jenny Hval - “That Battle is Over”

12. Ty Dolla $ign- “Miracle/Whenever” (feat. Big TC and D-Loc)

13. Chance the Rapper- “Angels” (feat. Saba)

14. Dr. Yen Lo- “Day 0”

15. Vince Staples - “Norf Norf”

16. Cereal- “Small Space”

17. YG- “Twist My Fingaz”

18. Roach Gigz- “Mobb Right Thru”

19. Joanna Newsom - “Goose Eggs”

20. Kodak Black- “Ran Up a Check”

21. Janet Jackson- “No Sleeep” [feat. J. Cole]

22. David Bowie- “Blackstar”

23. Miguel - “DEAL”

24. Dawn Richard- “Billie Jean”

25. Jeremih- “Planez” [feat. J. Cole/Chance]

26. Destroyer- “Girl in a Sling”

27. Jidenna- “Classic Man” [feat. Roman GianArthur]

28. Lana Del Rey- “Honeymoon”

29. The 1975- ”UGH!”

30. Fetty Wap- “Again”

MUSIC NOT FROM THIS YEAR that was very important to me this year more than other years (no order):

The Jacka: Tear Gas

Soulja Slim: Years Later...A Few Months After

DJ Fresh/Shady Nate: Based on a True Story

Minnie Riperton: Adventures in Paradise

Frank Sinatra: Where Are You?

Marvin Gaye: Midnight Love

Smokey Robinson: Where There’s Smoke, There’s...

Ice Cube: Death Certificate

Mac Dre: Young Black Brotha

The Beach Boys: Love You

Lil Boosie: Da Beginning

Blind Blake (the calypso one)- “Run Come See Jerusalem”

Fela Kuti: Teacher Don’t Teach Me No Nonsense

Blanket of Secrecy: Ears Have Walls

Darius Milhaud piano music

El DeBarge- “I Like It”

and, as always

The Blue Nile- Hats

MOVIES

Spotlight

Amy

The Gift

Love and Mercy

Far From the Madding Crowd

Wild Tales

Clouds of Sils Maria

The Big Short

Star Wars That Force Awakens

Carol

The Visit

Paddington

Steve Jobs

Miles Ahead

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

It Follows

The Last Witch Hunter

(NOTE TO SELF: watch that Mad Max, dum dum!)

The Americans

Fargo

The Leftovers

Making a Murderer

Mozart in the Jungle

UnREAL

Peep Show

Hannibal

Nathan for You

River

Wicked City

True Detective

“Snitch Bitch”

CULTURAL EXPERIENCES

Randy Newman at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors

D'Angelo at Forest Hills Stadium

Chance the Rapper at Pitchfork Music Festival

Nancarrow Studies for Player Piano at the Whitney

Rocco and his Brothers at Film Forum

Southland Tales at Brooklyn Academy of Music

MUSIC I WORKED ON

Ball of Flame Shoot Fire: ‘Tis Only Wine

Pat Kelly: Self-Concept

Jess Tambellini: Ginger Nut’s Meditations*

*I went back and forth on this, but I am leaving my friend and bandmate’s album -- even though I just followed directions and played only a very little bit -- off of my albums list, because I was slightly involved with it. It is my actual favorite album that came out this year, though -- doesn’t sound much like any other music.

MISC. WRITING

On Joni Mitchell’s Enduring Hissing of Summer Lawns, 40 Years Later

Reason Away (on “What a Fool Believes”)

All Raury Needs: the Atlanta Singer/Songwriter’s Quest to Shape the Future of Pop

Old Person-Core in Film: 'The Intern,' 'Five Flights Up,' Judi Dench and Beyond

The Workings of Tom Green's New Web TV Mini-Empire

‘Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole’ Is Zack Snyder’s Best Movie

S&D&R&R Saga

#best of 2015 #music #tv #movies #stuff #owls of ga'hoole

Sinatra Ballads

For me, knowing all about the ring-a-ding, “Lady is a Tramp” Frank Sinatra, the mob-enabling Rat Pack Sinatra of the mid-‘60s, and the eventual Reagan-touting, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown”-covering one enhances the experience of listening to the classic Frank Sinatra ballad albums of the late 1950s. Their spectres make this music feel even more miraculous, and detached from everything else around it -- especially from the black-and-white-pizza-place-poster Sinatra. Designed to sustain a specific mood, these records -- in a sense -- make everything else fall away.

As the cursory bios go, these albums capture -- in musical documentary -- the Sinatra who had let fame get the best of him: the prodigal, one-time teen idol warped and broken down by a fitful and emotionally abusive affair. Eventually, the Ava Gardner drama -- a tabloid nightmare -- would end up with him in Spain, trying to break up the actress’ tryst with a celebrity bullfighter, like the climax of some Marlene Dietrich-starring romantic melodrama. His adoring fanbase (grown during the war) realized that the former gangly, well-quaffed radio crooner was kind of a piece of shit.

Sinatra redeemed himself, commercially, in the mid-50s. He channeled his hurt and self-loathing into the sensitive singing of his career. (There was some good PR after a heartfelt, Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity, which helped him simultaneously revive his acting career). Just by the sales figures, his run on Capitol Records in the second half of that decade is one of the greatest comeback stories in pop music.

Along with the first entries in Ella Fitzgerald’s songbook series, these sonically lush releases were among the earliest full-length, studio pop LPs. Prior to that, the 12” format -- birthed in the late ‘40s -- had largely been reserved for classical music recordings and soundtracks. With each of the Capitol albums (from which no singles were extracted, as 78s and LPs were viewed as competing markets) Frank focused on channeling either leaning-on-a-lamppost despondence or spouses-dancing-around-the-living-room escapism. As the story goes, the singer would lay off drinking for a few weeks to prep for recording, and assemble a list of thematically united songs, working in tight collaboration with his chosen arrangers to get the mise-en-scène right for each of them.

For me nothing Sinatra ever did beats 1955’s In the Wee Small Hours -- his first 12” LP, and most unified “concept album” to date. It was the full-bodied realization of the previous year’s eight-song experiment -- the Songs for Young Lovers collection -- his first collaboration with Capitol’s in-house arranger, Nelson Riddle. Young Lovers was Sinatra’s the most refined, unified and stylish release of Sinatra’s already-decade-long recording career: a huge success which made possible the many albums that followed.

There is a dynamic range and subtlety to In the Wee Small Hours and all the ballad LPs that Sinatra did with Riddle which is offset a bit from the syrupiness of his other downtempo collections. Riddle had more of an eccentric sense of timbre and syncopation than Sinatra’s most frequent collaborator post-1955: Decca Records staple and frequently hired for “with strings” vocal jazz albums Gordon Jenkins. Jenkins’ orchestral charts were dominated by velveteen strings and hit clearer emotional beats, but in Riddle’s more wayward, overtly jazzier arrangements, the studio orchestra would pass little cascading ideas back and forth subtly. Tart little backgrounds of reeds and low horns would fade in like unwelcome pangs of longing. Jenkins painted the lyrics obsessively: waves rippling in the dark, trees blowing in the wind, footsteps on deserted streets at night. Riddle, on the other hand, dramatized the conflicted inner psychology.

Riddle collaborations like “Angel Eyes” and “One for My Baby” on 1958’s Only the Lonely and “Glad to be Unhappy” on Wee Small Hours evoke a very particular kind of lopsided, drunken and self-deceptive energy. Sinatra’s voice surges with feigned conversational gregariousness (“So drink up all of you people/Order anything you see…The drink and the laughs are on me”) but always drifts back slumped-over self-loathing (“Excuse me while I disappear…” he trails off with in “Angel Eyes”).

Sinatra recorded these albums entirely live, standing in the middle of a full orchestra. It isn’t only the perfection of the singing that’s stunning, but the clarity of production. It’s enough to make one believe that all mics must have gotten shittier since then -- that getting obsessed with using the studio as a instrument was the worst mistake pop producers ever made. Elvis’ echo chamber, Phil Spector’s caverns of tape echo and Henry Mancini’s epochal “Peter Gunn” theme would arrive at the end of the 50s, and begin to affect how everyone went about crafting pop records. But Sinatra made sheeny atmosphere without dialing any in. Somehow these records sound both precariously live and mythic -- glossy, laminated -- at the same time.

Also, how Riddle could get the busy orchestra to stay soft enough to not distract is hard to fathom. It’s virtuoso stuff -- a marvel of the pre-compression era.

There were a few almost-uniformly strong Jenkins albums during this time. On 1957’s Where Are You? and 1959’s No One Cares, in particular, Jenkins’ here’s-what-to-feel spoonfeeding works. Sometimes it’s unbelievably beautiful -- the ghostly string glissandos on Where Are You?’s “I Cover the Waterfront,” one of those ballads that owes a good half of its power to its creation of setting: an Edward Hopper-y lonely figure letting his imagination play off of a shadowy bay or East River. Tectonic plates of sound slide in to disrupt patches of dramatic silence to make ubiquitous standard “Stormy Weather” nearly unrecognizable -- full of humor as both as lovable ostentation.

As Sinatra moved towards working more with Jenkins, and eventually beginning his own Reprise label in the ‘60s to assemble a utopia away from the rock’n’roll craze, his performances would begin to develop into a more buffo world-weary semi-decrepitude, which had its own charms. 1964’s September of my Years -- and its enduring opener, “It Was a Very Good Year,” which turned a Kingston Trio hit into heavy Sondheim-y melodrama — is one of the most emotionally charged slow-burner albums of his career; its patchiness makes it all the more poignant.

It’s fitting that Sinatra’s birthday is around the holidays. For whatever reason, my father used to play these records around Christmas, after a more seasonal comp of the man who made Sinatra’s career path a viable profession, Bing Crosby. I remember it happening particularly when I was in elementary school, and being fascinated by the covers, poring over the inflated prose poetry of the back-cover liner notes with limited understanding. Sinatra was an alluring comic book character even when I had no concept of what heartbreak was.

In later years, I would listen to these same albums by myself: a just-post-college dude spending late nights trying to feel as sorry for myself as Riddle-augmented Frank. As it turned out, that was pretty easy for a just-post-college dude to do, so many of my major “moments” with In the Wee Small Hours date back to my early twenties.

Luckily, these records -- no matter how I slice them -- remain just as vibrant today. More valences come up every year, and it’s in the sound itself, though it’s enhanced by my memory of the compact den in my childhood home, which functioned as a sound chamber powerful to drown out one’s mind for a while. This kind of patent childhood fascination is impossible for me to ever stop romanticizing. Happy birthday Frank, and happy holidays.

#frank sinatra #In the Wee Small Hours #only the lonely #100th birthday #nelson riddle #gordon jenkins #ballads #sorrow #music

A diversion:

In addition to writing about music, I make music, usually in this band with some of my dudes from high school. It has been going for almost a decade. Four of us write and sing the songs, so the style is fairly all over the place, but this was always part of the point.

This week, we put out our first album since 2012, 'Tis Only Wine. If any one of you out there in the dank blogosphere gets a chance to listen, that would be great. You can even send comments, nasty or pleasant. I appreciate honesty, and just when anyone listens at all.

You can stream/DL the album at Bandcamp, or get it at iTunes/Google Play.

If you want to hear just a couple of songs, check out the "singles" HERE and HERE.

#ball of flame shoot fire #'tis only wine #music #brooklyn #rock #roll #pop #experimental #bandcamp #pittsburgh #san remo #hps

R.I.P. This is a pretty much perfect rap album.

#the jacka #the jack artist

Chicago Rap Reviews

I wrote about some new rap music from Chicago for Pitchfork this month.

Leather Corduroys, Season (RIYL: these guys are from Save Money so Chance, Vic, post-College Dropout/pre-808s Ye, N.E.R.D., Zappa)

Vic Spencer, The Cost of Victory (RIYL: Redman, Wu-Tang, DOOM)

#leather corduroys #vic spencer

ztf

Soulja Slim feat. Mia X- "Anything"

The triple-fart bass drum hits on the downbeat of the loop are enough to make me automatically love the song from the jump. The following evil C-Murder-featuring track also has them, and it's maybe even better. Every song on this record's "C" side is ridiculous--like, "Wootay"? I am celebrating the album, as I found it not long ago on seemingly unplayed promo vinyl and it sounds amazing pumping the low-end on the crusty old amp, sunning in the sun room on a slushy Saturday afternoon and wearing some fresh new sweatpants like there's nothing worth giving a fuck about in the world.

#soulja slim #give it 2 em raw #mia x #c-murder #no limit #wootay

#dj screw #june 27th #side b

Starlito- Black Sheep Don't Grin review

So this was to be my last piece for Wondering Sound, but because the powers that be unexpectedly pulled the plug on the site's normal operations, the gang wasn't able to edit and post this. Here's my rough draft-- many, many thanks to the folks at Wondering Sound for letting me write about music I really care about, for being all around a warm, conscientious and super intelligent group of people and for giving me my real start doing music writing.

This Starlito album was one of the classic rap full-lengths of the year, but was sadly under-touted due to its untimely release date of December 15th (Lito's birthday), which overlapped with the year-end-list fervor. If you haven't checked it out, now would be a perfect time to do so, just like any time. Lito is one of the greatest working.

-W

Nashville rapper Starlito makes sure to "keep it real," and reminds us throughout his verses--“I'm just telling you what I'm facing,” “True story, history, my story I based this on,” and so on. This commitment affects all elements of his music, from his minutia-oriented storytelling, to his mercilessly self-critical trains of thought, to his intimate, conversational flow. His dedication to fully realizing a thought usually takes precedence over bearing out a repeated rhythmic cadence. Eschewing the broad-stroke storytelling favored by many of his peers, Starlito attacks his subject matter from all angles; no claim he makes goes untested an inner devil’s advocate.

Since the mid-‘00s (at the end of which he was released from a non-starter contract with Cash Money), Starlito has played against type and trends—to the point that lumping him in with the bulk of MCs who specialize in slow-burning, Southern dopeboy rap (apart from relative anomalies like his frequent collaborators Don Trip and Kevin Gates) seems off-base. Between Starlito’s freestyle-based mixtapes, there have been numerous carefully composed self-released albums—most recently, last year’s Cold Turkey and Fried Turkey, and 2012’s Mental Warfare. Black Sheep Don’t Grin is one of these, and one of the more polished and streamlined collections he has released to date. He’s advertised the album as a “memoir,” and, though much of Lito’s music would seem to fit this description, it’s particularly apt here: On nearly every track, he’s in conversation with some past version of himself, whether it’s Star the cut-up teenager or the pushing-thirty-year-old who just spit the previous couplet (“All my smiles turn stoic, so I wrote it/A poet, hold up/Does that make this poetic? And if I don't regret it, does that make me pathetic?”)

Like the lead character in the film to which his moniker pays homage, Starlito’s present is always tied up in his past: Throughout Black Sheep Don’t Grin, the mistakes of his youth loom like taunting specters (“Still got em on standby, I could call the plug/But what's gon' happen to my family if I get caught up?”) Many of the hooks and memorable aphorisms on Black Sheep Don’t Grin function as self-help mantras as much as morals. For instance, Starlito qualifies one of the strongest refrains on the record—“This for my n*ggas/that's grindin' up to see a brick/You can't be greedy, when you got enough you need to quit/Who else gon' tell you this? They call this leadership” (“Leadership”)—in the surrounding verses, decrying the “blind leading the blind” even as he’s putting himself in charge of the mission. On most of the verses on this album, Starlito is damned if he does and doesn’t (“I got focus and my whole life changed/Working with what's left, I don't know what's right, mane”)—elsewhere, the image of Sisyphus pushing the bolder up the eternal mountain feels pertinent (“You can’t fail until you quit,” Lito sneers on the eponymous opening track).

Black Sheep Don’t Grin is as pop-minded an album as Starlito has released for years-- which is to say, not very. The songs have clear hooks, but they aren’t the music’s focal point, commenting upon more than dominating the action. Lito’s flow is languid and sometimes unwieldy, not punchy and ready-made for rap-alongs. But Lito has conventional chops in spades, and some of this record’s best rapping happens when he assumes a lilting, gently syncopated and decidedly smooth flow (“Living fast, paying for an abortion, don't know if it's mine/Smoking a quarter back to back, I'm like Romo with that nine/And they shoot 30 times like Kobe Bryant”) But for the most part, his clincher lines usually come during the next inhale, delivered like asides he’s not sure he wants to project.

As a result of these factors (that is to say, of what makes him great), Starlito may be destined to remain a regional favorite. He has developed a consistent brand: unforced but settled on after some years of deliberation (“Used to peruse, now I choose/No more window shopping”). If the past he sketches on Black Sheep Don’t Grin teaches him nothing else, it's to know a good thing when you have it, and do it the best you possibly can until you can’t anymore (“That's just how I feel, two days ago I made bail/Now I'm making up for lost time, trying to make it where I can't fail”) His hope seems to be that others will meet him on his own terms and glean something from it, and the cautionary tales and skillfully drawn vignettes that make up Black Sheep Don’t Grin easily facilitate that.

#starlito #black sheep don't grin #wondering sound #review

S-REM-life and Sremmlife

Don’t try to fall asleep to Sremmlife. I put it on for the first time in bed a couple of nights ago, because it’s normal for me to fill the “winding-down” time of the normal human specimen with music which strives to close and lock the doors of slumber to me forever. After accidentally initiating a “repeat” function on my phone—some subconscious power play in this self-punishing game—I woke up an hour later in the middle of one of the electro-discus-throw games in Tron, with the Lollipop Guild from The Wizard of Oz screaming and bopping between right between my eyes. Somewhere farther off, I made out Winkies in the Wicked Witch’s castle, or some assembly of off-brand monks, murmuring incantations while readying a funeral pyre. Was it mine? In the light of day, “Unlock the Swag” conjures none of this gothic atmosphere, so don’t worry. Just consume Sremmlife as recommended—in more idiomatic contexts (the gym, the turn-up function, the whip, while waiting at the DMV).

If you do so, you’ll have many positive impressions, along with a handful of songs at your disposal about which to badger every unfortunate DJ to cross your path. With the Rae Sremmurd experiment and Sremmlife, Mike Will Made It steps back from his role as an up-and-coming “urban”-flavored pop alchemist of an ambiguous stripe and becomes again the backseat genius who helped make Future’s mixtapes auteur statements in 2011, but that guy a couple of years on, complicating his trap-knocker vocabulary and weaving it into the fabric of concertedly “pop”-minded music at the roots. Sremmlife seems to recognize all of the threads running through in Southern swag and trap rap of the past six or seven years, from the sunny ephemera of Soulja Boy or Rich Kidz to the stark, steel-toed edifices that Flocka wrought to the resultant stuttering kicks and glottal ululations of Future-ism and its very specific sub-classification: Thuggerism. This is perhaps the first major commercial rap release that we can safely call post-Young Thug—it couldn’t have existed any recognizable form without him. He accepts the honor gracefully on “Throw Some Mo,” with what can finally call a stock Young Thug verse (and not yet pejoratively).

As a note: when Young Chop produces you, you are liable to sound a bit like that “old Sosa” Keef—the guy who was flirting just a little bit harder with conventional stardom than the Sremmurd are now. But much of this album comes out sounding only like Rae Sremmurd, or at least like something you can’t easily forget—“This Could Be Us.” With its White Album piano backbone, tuba punctuation and a theremin snaked out on top of everything like a musical henna tat (?!), the song offers a glimpse of a future where street rappers could become as big as the biggest pop stars, and get pop music consumers of all makes and models joining hands and rocking back and forth like the Whos after the Grinch carved.

SremmLife is slated to sell $45-50k in its first week—about what Finally Rich did. It’s a record like that—tight, undeniable, unlikely. Its mortar is simple, memorable lyrical pleasures—crystalline, grin-inducing (“Woke up, last night was all a blur/Four Seasons, three words, do not disturb”). I love the video of Swae and Slim at Hot 97: unconcerned with Ebro’s oppressive, warden-esque energy, too excited to sit down and stop grabbing the mics and swaying. It’s a great representation of the spirit of the whole Sremm-deavor. Sremmlife is a great and appropriately modest rap record which looks forward and backwards simultaneously without making you think about anything but what’s happening right there in the moment—mostly to your shoulders. Just don't fall asleep.

#rae sremmurd #sremmlife #review #that could be us #no type

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