Drive By Truckers – A Blessing and a Curse [New West Records LLC 2006]
It feels forced, like a piece that was so frustrating they just put it out to get it off the workbench. From the schlocky drumming that opens to the way Cooley splits the difference between Mick Jagger & Rob Thomas to the way Isbell’s “Don’t be so easy on yourself” refrain is self-loathing, all of it feels derivative for the first time instead of inspired. Next. 3.4/5
A Tribe Called Quest – People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
No matter how much love there is between the ostensible four members this is the Q-Tip show, and at age 19 his greenness shows in clunkers like “the boom bip indicates to the brothers that we be on the flip tip” at the outset. That said, as a document of forward thinking hip-hop it remains interesting if not compelling, short stories, cautionary tales, a call for healthy eating, and an ode to a lady with big booty that he doesn’t objectify, in fact he’s glad to meet her. All to the rock and jazz that most others avoided for funk drums and bass. Neat. 4.0/5
Jay-Z – The Blueprint [Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella 2001]
The legacy of these 13 tracks has more to do with their producers these days than any of the bars that Hova lays down. Curiously you’ll note that Just Blaze has more soul samples than Kanye does, even if Kanye did make “Heart of the City”. Jay’s greatest skill here is sustaining, he’s not saying anything he hasn’t already said, he’s the renegade, the king of New York, he likes women but doesn’t treat them decently, he mourns for the struggles of his past that all of his money can fix now. One of the greats? Undoubtedly. But his best trick is that he makes his puns and tales sound so easy to do. $120 million in 6 years is a lot of weight to shoulder. 4.3/5
JPEGMafia & Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES [AWAL/Peggy 2023]
To explain the joke, the title is a reference to how none of this music would make it on a party playlist outside of one made by the alt kids who dig glitched out gospel and dirtbag leftist tweets. If that still doesn’t make sense, be thankful you aren’t terminally online. Barrington Hendricks and Daniel Sewell team up to make the most alternative music of their careers, if that’s even possible. They live as critical darlings whose inability to move records could very well bankrupt them as Brown almost was after Atrocity Exhibitions. But what a joy it is to behold that high pitched squawk amongst the crushing breaking ethereal beats that JPEGMafia provides, even if he can’t stretch out as much as he could on his solo work. Peggy, as his fans call him, is the director of the show, able to nimbly move in and out of his beats because he knows them so well and whose verses take up about 60% of the lyrics. Other virtuoso rapper + producer combos come to mind like in Watch the Throne or Run the Jewels, a lineage that these two alt types figure they belong in, which is why there’s a song named after the latter. It also begs an interrogation of their personae’s functions: Jay-Z is a capitalist/king while Kanye was an insecure backpacker with a golden ear, Killer Mike a revolutionary/preacher with El-P the angry conspiracy theorist, and Danny Brown’s a junkie/jester working with JPEGMafia’s ex-military Reddit troll. Their Venn diagram certainly isn’t a circle but a mischievous sense of humor is their biggest overlap. Case in point? It’s not how JPEG calls himself both Black AOC and the Black Marjorie Taylor Greene, it’s how despite Kelis reprimanding goddess-amongst-us-mortals Beyonce for sampling “Milkshakes”, he does it anyway for his record. 4.4/5
Cosmic Hero 