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Six Degrees of Fitz and the Tantrums’ More Than Just A Dream

Ryan Reed — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:23:12 +0000

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.

The Album

More Than Just A Dream

Fitz and The Tantrums
2013 | Elektra (NEK)

Fitz and the Tantrums never pretended to be "above" their influences. In fact, part of what makes their music so fun is how it joyfully connects the dots between an array of instantly identifiable retro styles. The band's debut album, 2010's Pickin' Up the Pieces, wore Motown and Stax blatantly on its sleeve — that bone-dry Hitsville USA drum sound, the soulful sax and glistening keys, as well as frontman Michael "Fitz"... Fitzpatrick's playful vocal sparring with duet partner Noelle Scaggs. But there was also a bubbly layer of '80s New Wave under the surface. As Fitzpatrick has noted in recent interviews, the Tantrums have reversed that formula on More Than Just A Dream, broadening their palette with glossy synthesizers and propulsive drum machines while pushing their classic soul touches more to the background.

Part of that sonic switch can be chalked up to fidelity: Where Pieces was created with an almost DIY aesthetic — it was written on Fitzpatrick's creaky upright piano and recorded in the living room of his L.A. apartment — More Than Just A Dream was envisioned as a slick, professional studio document. The sextet worked with Tony Hoffer, a producer and mixer (Beck, Air, Phoenix) known for highlighting a band's funky fringes even as he expands their sound. The result of this collaboration is a spastic, elastic album that feels fascinatingly out of time. Just take opener "Out of My League," which blends soulful piano chords with snaking drums and synths that blast like vacuum cleaners. On the infectious "Break the Walls," the organic mingles with the synthetic, Fitzpatrick and Scaggs harmonizing over a glorious wall of sound. (Is that a bass guitar or a synthesizer? Is that a drum machine or timpani? Does it matter?) More Than Just A Dream is a brilliant pop grab bag.
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The Retro-Soul Peers

Dap-Dippin' With…

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
2006 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

Along with Fitz and the Tantrums (not to mention Adele, Charles Bradley and Amy Winehouse), wildfire belter Sharon Jones remains at the forefront of pop music's vintage soul revival. Actually, that last word is a bit of a misnomer; Sharon Jones (along with the rest of her label-mates at Daptone Records) isn't so much "reviving" soul music as continuing its legacy. Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the singer's studio... debut, isn't a "throwback"; it's a classic soul album that just happened to come out in 2002. Like The Tantrums, The Dap-Kings are fiercely funky (check the bass-driven stand-out "Got a Thing on My Mind"), their relentless grooves captured on crackling analogue tape. But, like Fitzpatrick, Jones has too much star power to be overshadowed, strutting through each and every deep-pocket groove like a queen mistress of sass.
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The Blue-Eyed Soul Influence

H2O

Daryl Hall & John Oates
2009 | RCA/BMG Heritage

For white male soul singers, certain comparisons are unavoidable. Fitzpatrick has been labeled a Daryl Hall disciple from the very beginning, but he's never shied away from the influence — noting his love for Hall's expressive tenor in various interviews, even performing as a guest on his music webcast, Live from Daryl's House. On More than Just a Dream, that connection feels more pronounced than ever. With its various '80s instrumental tones... (the kitschy hand-claps, the drum machine blasts, the candy-coated synthesizers), it harkens back to the New Wave soul of H20, Hall & Oates's 1982 smash. As pure vocalists, Fitzpatrick and Hall share a similar timbre: soothing, subtly smoky and just a bit theatrical. Few frontmen can sell a pop anthem as campy as Hall & Oates's "Maneater," and even fewer can do so artfully. As he demonstrates throughout his new album (the outlandishly hooky synth-funk of "6am," the triumphant stomp of "Fools Gold"), Fitzpatrick boasts an awfully similar skill set.
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The Modern Camp-Pop Heartthrobs

Some Nights

fun.
2012 | Fueled By Ramen

More than Just a Dream is brimming with soulful, kaleidoscopic pop: Its songs are densely produced and intimately crafted, clearly the work of a tight-knit band aiming to expand its sonic identity. But for all its studio magic, this is also an album stuffed to the brim with capital-H hooks. This kind of mega-pop LP — one that could easily produce five or six huge singles — is a dying breed; a... similar exception is fun.'s 2012 break-out, Some Nights. If you were conscious in 2012, you probably heard all three of the album's massive singles ("Some Nights," "We Are Young" and "Carry On") in almost-clockwork rotation. And, odds are, you loved them: Like Just a Dream, Some Nights is almost impossible to dislike. Bold production, instantly memorable choruses, rich instrumental performances — this is music that transcends pop boundaries, appealing equally to indie-rockers, soccer moms, and Gleeks.
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The Funky Producer

Midnite Vultures

Beck
2004 | Geffen

As a producer, mixer and engineer, Tony Hoffer is a master at juggling eclectic, funky sounds. It's an approach he's applied masterfully to most of his projects — including the caffeinated head-rush of More than Just a Dream — but his most iconic studio work is found on Beck's 1999 masterpiece, the incredibly groovy and insanely goofy Midnite Vultures. If there's one album in pop history that would have proved a nightmare... to mix, it's this left-field clusterfuck ("Sexx Laws," for example, is a horn-driven soul revue work-out with unexpected banjo and hip-hop percussion). Hoffer didn't face quite that level of insanity with Just a Dream, but it's easy to see why Fitz and the Tantrums chose him as producer: Songs like "6am" (with its sci-fi synth-bass) and "The Walker" (with its overblown organs, beatboxing, and sax breakdown) are the work of a giddier, crazier band.
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The Sexual Tension

Workin' Together

Ike And Tina Turner
2007 | EMI

Fitzpatrick is a natural pop star all on his own, but he's also smart enough to surround himself with incredibly talented musicians. Co-vocalist Noelle Scaggs is the Tantrums' not-so-secret weapon — singing with Fitz in radiant harmonies, balancing his quirkiness with palpable sass and sensuality. This boy-girl dynamic is one of the band's old-school charms — and an essential element of their live show — harkening back to the glory days of... Ike & Tina Turner. Though Tina was the star singer (with Ike regarded primarily as a producer and bandleader), there was still an undeniable tension between the Turners that charged every one of their songs. The duo's most iconic album is 1971's Workin' Together — mostly due to "Proud Mary," their show-stopping re-interpretation of the CCR anthem. With Tina's raspy attack anchored by Ike's guttural croon, it's one of the greatest vocal duets of all-time.
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Talib Kweli, Prisoner of Conscious

Christina Lee — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:42:06 +0000

Rather than feeling hemmed in, he sounds liberated and awake

In 1998, Talib Kweli said, “Every day someone ask me, ‘Where all the real MCs at?’/ They underground.” He was proudly pinpointing a shift in hip-hop’s values, how mainstream rappers wanted to be Hugh Hefner while those primarily concerned with artistry were netting only cult appeal. In subsequent releases however, Kweli endured criticism as he tried catchier hooks and wove pop culture references into his lyrics. He epitomized “conscious rap,” but he also struggled to stay within its confines.

So on his fifth LP, Prisoner of Conscious, Kweli raps to music rooted in the time before all that. While 2011′s Gutter Rainbows updated the neo-soul sound of Kweli’s onetime label Rawkus, Prisoner reaches back to even older genres. Samba revivalist Seu Jorge adds wistfulness to “Favela Love,” a song about wandering abroad. On “Come Here,” R&B singer Miguel does his best Marvin Gaye while Kweli composes a valentine made of hip-hop references: “We can do it like Common and Mary and ‘Come Closer’/ We can do it like Barack and Michelle, give me a fist bump.”

Throughout the album, Kweli raps of his connections to people and music. On album opener “Human Mic,” Kweli scrambles through a few opening lines before landing on a memory of 9/11: “I seen them crossing bridges by the masses, covered in the ashes of both towers.” Over celebratory horns in “High Life,” he and Rubix exchange dizzying verses that simulate the bustle of a block party. “Prisoner of Conscious? Nonsense,” Kweli raps at one point. Rather than feeling hemmed in, Kweli sounds liberated — not “conscious,” just awake.

Har Mar Superstar, Bye Bye 17

Keith Harris — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:42:47 +0000

Remaking himself as a soulfully wronged but never spiteful lover

More than a decade ago, indie rocker Sean Tillman was reborn as a campy R&B leg-humper keen on tickling your unmentionable zones with his freaky antics. Now Tillman has re-remade himself as a soulfully wronged but never spiteful lover, his vocals filtered for full retro effect, his effortless swoop drawing inspiration not just from Sam Cooke, but from white Cooke heirs like Rod Stewart.

“Please Don’t Make Me Hit You” accentuates that persona shift, as Har Mar resists a lover’s S&M demands (rhythmically indebted to Cooke’s “Cupid”) with a heartfelt “I’m not so into all that kinky stuff.” But it’s the opener, “Lady, You Shot Me,” with its pained virtuoso cry soaring over tricky Stax-via-Daptone horns and a sharp tempo shift, that justifies his newfound fascination with classic soul. And the jaunty “Restless Leg” suggests that Har Mar might fancy himself a haircut, a gym membership, and the right licensing deal away from becoming Bruno Mars. Stranger things have happened.

Kid Cudi, Indicud

Dan Hyman — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:10:16 +0000

An attempt to show he's emerged from the deep unscathed

“Niggas thinking I’m living life paranoid,” Kid Cudi says early on his third album, Indicud. He’s done a lot to cultivate this perception: The rapper’s persona — solitary stoner-turned-cocaine-addict-turned-bedroom philosopher — has been delivered to us as one long-form soliloquy to a shrink. But if his 2009 debut, Man on the Moon: The End of Day, and the following year’s equally soul-spilling effort together form one long-winded tale of woe, the singing/rapping emcee’s self-produced new effort, teeming with guests, feels a deliberate attempt to show he’s emerged from the deep unscathed.

There are still classic Cudi confessionals here (“I just experimented and it helped me adjust” he says of his well-publicized drug troubles atop brooding bass on “Burn Baby Burn”), and stabs at musical innovation — see the puzzling four-song, mid-album instrumental interlude. But Indicud thrives when at its most forthright and simplistic: “Just What I Am,” typical weed-praising fare, bangs with Cudi’s best. Dude’s curatorial chops are also top-notch: Kendrick Lamar kills on the staccato-pulsating standout “Solo Dolo Pt. II,” A$AP Rocky and King Chip exchange biting barbs on “Brothers” and the HAIM sisters complement Cudi’s trademark catharsis-inducing moan on “Red Eye.” Kid Cudi remains hip-hop’s resident weirdo, albeit a noticeably more self-assured and socialized one.

Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge, Twelve Reasons to Die

Nate Patrin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:00:21 +0000

An elaborate, conceptual attempt at a fantastical origin story

Though his persona draws from comics, true crime and 42nd Street double features, it can still be pretty easy to see Ghostface Killah as simply a skilled amplification of an actual person. An actual person with of the most unmistakably intense voices and storytelling instincts known to hip-hop, sure, sure, but as much the man who grew up picking roaches out of the cereal box as he is the Wally Champ with the massive eagle gauntlet and Marvel-via-Shaw Brothers mythos. That’s why Twelve Reasons to Die, his collaboration with soundtrack composer and psychedelic-soul maestro Adrian Younge, is such a unique addition to his catalog: it’s an elaborate, conceptual attempt to give the Tony Starks-turned-Ghostface identity a fantastical origin story, set two years before his birth and drenched in a sound that uncannily evokes both Ghost’s fictional and real-life come-up years.

The plot’s over-the-top in the best way possible. Tony Starks, former enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, is set up and killed after going into business for himself in 1968. The method of execution becomes the means for revenge: he’s melted alive in boiling vinyl and his remains are pressed into a dozen LPs that, when played, resurrect him into Ghostface Killah and sets him on a path of bloody payback. The music-as-immortality metaphor’s both obvious and effective, especially in tandem with Younge’s compositions, which draw from many of the same inspirations the RZA used for his early production blueprint (Morricone, Stax, Hi Records), then faithfully but uniquely filters them through live-band instrumentation, complete with Younge’s own penchant for grimy organ riffs. Thanks to the unifying theme — and a no-bullshit focus that runs through power, love, betrayal, payback, and legend with his top-form panache — Ghost sounds more riveting than he has at any point since Fishscale, a presence that’s larger than afterlife.

Various Artists, Fool’s Gold Presents: Loosies

Tayler Montague — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:09:08 +0000

A cohesive intro to Fool's Gold's roster

Loosies, from the Brooklyn-based indie record Fool’s Gold, is a selection of self-proclaimed “High Grade Menthol Raps From Fool’s Gold Friend’s & Fam.” The 22-song compilation boasts a mix of Fool’s Gold artists, ranging from Grande Marshall & A-Trak to up-and-coming rappers Troy Ave and Problem. Most notably, Fool’s Gold signee Danny Brown throws in his AraabMuzik-produced track, “Molly Ringwald.” Over a Harlem Shake-inducing, hard-hitting trap beat, he blesses us with typical vulgar Dannyisms on the order of “Your ho pussy like coat hair, I’ll never hang my coat there,” punctuated by the manic “STYLE!” adlibs that are always integral to a Danny track. The song is a little over two minutes but will definitely induce high-octane fist pumping and convulsions on the dance floor, like that one rave you went to in the ’90s that you’ve yet to tell your parents about.

The best part of Loosies is its potential to appeal to a wide variety of audiences, meshing younger, lesser-known artists with older, more established acts. A-Trak shows up with the “Piss Test” remix featuring Juicy J, Jim Jones, the Flatbush Zombies and more. The song is the perfect club banger — a cry of protest for teenagers who had to put the blunt down to get that summer job. Freeway delivers “Dedicated,” which doesn’t stray too far away from the sound he previously explored on tracks like the Just Blaze-produced “What We Do.” There’s also Troy Ave, whose “Vikings” sounds like something 50 Cent would’ve dropped years ago without sounding dated or derivative.

Loosies also offers an array of new faces, like New Orleans-bred Chase N Cashe, who uses his self-produced track “This & That” to alert everyone that he’s “the new hip-hop loudmouth.” Newcomers World’s Fair contributes the fast-paced “Tip Jar” with a catchy hook (“Who gotta dolla dolla? Who got a dolla?”) and raps like, “Only one Metro Card so we gotta double up” that are guaranteed to get stuck in anyone’s head. Gita, the only girl on the compilation, holds her own on “Let That” with a beat that sounds straight out of Tron: Legacy.

Much to Fool’s Gold’s credit, for an album featuring so many different rappers and personalities, Loosies flows extremely well. The compilation maintains its cohesiveness partly because of its beats, which live up to the label’s credo of “bridging the worlds between hip-hop and electronic music.” On Loosies, they do just that, without offering clear-cut-distinctions between the two, and the lack of restraint allows rappers to tap into their wildest, no-holds-barred concepts and topics.

Interview: Charles Bradley

Andrew Perry — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:59 +0000

[Charles Bradley turned heads and broke hearts with his 2011 triumph No Time for Dreaming. On the advent of his second masterpiece, the scorching, searing, Victim of Love, we invited Bradley and his bandleader and co-writer, Tom Brenneck, to take over eMusic's editorial section. Below, they discuss the whirlwind that was the last two years of their lives. You can also read our interview with legendary songwriter Leon Russell, commissioned at Bradley and Brenneck's request. — Ed.]

Emerging from nowhere to deliver his 2011 debut at the ripe age of 62, Charles Bradley has quickly become one of the most talked about and beloved artists of the decade. With a rich, raspy voice fit to compare with the greats of the golden era in the 1960s and early ’70s, Bradley, almost overnight, has become soul’s leading ambassador in the new millennium.

His live performances routinely unfold as touchy-feely love-ins between artist and audience. Behind this in-the-now euphoria is a life story of deprivation, itinerancy and bitter failure. As illustrated in a new documentary about him called Soul Of America, Bradley, like the subject of a Curtis Mayfield song, has lived most of his life beneath the poverty line, relying on charity from soup kitchens, sleeping rough, with no fixed abode.

After settling in Brooklyn, he plied a meager trade for many years as a James Brown impersonator in the Black Velvet revue. His fortunes only began to reverse when he hooked up with Gabe Roth from New York’s R&B imprint, Daptone, who in turn introduced him to aspiring band leader, producer and songwriter, Thomas Brenneck. From unsteady, no-budget beginnings, the duo worked at realizing Bradley’s higher talent.

Backed by Brenneck’s Menahan Street Band, Bradley released “No Time for Dreaming,” about his own private hardships, to huge global acclaim. He duly wowed the world on tour, and now returns with Victim Of Love — a record of exquisite joy, hope and gratitude, which pushes at the boundaries of conventional R&B like some lost treasure of early-’70s psychedelic soul. When eMusic hooks up with him and Brenneck on their latest ambassadorial London visit, Bradley’s voice is hoarse from so much testifying and giving. But now, at last, is the time for dreaming.

Yours is an incredible story, Charles: all that power to move people has been bottled up inside you all these years. Did you always know it was in there?

Charles Bradley: True artists, that sing from their soul and heart — nobody knows the depths they go under for a length of time trying to hold onto the honesty and decency and respect inside them. A person don’t get that easy. They work their asses off. I’m saying if you wanna be a career singer, you gotta take that hurt with ya.

But it was all this guy [pointing at Brenneck], helping me get heard. I say this to all my interviews — he’s gonna get tired of me thanking him. Then I’ll say, he might as well get used to it, because I can’t tell him enough where I would’ve been at right now — calling people and getting nowhere, doing my James Brown show still, keeping alive the dream, hoping it’s not too late.

Did you ever audition for TV talent contests, hoping to become a Susan Boyle-style “senior” success?

Bradley: I tried to get on all those things. Then I saw Jennifer Hudson [low-ranking finalist on the third season of American Idol, who went onto recording and acting mega-success] — I was angry at her! How did she get the chance? Overnight she just flew up, and I’ve been trying to get there for years? I was having doubts about everything. But my time came, in its own way.

The first album, No Time For Dreaming, documents the pain and hardship of your life, in a gritty funk style. Was it a kind of exorcism for you?

Bradley: I say, what is soul? Soul don’t have no creed or color. It’s what you been through, your hardship deep in your soul. You gotta reach down there where people’s never been half as deep, and pull it out. So the more I’m going deep into myself — that’s what soul’s about. Me and Tommy, we didn’t let go, we kept digging at one another, and that turned into that first record.

Was it a DIY effort, between the two of you?

Thomas Brenneck: 100 percent. I wrote all the songs with Charles, produced it, recorded it in my bedroom at the time — our humble beginnings. Gabe actually bought me a half-inch 8-track machine, which I kept right next to my bed, with a little stereo and a piano, and I chipped away, played stuff for Charles, and he loved it.

The years have been nice and we’ve got a recording studio now. We toured the first record, wrote a bunch of other songs, then went to the studio and recorded them with a much bigger sonic palette to choose from.

Did you know Daptone’s stuff before that, Charles?

Bradley: I knew Tom going on a lotta years.

Brenneck: We had recorded two singles, prior to the first album, with a different group. We first got introduced by Gabe from Daptone. I had an instrumental group called Dirt Rifle & The Funky Bullets, based on The Meters, James Brown, Dyke & The Blazers and such. Charles had knocked on Gabe’s door, saying, Hi, I’m a singer, you make records — are you looking for singers?

So Gabe introduced us, and we recorded two singles for Daptone that Gabe produced, as Charles Bradley & The Poets. The two singles were extremely derivative. It took five years after that, I’d say, of growth for myself, maturing in taste of music, for me to record some Menahan Street Band stuff that was much deeper music, it wasn’t just funky on the surface. It was slower and much deeper.

When Charles heard that music, he got inspired, and I think all his inspiration was really coming from all his trials and tribulations, and from living a life of struggle and poverty, and moving around, and not really having a home, and so that first album is really just Charles singing about the darkness, about the world from his perspective.

So that was Ground Zero?

Brenneck: Yeah, exactly, and now he’s felt warmth from people all around the world, and it’s because of those stories that people can relate to Charles — they’re drawn to him, and they love him, and he’s not just an entertainer up there that’s singing somebody else’s songs.

We write these songs together, they come from a really deep place, and now his inspiration is being drawn from some of these positive things that have happened in his life, and it still lends itself to be beautiful, soulful songs. They don’t just have to be tough, gritty and raw, they can be beautiful and psychedelic and soulful at the same time.

Some of your live shows have become the stuff of legend. One that often gets mentioned was at an outdoor festival in Utopia, Texas, where the heavens opened for a biblical downpour, and you went out and hugged crowd members in the rain…

Bradley: Yeah, that was a show! There’s nothing on earth like being on stage. To me, stage is home. If I see the people standing outside in the rain, getting wet, to watch me perform — I said, “Naaah, that not fair!” I had to jump off the stage and get out in the mud and get wet with ‘em! That’s when everybody went crazy. I said, “You gettin’ wet out there watchin’ me perform — can I come out, too?” Yeeah! It was a tear-dropper. There was warmth, kindness, hurt, love, and, in the midst of it, it was beautiful.

Does it feel massively different to you, doing your own show, with your own music, compared to doing your old James Brown show?

Bradley: I think they’re loving me more because I’m singing my song, and I’m singing from the heart, rather than doing James Brown and trying to manifest on his style.

Victim Of Love feels like a watershed record for Daptone. People were sometimes sniffy about it at first, like it was pointless and copyist. Has it all been a process of winning people over?

Brenneck: Yeah, to modern soulful music. With this album, I was really trying to push outside of the boundaries of the normal Daptone production by adding elements that you wouldn’t hear on Sharon Jones records and such. We’re trying to make soul music in 2013, and embrace all our influences that are outside of just directly James Brown or Otis Redding or any Motown Detroit artist. But once he sings on it, it’s impossible to call it anything but a soul record.

Bradley: Tommy said, “You wanna move on from James Brown?” And he’s doing it by putting in that music that I like. Once my spirit gets into the depths of the music when I hear it, it all happens. I don’t wanna do James Brown no more, because I’m feeling that feeling I’ve been wanting for a long time, and the more you put it on me, and when I get into it when you give it to me, the more I want it. That’s just the bottom line.

Now we’re doing funk and rock. We’re gonna find a new mixture. We’re heading into a mixture that nobody’s doin’, our own creation.

Brenneck: It’s not gonna be fresh by doing a hip-hop song. It’s gonna be by him doing his own song, that embraces all that and lots else beside. Bradley could take a Black Sabbath song and turn it into a soul song.

You might go heavy metal next time? Like with Jimmy Page guitar?

Brenneck: Jimmy Page is cool, but that’s not heavy metal, it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s where we’re going. Bradley can do a good Robert Plant impersonation, and he doesn’t even know it!

Bradley: Yeah, and one song we play is Neil Young’s “Heart Of Gold.” I lu-u-urve doing that song. It feels good, it fits right in.

How has your life changed since your upturn in fortunes, Charles? Do you have a decent lifestyle now?

Bradley: Not totally. I’m working on it.

Do you have a family, with kids to provide for?

Bradley: I made a vow to myself when I was 14 years old, and I lived that commitment from that date right up to today: No child of mine is comin’ into this world. I’m gonna keep seeking, but right now at my age, 64, it’s too late for me to have kids.

But surely your story proves that it’s never too late for anything?

Bradley: No, man, it’s best to have kids at Tommy’s age. He can grow up with his kids, be young with ‘em, play with ‘em. My playin’ — I wanna do it onstage. I’m gonna be godfather to a lotta kids [gesturing out into imaginary audience, smiling], and I’m gonna teach them to the best of my ability. Same thing with Oprah [Winfrey]: She never had no kids, but she’s like the motherhood of all kids. So I’m gonna be a godfather!

And you’re going to be a movie star, too, with your own documentary…

Brenneck: That’s not gonna make Bradley a movie star, that’s just gonna make him a topic of conversation. It’s more about his life than his music. Where it ends, another documentary could start, because the last few years have been crazy, successful, amazing — but with that success, after 60 years of being down in the dumps, your shit doesn’t change overnight, even if the money starts coming your way. It’s still hard to change what you’re used to, psychologically, even if physically it’s easier to get material things.

There’s a lot of people around Charles trying to help him out, and Charles is trying to steer on the right path, not listen to people around him who’re trying to just leech onto him. It’s hard.

Bradley: One thing my mother taught me, I won’t forget: Go out and make money, but never let money make you. And I won’t. The only thing material things can do for me, is buy things I don’t have, and get me outta that level that I’m live in.

But this new record is about documenting the changes that are underway, and expressing your hope, love and gratitude?

Bradley: This new record is coming out of the darkness into the light, and meeting new peoples. I’ve been meeting lots of positive people, and they’ve been making me more sure of myself. [smiles] It’s a beautiful thing.

Tyler, The Creator, Wolf

Nick Murray — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:14 +0000

Inheriting his influences on his third LP

In the past, Tyler, the Creator has made it clear that his favorite album by Eminem, the man he once referred to as his atheist God, is Relapse, the dark, dense comeback record that preceded the chart-topping Recovery. Wolf, the producer/rapper/clothing designer/cockroach-munching troublemaker’s third full-length, inherits the Shady influence that marked its predecessors, but it also looks back past Relapse to earlier entries in the older rapper’s discography, The Marshall Mathers LP in particular: Just as “Domo23″ takes superfluous shots at the pop stars of the moment (“purchasing weapons, naming them and aiming them in One Direction”), “IFHY” relates a “Kim”-style love/hate relationship, its title abbreviating a hook that the New York Times would be forced to describe as unprintable. “Colossus” even narrates a fan’s encounter with his 22-year-old role model, his desperate monologue inspiring in Tyler the same mixture of honor and disgust that Stan’s letters once inspired in Eminem.

Behind the boards for all 17 the album tracks, Tyler continues to prefer minor chords sustained over boom-bap beats. Posse banger “Trashwang” stands out for its double-time use of guns-as-drums (“I want the black kids to like me for this one,” he says on the intro) and “Tamale” pairs a syncopated beat with yelps from Tallulah Belle (previously best known for dating OF-affiliate Lucas Vercetti 18 years after emerging from the womb of Demi Moore), but the record’s most ambitious track might be the seven-minute “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer,” which attempts to graft three song fragments (the second featuring Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, the third Frank Ocean) into a unified whole. The pieces never quite come together, but if there’s anything to learn from those early Eminem records, it’s that they usually don’t.

Charles Bradley, Victim of Love

Barry Walters — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:45:40 +0000

Capturing the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones

Charles Bradley is not the kind of guy to sing of love in fantastical terms; he’s much too real for that. Bearing a voice streaked with the ravages of inner torment, this nomadic 64-year-old soul shouter — now based in a Brooklyn very different to the one in which he grew up — instead captures the pains and pleasures of love in sobering but unrestrained tones: He screams, shouts, pleads and moans of desire and disappointment so extreme that words alone cannot suffice. Not merely singing, he testifies of love and social injustice: This former James Brown impersonator does not hold back.

Bradley’s second album teams him with the Menahan Street Band, a dynamic crew drawn from the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, the Budos Band and other Daptone acts. Unlike his 2011 debut No Time for Dreaming, this one’s solely comprised of originals composed by Bradley, Menahan leader Charles Brenneck, and other band members who help him both recapture and transcend the southern soul grooves of Dreaming. Victim of Love is no less reverent, though: When it leaves behind the romantic themes of its first half for a suite of socially conscious tracks starting with “Confusion,” producer/guitarist Brenneck conjures up a storm of psychedelic sound effects and thunderous rock riffs that evokes Norman Whitfield’s late-’60s/early-’70s work with the Temptations. The tough, tumultuous results suit Bradley’s growls and grunts, particularly on “Hurricane,” where man’s ecological abuse begets tears from heaven that make life hell. On the concluding “Through the Storm,” clouds part for prayerful sentiments of gratitude and hope. He’s weathered the tempest, yet remains tenacious.

The Como Mamas, Get an Understanding…

Ashley Melzer — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 14:15:45 +0000

The pure conviction and power in their music converts listeners immediately

Ester Mae Smith and sisters Angela Taylor and Della Daniels have been singing together since childhood, but the way their voices blend sounds much older: singing a cappella at Mt. Mariah Baptist Church in Como, Mississippi, the women harness a stripped-down sincerity. In their voices, God is taken off the pedestal and put in arms’ reach.

“Now let us all go back to that old landmark,” the women sing on the first track of Get an Understanding…, an invitation by a gospel trio molded in the land of the blues. “God is able,” the women insist, in a swaying call-and-response: “He’s so good to me.” Their personal touch makes easy friends with old songs like “Meet Me at the River Jordan,” which reflect a long history of struggle and faith blooming into powerful music. “I had my chance, I made my choice and it’s nobody’s fault but mine,” they call out on the old spiritual; the line is about making a conscious decision to follow god, but when it comes to the Como Mamas we aren’t given as much of a choice: The pure conviction and power in their music converts us immediately.

Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, Tortured Soul

Barry Walters — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:30:52 +0000

Righteous, reverent old-school soul meets New Wave and acid-jazz

Imagine if Curtis Mayfield were still alive and making music as he did in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Now factor in the devout feeling of Paul Weller’s Mayfield-loving records of the ’80s with the Style Council. That’s the sound and spirit of Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, an unlikely but inspired combination of a Brooklyn-born, Helsinki-based singer and a Finnish band. It’s righteous, reverent old-school soul filtered through the retro/revisionist sensibilities and playing skills of New Wave and acid-jazz.

You’ve heard it before, yet not quite: Opening salvo “Light Years Ahead” is virtually a rewrite of Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go,” featuring blaxploitation strings suggesting the tension of a pressure cooker ready to blow, as well as an enraged wah-wah solo more James White & the Blacks than Dennis Coffey. The fuzz-crazed riff burning in and out of “Time to Get the Business Straight” pushes into Nuggets‘ garage rock territory, even if a smooth subsequent vibraphone pulls the track right back to soul. Some songs are twice as long as they’d have been back in the day, as if the band kept jamming long after the engineer faded the cut, and that’s OK: These Investigators aren’t super-tight, but they’re enthusiastic and Willis grounds their nostalgia with genuine heart, particularly on the wistful “Best Days of Our Lives.”

Lady, Lady

Michelangelo Matos — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:52:26 +0000

Invigorating retro soul

This invigorating retro-soul album comes from a duo consisting of one-time UK 2-step garage star Terri Walker and Nicole Wray, whose “Make It Hot” (under her first but not last name) was one of a half-dozen Jeep bombs Timbaland concocted in 1998. Nothing about Lady, also the name of their act, feels forced — Walker and Wray sound like they’re having the time of their lives, not least because nothing is stopping them from getting to dig in lyrically. “If You Wanna Be My Man” analyzes a relationship sharply but without rancor (“You changed, and I changed/What we used to be”) over a groove that’s equal parts Spinners and Bill Withers. And the amazing “Money” is a bad-boyfriend anthem (she likes the green better than him) that doubles as a proud feminist declaration (“I feel proud that I’m an independent lady”) — not to mention a classic soul single, whatever the calendar year.

Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics

Nate Patrin — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:00:15 +0000

A fitting addition to the canon of a justly revered name in R&B

The original Delfonics lineup split up decades ago, but their legacy has lingered. The hip-hop generation saw to that, using Thom Bell’s velvety arrangements and the achingly sweet falsetto of lead singer William Hart to striking effect. Enter Adrian Younge, the Black Dynamite soundtrack mastermind who’s also collaborated with avowed Delfonics fanatic Ghostface Killah (Pretty Toney highlight “Holla” famously paid homage to “La-La – Means I Love You”). Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics is an unusual type of throwback: Younge’s muddy, lo-fi atmospherics recall low-budget early ’70s local-label 45s more than they do Bell’s vintage lushness. But the hallmarks of those classic albums’ instrumentation — burbling electric sitar, tinkling harps, chiming bells — are not only present but mix well with Younge’s characteristic elements of blown-out fuzz guitar and bone-chilling organ. And if Hart’s once-delicate falsetto has aged into something with a bit more bite to it, it cuts through the production’s intense haze vividly and harmonizes lushly with the young backup singers Saudia Mills and Loren Oden. With a slate of achingly heartfelt love songs — the blues-drenched garage-soul of “Lost Without You”; the haunting Om’Mas Keith collabration “Stop and Look”; the early ’60s vibe of “I Can’t Cry No More” — this is a fitting addition to the canon of a justly revered name in R&B.

Six Degrees of Rihanna’s Unapologetic

Hua Hsu — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 19:28:08 +0000

The Album

Unapologetic

Rihanna
2012 | Def Jam Records

What's left for Rihanna? The young star has far exceeded every conceivable metric of pop success, whether it is awards or album sales or her designation as the most popular person on all of Facebook. The 24-year-old recently released her seventh album, Unapologetic, essentially a cross-section of all pop music's various strains circa 2012. There's the arena-sized electronic buzz of "Phresh Out the Runway" and "Right Now," the over-the-top, funhouse wooziness... of "Numb" and "Loveeeeeee Song," the classic pop march of "Diamonds." Its sound is broad and universal, thanks to continent-hopping producers like David Guetta, Stargate, Benny Blanco and The-Dream. This savvy versatility has always been at the heart of Rihanna's appeal, from her dancehall-tinged debut to her present-day attempts to master some kind of global pop template. But Unapologetic's attitude and moods are resolutely her own, and nowhere is this clearer than on "Nobody's Business," the disarmingly buoyant duet with her — to put it mildly — controversial boyfriend Chris Brown. Like many of Rihanna's albums, Unapologetic is a collection of choices that seem both calculated and somewhat eccentric — consider the famously strange week she spent commemorating Unapologetic's release by playing seven shows in seven different cities around the world. In a way, it's those erratic moments that make Rihanna — a new kind of flexible, carefully stage-managed, frighteningly efficient worldwide pop star — still seem human. Everyone knows the names in Rihanna's immediate orbit — her influences Bob Marley and Madonna, her boss Jay-Z, her mates Brown and Drake. Here, we consider the broader constellation of Rihanna — from her lesser-known collaborators to the far-flung, future heirs to her style.
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The Visionary

Private Life: The Compass Point Years

Grace Jones
1998 | ISLAND RECORDS

Before Janet Jackson or Madonna — Rihanna's musical influences growing up — there was Grace Jones. The Jamaican-born Jones was one of the most singular artists of the early 1980s, a fashion icon and a visionary of modern-day club music. She had released some well-received disco records throughout the late 1970s, but for 1980's Warm Leatherette, Jones relocated to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to record with the legendary reggae drum-and-bass... duo of Sly and Robbie. The result was a breakthrough, a vibrant collision of New Wave and island riddims. Jones recorded two more albums at Compass Point, Nightclubbing and Living My Life. The best material from that period is collected on Private Life. Her alien arrangements of familiar songs (she covers Tom Petty and Smokey Robinson, among others) represented everything fresh about the burgeoning club culture, and the way Jones carried herself — the androgynous style, the almost confrontational raunchiness — was visionary. Rihanna's copped her look on more than one occasion. Don't think Jones doesn't notice these things. Just ask her what she thinks of Lady Gaga.
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The Hit-Maker

Just A Little More Love

David Guetta
2009 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CAT

The Parisian Guetta already had a successful, decade-long career DJing and throwing parties when he finally decided to record his debut album in 2002. It was easy to overlook Guetta, given the acclaim that had met countrymen Daft Punk, Air or Cassius. But Guetta chose a more populist, bombastic approach to French house on Just a Little More Love. It was more vocal driven and club-oriented, its clean sound shaped by massive... hooks and friendly throbs. "Give Me Something" was an amped-up version of classic New York disco, while "Can't U Feel the Change" and the title track — both featuring singer Chris Willis — whittled house down to its fist-pumping basics. The most brazen statement here was "Just for One Day," which threw David Bowie's "Heroes" into the middle of an electro-thunderstorm. By the end of the decade, Guetta would be one of dance music's sought-after producers, particularly among those looking for new audiences. In 2010, Guetta and Rihanna collaborated on "Who's That Chick?" for the former's path-breaking One More Love release. They got back together for Unapologetic, cutting the standout "Phresh Out the Runway" and recent hit "Right Now."
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The Collaborator

tracks

Mikky Ekko
2013 | RCA Records Label

One of the high points of Unapologetic is "Stay," a stirring, stripped-down, piano-backed duet between Rihanna and the song's writer, Nashville-by-way-of-everywhere singer Mikky Ekko. Despite his faintly futuristic name, Ekko makes for an unusual collaborator, as evidenced by all the Rihanna devotees wondering who the rumpled vagrant was onstage with her when she performed the song at the Grammys. There's a delicate, rangy confidence to Ekko's songs, and he's equally at ease... singing atop a rollicking band, a Clams Casino beat or nothing at all. Check out the Reds EP, which features the gorgeously woozy "Secret to Sell" and the swashbuckling "Who Are You, Really?" After the recent success of "Stay," his label released Tracks, an EP of new tracks and live sessions. It's a startlingly versatile collection. "Pull Me Down" commissions some moody pop triumphalism from Clams Casino while "Feels Like the End" is an epic brew of falsetto, synth and strings. The EP closes with the most intensely atmospheric cover of the xx's "Chained" you'll likely ever hear.
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The Charismatic Heir

Halcyon

Ellie Goulding
2012 | Interscope/Cherrytree

Rihanna's transition from radio R&B toward global club pop has been massive influential for a new generation of young singer/songwriters, and perhaps the most important lesson to be learned is that the songs themselves still matter. Consider Ellie Goulding's carefully restrained cover of Rihannas' "Only Girl (in the World)," which seems to deconstruct the original's hypnotic grooves and overheated synths and highlight the perfectly proportioned melody at the song's core. From... the indie synthpop of 2010's Lights to the cavernous spaces of last year's Halcyon, Goulding has become one of the more charismatic heirs to Rihanna's versatile style. What distinguishes Goulding is that her music, for all its busy, layered production, is quite old-fashioned. YouTube is full of Goulding doing acoustic versions of her own songs, and suddenly singles that sound huge and interplanetary are revealed to be simple and intimate.
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The Global Pop Forerunners

2nd Mini Album

2ne1
2011 | YG Entertainment Inc. / Ditto Music

Artists like Rihanna, Pitbull and the Black Eyed Peas may be forerunners of a global pop aesthetic, but this kind of thing has been going for years in South Korea. Beyond "Gangnam Style" lies a healthy and rapidly evolving pop scene, and a group like 2NE1 — pronounced "21" or "To Anyone" — is probably one lucky break away from global domination. All the songs on their latest EP feel instantly familiar... — there's the hyper absurdism of "I Am the Best," the slightly less hyper anthems "Don't Stop the Music" and "Hate You," the guitar-strum introspection of "Lonely." Maybe a breakthrough isn't as far off as it seems. Korean pop idol-watchers were abuzz with recent news that 2NE1's "baddest female" CL had acquired a famous new follower on Instagram: Rihanna.
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Warren Ellis Picks His Favorite Albums

Andrew Perry — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:30:24 +0000

[To celebrate the release of their 15th studio album, Push The Sky Away, we invited Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to take control of eMusic's editorial for a week. You can read our exclusive interview with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds here. The band also asked us to interview Australian rock legend Ed Kuepper as part of their takeover — you can read that here. And Warren Ellis reveals the band's favorite albums on eMusic, below. — Ed.]

Nina Simone: The Tomato Collection

Nina Simone
2005 | Tomato Records / The Orchard

Supreme sampler of the uncompromising jazz-blues diva's oeuvre. Includes big-hitters "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl," "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and 35 other gems.

Nina Simone is a huge inspiration. I was put on to her back in Australia in the '80s and '90s, then I discovered her version of "Who Knows Where The Time Goes" on the 1970 live album Black Gold. She's one of the only people who... can interpret Bob Dylan in an amazing way. Live, if you look at any footage of her, she's one of the purest performers you've ever seen. I saw her at Meltdown in the '90s [the London festival curated by Nick Cave] and it was still one of the greatest concerts I've ever seen in my life, terrifying and extraordinary on every level. I'd never seen anything like that, and probably never will.
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A Way of Life

Suicide
2012 | Cherry Red Records / The Orchard

New York electronic punks' oft-overlooked third album from 1988.

Suicide are an extraordinary band. Just the way they combine the cool electronic thing with punk rock attitude and those vocals. There's something really beautiful about their songs. Plus Alan Vega and Martin Rev are two of the coolest guys in the industry. I put Alan Vega on at All Tomorrow's Parties when the Dirty Three curated the festival in 2007. When he turned... up, it was the first time I'd met him, and the door opened, and he goes, "You never told me there were fucking cows! I hate cows!"

And then, Martin Rev — what a musician. He's got this great jazz sensibility combined with punk rock. We played with them one night with Grinderman, and did a couple of songs, and man, that guy can fuck shit up. Martin started this song totally different to the way we'd played it at soundcheck, and he just lifted his glasses up, and gave me a wink. He's a sonic terrorist, with a glint in his eye.
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Electrical Storm

Ed Kuepper
Hot Records

Erstwhile guitarist with Aussie punk-rockers The Saints, Kuepper is now a touring Bad Seed. This 1985 album is from the beginning of his prolific — and amazing — solo career.

Ed Kuepper is one of the great guitar players. I remember seeing the Saints on TV when I was a kid in Australia, doing "Stranded." It was extraordinary to see that among the other stuff, in the same way that seeing AC/DC at... the time was so extraordinary. Like, what the fuck…? Ed is so prolific and his output is very diverse. He has written some fantastic songs. The Laughing Clowns, his band between The Saints and going solo, were amazing, just phenomenal. He has had a really long, significant career, but he just keeps moving and creating.
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The Complete Sun Singles, vol. 1

Jerry Lee Lewis
Sun Records

The motherlode of late-'50s rock 'n' roll, as "The Killer" rattles off "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" and other Sun Records classics.

You can't go wrong with The Killer, can you? We tried to get to play at ATP, and the fee he came in with was more than the budget of the whole festival — for a 38-minute set. That was a shame. But I saw him play in Paris a few... years back and the gig was up there with Nina Simone. He looked like he wanted to murder somebody, just insane, they were holding him back. He was really doing the showbiz thing, and he had that piano sound, which was like a piledriver going through your head. It was one of the greatest 38 minutes of live music I've ever seen in my life.
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Gimme Some Skin

The Stooges
2009 | Vanilla OMP / The Orchard

Sleazy, in-the-red proto-punk-rock 45 from the dying days of Iggy Pop's legendary combo.

The Stooges are one of those bands that just got it right. They're like The Velvet Underground: You remember the first time you heard them, and you know that things aren't gonna be the same after that. I met Iggy once at a festival, back in the '90s. I don't feel like I have any right to comment on him... now, or whether he's carrying the torch still. I'm just a stupid dick from Ballarat (Victoria, Australia), you know? And he's Iggy Pop!
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Love a Kind of Hate Story

Tim Rose
2009 | Popgear / AWAL

1970 album from the gutsy white-soul/blues author of "Morning Dew" and "Long Time Man" — the latter covered by the Bad Seeds in '87.

Tim Roses's stuff is all beautiful. His voice is unbelievable — the delivery, and the sense of narrative, the way things can unfold. And his sense of space, too. We did a couple of shows with him on the Boatman's Call tour — it was kind of his comeback.... It's hard to judge a person on 35 minutes spent with them backstage, but I was amazed just to see him standing there. He was one of those people, you like their stuff, and you hear somewhere along the line that they've died, or they don't exist anymore, and then you see them!
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Walking On The Wild Side

Lou Reed
2009 | Vanilla OMP / The Orchard

New York's most ornery avant-rocker caught live post-Velvet Underground. Features an interview enthusiastically celebrating of his recent alliance with David Bowie on Transformer.

When I heard The Velvet Underground, it was the first time I'd heard a stringed instrument [John Cale's viola] used like that. I couldn't believe how it was played. It blew my mind. Their music still does. I'd always played classical instruments, and I'd always listened to rock 'n' roll,... but I didn't really see where they'd fit together. When I heard the Velvet Underground, I was like, Wow, it can be done. It was amazing.

I saw Lou Reed do Metal Machine Music and I would've liked to have seen him with Metallica. I felt like that was his attempt to do something different, and get himself outside of the comfort zone. It was so refreshing. I don't put that album on every day, but it's nice to know it's out there.
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Back in the Motherland (Live)

Leonard Cohen
2011 | Left Field Media / The Orchard

Homecoming live set from Laughing Len in '88, featuring consummate takes on "Suzanne" and "Tower Of Song" (also once covered by the Bad Seeds).

Everyone says Leonard Cohen is miserable and morbid, but they say the same about Nick, too. Everybody focuses on the dour thing, when in fact there's a real sense of humour in there. Leonard Cohen's certainly got his dark spots. Songs Of Love & Hate is one of my... favourite albums ever. Sure he gets 'down there', but there's always this humanity that you can latch onto. Even at his most nihilistic, you can ride with him.
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Kollaps

Einstürzende Neubauten
2003 | Potomak / Zebralution

The Berlin metal-bashers' astonishing and ground-breaking (often literally!) debut from 1981. Blixa Bargeld, their incandescent leader, was a Bad Seed until 2003.

Einstürzende Neubauten are a great band. A lot of groups, you hear where they've come from — you hear the influences. This band, they're more like a jazz band in that they have this language of their own. They've come up with this way they play together. I read a great... interview with Blixa recently. They were doing a tour, and he said, "Anybody expecting to see a bunch of people smashing things up is going to be very disappointed." His quote of the century [shortly before departing the Bad Seeds] was, "I didn't get into rock 'n' roll to play rock 'n' roll." He's another one-off!
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Miss America

Mary Margaret O'Hara
2010 | Mary Margaret O'Hara / CD Baby

Solitary classic from brittle Canadian country chanteuse, released in '88.

Mary Margaret O'Hara has such an amazing voice. I almost don't even listen to the music, because it's not my sort of thing, but her voice is just phenomenal. Watching her perform is something else too. Her performance always seems to be on the brink of either absolute genius or total collapse, and you're just like hanging in there. But then when it... takes off, it's just amazing. I did a show with her and Howe Gelb in London. It was a real treat. Again, she's a one-off, and I mean that in a very respectful way.
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Mondscheinsonate - Single

Beethoven
2011 | Mondscheinsonate / TuneCore

The funereal yet exquisite Piano Sonata No 14, by the great Ludwig Van, written in 1801.

The Moonlight Sonata is beautiful. I like Beethoven because he always seemed to know where to go with his music. He could always keep moving, he didn't get stuck on a riff. I really enjoy that about listening to him.

I was visited by the ghost of Beethoven when I was about 24. He sat on the... end of my bed, and I took that as a sign that I should get on with my life. We didn't have words. He actually appeared twice, once when I was playing in an orchestra, and then the second time I was just totally fucked up, in a state, and I had this wonderful visitation. If you're gonna get one, it might as well be someone like Beethoven.
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A Winter Project

A. Pärt
2011 | KrysaliSound

Present-day classical composer from Estonia brings his trademark stark beauty

Pärt's music is very pure and simple. He usually writes for large ensembles, like choral groups with orchestras, but sometimes he'll write for just piano and violin. It's so soulful, the music, it's some of the most beautiful you'll hear. People hear him and just connect. He's been copied and imitated so much in the last ten or 15 years — he's probably... one of the most imitated contemporary composers.
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Hurt me

Johnny Thunders
2010 | Last call / Believe Digital

Unusually unamplified and stripped-down solo recordings from the late New York Doll

He's great, Johnny Thunders. I like the fact that in interviews he'd say, "Listen, I don't play punk rock, I play rock 'n 'roll." It's so true. He seemed to have a real pride in what he did, he wasn't this sort of smash-it-up punk guy. That attitude was what he objected to and why he saw himself as a rock... 'n' roller. This is an acoustic album and I love it. It was recorded in Paris for the New Rose label.
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Barbed Wire Blues

Wilko Johnson
1989 | Jungle Records / The Orchard

The Dr Feelgood guitarist, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, here on fire with his long-running trio circa '89.

I love Wilko. I always thought there was a bit of Rowland Howard [late Birthday Party guitarist] in him. Rowland got something from Wilko. With Wilko, if you watch any footage of him from back in the day, you just think, how did he come up with that style?

We bumped into him in Heathrow... airport, him and [bassist] Norman Watt-Roy drinking Bloody Marys at some horrendous hour in the morning. The biggest smiles on their faces, and affable as you could imagine — in their 60s, eyes bulging. I hope I'll get to see him again before he goes.
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The Namedroppers: Getting to the Bottom of 10 Musical Shout-Outs

Arye Dworken — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:22:12 +0000

Musicians are narcissists. It’s the chief qualification for getting on stage and soaking in the adulation of the masses. So when a band or a songwriter references another performer in a song, there’s almost always a reason for diverting the attention.

Considering the rareness of this generosity, we decided to highlight a handful of those shout-outs — the best well-intentioned, intra-musical nods

But knowing that musicians are also legendary canard-makers, we wanted to consider the plausibility of the scenarios as well. What are the chances that, let’s say, Katy Perry was, in fact, listening to Radiohead as she was making out — which she alleges in “The One That Got Away?” We get to the bottom of this, and more, in the list below.

Miley Cyrus

The Time Of Our Lives

Miley Cyrus
2009 | EP/SINGLE

The song: "Party In The USA"
Lyric sample: "And the Jay-Z song was on."
Which song is being referenced: MIley is riding in a cab and she hears Hova on the radio. It's natural to assume she's listening to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," because it was ubiquitous, kind of like God. But Blueprint 3, from which the heartfelt Manhattan homage is taken was released a few weeks after "Party In The USA"... had already hit the charts. So which track could it be? Well, since Cyrus admits to putting her hands up in the air — or as high as a cab roof will allow — and thus thereafter appropriates the song as her own ("they're playin' my song"), she presumably relates and connects to the lyrics on a substantive level. Therefore, the Jay-Z song that's on is "Girls, Girls, Girls," because Miley Cyrus happens to be one.
The probability of this scenario? After "Party In The USA" became a mega-hit, Cyrus was asked in an interview about the Jay-Z song. Her response: "I have never heard a Jay-Z song. I don't listen to pop music." This is a direct quote.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: None. Jay-Z is very famous, Cyrus or no Cyrus.
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Katy Perry

Teenage Dream

Katy Perry
2010 | CAPITOL

The song: "The One That Got Away"
Lyric sample: "Summer after high school, when we first met/ we made out in your Mustang to Radiohead."
Which song is being referenced: The chances of anyone owning a Mustang listening to Radiohead beyond Kid A are improbable. This limits the teens' make-out sesh soundtrack to a select track from one of three albums: Pablo Honey, The Bends and OK Computer. Now, factoring in the high... school reference in the lyrics, Perry, at the time, assuredly felt alienated, misunderstood, and that she didn't belong here wherever "here" was at the time. These two teens were undoubtedly listening to "Creep."
The probability of this scenario? Before Katy Perry ejected whipped cream from a plastic cupcake bra, she was a Christian pop singer — which, ultimately, would make this scenario unlikely. However, if the lyrics were "We made out in your Mustang to Jars of Clay," we might have a real autobiographical moment.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Small. Yorke and company are plenty famous without a pop singer's endorsement even though, according to many disgruntled fans, they're trying hard to reverse that progress.
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Snow Patrol

Up To Now

Snow Patrol
2009 | Polydor/Fiction/Geffen

The song: "Hands Open"
Lyric sample: "Put Sufjan Stevens on and we'll play your favorite song."
Which song is being referenced: In the next line of the song, singer Gary Lightbody specifies The song: It's "Chicago," from the orchestral folk singer's album Illinois. The thing is, though, "Hands Open" is about a hopeful man courting an emotionally resistant woman who — side note — has a real affinity for a six-minute song about... the Windy City. But writing a new song about playing a song for a girl seems like long route to wooing someone. Just play her the song she likes, don't write her a new one. Look at how much time I saved you, Gary.
The probability of this scenario? Incredibly likely. After soundtracking Grey's Anatomy with his compositions a number of times and presumably watching select episodes of the series, songwriter Lightbody is looking for sad, folksy and introspective music to help him deal with Meredith Grey's constant heartbreak.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Well-intentioned. Or, in the parlance of the show, Lightbody is McWell-Intentioned.
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MGMT

Oracular Spectacular

MGMT
2009 | Red Ink/Columbia

The song: "Brian Eno"
Lyric sample: "We're always one step behind him, he's Brian Eno."
Which song is being referenced: Psychedelic hipsters Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden insist that Eno "taught [them] so many things," one of which was how to follow up a hit debut with a difficult follow-up. In 1977, Eno released Before And After Science, which many consider by to be his last "conventional" rock album as a solo artist.... After that, he recorded a surreal ambient album which confounded the fans accumulated with his five classic glam rock records. MGMT took that lesson to heart. The duo's prog-heavy second album Congratulations confounded fans looking for more "Kids."
The probability of this scenario? Two kids from Wesleyan University listening to Brian Eno? That's practically a curriculum requirement.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: High. Eno's early output is, inexplicably, still underrated.
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Regina Spektor

Begin To Hope

Regina Spektor
2006 | Sire

The song: "On The Radio"
Lyric sample: "On the radio, you hear 'November Rain,' that solo's awful long, but it's a good refrain."
Which song is being referenced: "November Rain" from Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. And just to clarify, there are three solos: the first being 47 seconds long, the second one 24 seconds and the final, epic one at a goose-bumping 1:35. It's unclear as to whether Spektor considered the culmination... of all three solos to be too long, or whether one of the three individual solos were superfluous. Or just maybe Spektor had a beef with Slash and chose to take it out on him here. That's possible, too.
The probability of this scenario? The songwriter, having emigrated from Russia in high school, was inevitably listening to hard rock, as most Soviet expats were inclined to do. Having been in Russia myself, the listening choices are pared down to either t.A.T.u., Michael Jackson or metal.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: High. We all need a reminder of how great Axl Rose and his band used to be.
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Counting Crows

Recovering The Satellites

Counting Crows
1996 | Geffen

The song: "Monkey"
Lyric sample: "Got nowhere but home to go/ Got Ben Folds on my radio now."
Which song is being referenced: In 1996, when Adam Duritz and the gang released Recovering the Satellites, the Chapel Hill trio Ben Folds Five had released just one album, and that was the self-titled debut. Therefore, there were only 12 songs for the dreadlocked frontman to play on his radio. "Monkey" also depicts Duritz as his... most introspective, referencing a "lonely spiral" and a feeling of being "all messed up." It's a reference to his depersonalization disorder, which causes a person to live life as an imitation of himself. Adam Duritz was listening to Ben Folds Five's "Best Imitation of Myself."
The probability of this scenario? Highly probable. Crows that count enjoy band names with numbers.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Even. Back then, Ben Folds Five was an indie act on a small label which lent Duritz some cred.
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Mary Lou Lord

Mary Lou Lord

Mary Lou Lord
2008 | EP/SINGLE

The song: "His Indie World"
Lyric sample: The whole damn song is a reference.
Which song is being referenced: In a span of two-and-a-half minutes, folk singer Lord references a total of 34 obscure indie rock artists, many of which her snobby boyfriend prefers over more common classic rock fare like Joni, Neil or Bob. There's Velocity Girl, Rocket from the Crypt, Slant 6 and Butterglory and a tossed salad of what... was once considered alternative rock. Ultimately, the snob's lack of interest in her love may not be because of the lack of vinyl overlap. Dude may be too cool to, like, have a — insert air quote — relationship.
The probability of this scenario? Likely. Back when Lord wrote the song, people who differed in musical tastes still interacted with one another and even tried dating.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Even. Everyone's obscure.
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Ben Lee

Awake Is the New Sleep

Ben Lee
New West Records

The song: "Catch My Disease"
Lyric sample: "I hear Beyoncé on the radio and that's the way I like it."
Which song is being referenced: It's a strange thing to write a love song about "opening your heart" and moments thereafter reference the possibility of a transmittable disease. But Lee is an open and communicable guy. When he invites a potential love interest to a two person viral party, he even says "please." Considering... his politeness, the Australian songwriter could not be listening to Beyoncé's rude and fierce alter ego Sasha Fierce. However, "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," which many consider as a literal admonition, could also serve as a veiled and metaphorical warning to "put a ring on it," or, in common parlance: wear protection at all times.
The probability of this scenario? Beyoncé and diseases are a pretty unlikely pairing, but then again, Ben Lee dated Claire Danes and that's an unlikely pairing, too.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Beyoncé doesn't need your altruism, mortal.
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Clem Snide

You Were A Diamond

Clem Snide
1998 | Tractor Beam / The Orchard

The song: "Nick Drake Tape"
Lyric sample: "That Nick Drake tape you love, tonight it sounds so good."
Which song is being referenced: In "Nick Drake Tape," the song's narrator attempts to lull a stressed-out lover into slumber. They're listening to the "When the Day Is Done," a sweet lullaby about the culmination of the day's events.
The probability of this scenario? In 1999, Volkswagen used Drake's "Pink Moon" in what's considered... one of the finest commercials in advertising history. The spot, titled "Milky Way," inspired a posthumous appreciation for the soft-spoken British folk singer. Yet, Eef Barzelay, the frontman for the rustic folk collective Clem Snide, wrote and recorded "Nick Drake Tape" in 1998, one year ahead of the trends. This would make Barzelay a genuine Drake Aficionado who can recognize the genius in any and every song from Drake's limited three-album catalog.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: High. It's hard to imagine, but Drake was a forgotten gem only rediscovered in the last decade.
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Diddy Dirty Money

Last Train To Paris

Diddy-Dirty Money
2010 | Bad Boy / Interscope

The song: "Coming Home"
Lyric sample: "'Tears of a Clown,' I hate that song."
Which song is being referenced: Not to be a stickler here, but the title of the song Diddy references is missing the all important "The." We're not simply talking about the collective tears of a clown over his or her lifespan. We're meant to consider a singular event in which the clown was brought to uncontrollable sobbing. Upon further inspection,... "The Tears of a Clown" by Smokey Robinson is about heartbreak. And while Diddy is coming home, he's probably only coming home because he has Coulrophobia, which is an irrational fear of clowns.
The probability of this scenario? Diddy, who likens himself to a New Jack Sinatra, appreciates the old school and could just as easily be listening to Smokey as he could be listening to Danity Kane. Which is to say his taste in music is inconsistent. And that he is afraid of clowns.
Altruistic nature of the shout-out: Diddy isn't familiar with this "altruism" you speak of. Is it a vodka drink?
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Eddie Huang’s Top 5 Hip-Hop Albums

Elisa Ludwig — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:00:29 +0000

Eddie Huang, celebrity chef, TV host and author of the memoir Fresh Off the Boat, is pretty sure that hip-hop saved his life when he was a bullied, racially “other” kid growing up in Florida. Even now, the influence is obvious in everything from his restaurant’s playlists to the cover of his book to his Source-esque wardrobe.

Here, he shares the top five albums that got him through his formative SPAM-launching/skateboarding/security fence-hopping years.

Camp Lo, Uptown Saturday Night

Uptown Saturday Night

Camp Lo
1999 | Arista

I can't even explain it — this album is just my a-alike. From the first time I heard it, I never stopped listening to it, every week. It doesn't even speak to me as literally as it does subconsciously. I've listened to this album over and over, but I think the flow on the tracks just taps into my idle mind. A lot of the lyrics are nonsensical, but Cheeba and... Geechi just sound like two kids in high school, talkin' shit, and it transports me back to childhood.
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Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die

Ready To Die The Remaster

The Notorious B.I.G.
1994 | Bad Boy Records

Lyrically, this is my favorite album of all time (this and Illmatic). It's hard to say anything about B.I.G. that hasn't already been said. I related a lot to his story about coming up by any means, owning how he was a fat ass and still having more game than any pretty mofucker out there. "Heartthrob? Never! Black and ugly as ever! However, I stay Coogi down to the socks." I... mean, peep the rhyme scheme, the swag, and the Coogi.
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The Diplomats, Diplomatic Immunity

Cam'Ron Presents The Diplomats - Diplomatic Immunity

The Diplomats
2003 | Roc-A-Fella

"Put your two arms up/ Touchdown." The Ramones ran downtown NY in the '80s from Forest Hills; Diplomats ran it in the '00s all the way from uptown.

Wu Tang Clan, Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers)

Enter The Wu-Tang

Wu Tang Clan
1993 | RCA Records Label

I was never as proud to be Chinese as I was the day I heard Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). I was always a hip-hop head, but a lot of people tried to tell me I couldn't be part of the culture. When these brothers from Shaolin took over the game — with inspiration from Shaw Brothers Films — we felt like we belonged. THANK YOU, RZA.

Outkast, ATLiens

ATLiens

Outkast
1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

People know OutKast post-Stankonia, for the most part, but down South we were bumpin' Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and ATLiens. Outkast was the defining group from the Field that repped for flip-flops and socks and sweatpants. This was the perfect album to smoke to, listening to André and Daddy Fat Sax drop knowledge about Jazzy Belles and Elevators.

Discover: 2013 Grammy Winners

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:52:41 +0000

fun., Gotye and Mumford & Sons came away with some of the 2013 Grammy Awards’ biggest honors. See who else took home golden gramophones and catch up on what you might have missed last year.

Album of the Year

Record of the Year

Somebody That I Used To Know

Gotye
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Stepping out from behind the piano/drums of Melbourne indie pop three-piece the Basics for the third time, Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Wally De Backer, aka Gotye's first solo record in five years, Making Mirrors, reveals a love of the '80s pop scene, which extends far beyond the usual influences of the current nu-synth brigade. Unexpected chart-topper "Somebody That I Used to Know," a collaboration with New Zealand vocalist Kimbra, is an oddball break-up song... whose stuttering rhythms, reggae hooks, and hushed vocals sound like the Police as remixed by the XX.
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Song of the Year

We Are Young

fun.
2011 | Fueled By Ramen

fun. is one of those bands that came seemingly out of nowhere to ascend to the top of the charts. Usually, those groups piggyback the steez of some other currently radio-ruling act. fun. doesn’t. On its breakout second album, the New York trio draws from hip-hop, power-pop, emo, ’70s art-rock, singer-songwriter balladry, contemporary R&B and Broadway; a combo you’ll likely only find right here. Singer Nate Ruess — who also writes the... ardent lyrics and highly sing-able melodies — has a Freddie Mercury thing going on vocally, and Some Nights opens with a flurry of Queen-y harmonies and symphonic gallantry. But after that, all bets are off. The runaway success of “We Are Young,” the first substantial rock song in ages to not only top the pop charts but also put a justified critic’s darling, avant-R&B diva Janelle Monae, on the radio where she belongs, is particularly amazing considering that Ruess’s first band, the Format, was dropped by the same major that now distributes both fun. and Monae.
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Best Pop Vocal Album

Stronger

Kelly Clarkson
2011 | RCA Records Label

It's been nine years since Kelly Clarkson was crowned as the inaugural American Idol, and in that time she's remained the show's ideal; she's a technically gifted singer with charm to spare, an inviting smile, and a knack for inhabiting hooks like they're barnhouse lofts squirreled away on Texas farm. Even the most Idol-allergic music consumers have embraced the combination of melody, perfectly calibrated guitar grit, and wailing that made up her... 2004 hit "Since U Been Gone"; other songs in her catalog, like the sassy "Walk Away" and the girl-group throwback "I Want You," are similarly indelible.

In keeping with Clarkson's career — and the ethos of Idol — her fifth album takes its inspirations from all over the pop map. While Dr. Luke and Max Martin, who shepherded "Gone" and the lead single from Clarkson's previous album All I Ever Wanted, aren't present, the producers in the mix give Stronger a texture that shows how the genre of "pop" can be a jumping-off point, and not an endgame. "You Love Me" is muscular guitar-pop with gorgeous new-wave flourishes blossoming on its pre-chorus; "Dark Side" has a delicate lullaby threaded throughout; "Honestly" opens with a floating haze of guitar distortion that could be mistaken for a chillwave track. The through line between all these stylistic leaps is Clarkson's voice, a formidable instrument that knows when to get vulnerable and when to absolutely blow. (Chillwavers could probably stand to learn a lesson or two from her.)

What gives Stronger its extra oomph is the confidence exhibited by Clarkson as she sings lyrics about self-acceptance being a key to love ("Dark Side") and rumor mills that she wishes would stop churning ("You Can't Win"). Escaping the Idol machine has been a great thing for Clarkson, who sometimes takes on the role of the pop world's ombudsman when she's defending her former show against the "authenticity" police or rolling her eyes at former Idol meanie Simon Cowell's declarations that she's not interested in being a pop star. That Stronger allows her to drop the façade that other pop stars might depend on for dear life, and address both the characters in her songs and her audience directly, speaks both to Clarkson's charm and to her growing maturity as an artist.
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Best New Artist

Some Nights

fun.
2012 | Fueled By Ramen

fun. is one of those bands that came seemingly out of nowhere to ascend to the top of the charts. Usually, those groups piggyback the steez of some other currently radio-ruling act. fun. doesn't. On this, its breakout second album, the New York trio draws from hip-hop, power-pop, emo, '70s art-rock, singer-songwriter balladry, contemporary R&B and Broadway; a combo you'll likely only find right here. Singer Nate Ruess — who also writes... the ardent lyrics and highly sing-able melodies — has a Freddie Mercury thing going on vocally, and Some Nights opens with a flurry of Queen-y harmonies and symphonic gallantry. But after that, all bets are off. The runaway success of "We Are Young," the first substantial rock song in ages to not only top the pop charts but also put a justified critic's darling, avant-R&B diva Janelle MonÃ¡e, on the radio where she belongs, is particularly amazing considering that Ruess's first band, the Format, was dropped by the same major that now distributes both fun. and MonÃ¡e. That Arizona band teamed with Redd Kross/OFF! bassist Steven McDonald for its second album, 2006's Dog Problems, and Ruess and McDonald continued honing their smarty-pants eclecticism on fun.'s 2009 debut Aim and Ignite, with the help of its multi-instrumentalists Jack Antonoff and Andrew Dost, formerly of Steel Train and Anathallo. Here the trio trade McDonald for Jeff Bhasker, a hip-hop/R&B guy who produced monster hits for Kanye West, Jay-Z and BeyoncÃ©. Together, they layer seemingly incompatible genres with reckless but radio-friendly glee, as if a music nerd's iPod somehow got into the hands of a Bruno Mars.
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Best Dance/Electronica Album

Bangarang EP

Skrillex
2011 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

Nominated for five Grammy Awards, shortlisted for the prestigious BBC Sound of 2012 poll, and courted by everyone from Chicago producer Kaskade to metal icons Korn, former From First to Last frontman Sonny Moore's transition from post-hardcore vocalist to dubstep producer couldn't have realistically gone any smoother. However, despite his unprecedented success, there's still a question as to whether he can apply his now trademark, demonic, wobble bass drops and thumping syncopated... beats to a whole album. Named after the battle cry of the lost boys in Steven Spielberg's Hook, his fourth consecutive EP Bangarang (also his first Top 40 entry in both the UK and US) suggests he'll have to be on his game on the forthcoming full-length Voltage if he's to avoid an Emperor's New Clothes scenario. While the bombastic Wall of Sound displayed on 2010's Scary Monsters & Nice Sprites initially provided a unique take on the UK dubstep genre, Skrillex's lack of progression means there's a distinct sense of déjà vu among its seven tracks, particularly on the relentless, scattershot bleeps, chopped-up vocal hooks, and repetitive loops of opener "Right In" and the rap-metal fusion of "Kyoto." Even when he does think outside the box -- as on "Right on Time," a percussive, hard house collaboration with 12th Planet and Kill the Noise which eventually builds into a feverish slice of happy hardcore, and "The Devil's Den," a chaotic hook-up with Wolfgang Gartner which takes in everything from old-school rave to ska to techno — the results are more headache-inducing than thrilling. There are a few more encouraging signs, such as the Doors-featuring "Breakin' a Sweat," which combines proggy guitar hooks, psychedelic organ chords, and Jim Morrison samples with a snarling, Prodigy-esque vocal and a filthy slab of dub bass to produce one of the year's most unexpectedly successful partnerships, and the multi-layered trance of closer "Summit," given an ethereal sheen thanks to Ellie Goulding's lilting tones, both of which suggest Skrillex should utilize his melodic leanings more often. But overall, Bangarang is a disappointingly formulaic affair which hints for the first time that the wheels may soon slowly begin to fall off.
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Best Rock Album

El Camino

The Black Keys
2011 | Nonesuch

The Black Keys, Akron's unsuspecting blues-rock saviors, faced ridiculous pressure in following up their expansive 2010 breakout effort, Brothers. Big things happened in the subsequent year: The duo (vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney) graced the cover of Spin, tucked away three GRAMMYs, played SNL and raked in huge piles of advertising cash — big-deal developments for a band that recorded their debut album in a basement nearly a decade earlier.... Brothers found the band at a creative and commercial high-point, simultaneously embracing soulful pop melodies and the spirited muscle of their live shows, even as they gently experimented with psychedelic overdubs — emphatically darting away from the sleepy, awkward soundscapes of the Danger Mouse-produced identity crisis Attack & Release.

On El Camino, the Black Keys are done trying to impress anybody, sounding wonderfully unhinged throughout the album's compact 38 minutes. The name of the game is hard-hitting focus; spontaneity; keeping it simple, stupid; never over-thinking or over-cooking any swampy chorus or tossed-off lyric ("Hey, my my, she's a money-maker/ Hey, my my, she's gonna take ya," goes one gem). After only producing one Brothers track (the emphatic "Tighten Up"), Danger Mouse returns to man the boards — and though his approach on Attack & Release was heavy-handed, never quite gelling with the duo's style, he takes a wiser backseat approach on El Camino. His presence still lingers (check that whirring Hammond organ and retro-glock twinkle on the hooky "Dead and Gone"), but this time around, he's adapted to the Keys' raw rock approach, instead of forcing a synthesis with his bread-n-butter symphonic electro-pop.

The looseness is intoxicating. "Money Maker"'s beastly bass lags behind a millisecond or two, pushing and pulling in gnarly blues warfare with Auerbach's guitars. Carney, charmingly, still swings with the finesse of a caveman on Ritalin — despite his finest efforts at a multi-tiered groove on standout "Stop Stop," dude nearly trips over his own drum sticks. Those sassy female vocalizers on "Gold on the Ceiling" would fit nicely onstage in a broke-down backwoods bar. The acoustic-ballad-turned-electric-stomper "Little Black Submarines" unintentionally evokes Tenacious D channeling Led Zeppelin, and the result is a goofier (yet no less rocking) "Stairway to Heaven" demoed in a truck-stop bathroom stall. Meanwhile, "Sister" is the Black Keys at their glammiest and hammiest, Auerbach's fuzz-bathed, bee-stung guitars layered impeccably over a wicked Carney stomp.

Perhaps the Black Keys are America's finest rock band only because the competition is so depressingly slim. Regardless, with two straight knock-outs on their resume, these guys have clearly earned the title.
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Best Alternative Album

Making Mirrors

Gotye
2012 | Samples & Seconds / Republic

Stepping out from behind the piano/drums of Melbourne indie pop three-piece the Basics for the third time, Belgian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Wally De Backer, aka Gotye's first solo record in five years, Making Mirrors, reveals a love of the '80s pop scene, which extends far beyond the usual influences of the current nu-synth brigade. The hugely experimental follow-up to 2006's Like Drawing Blood doesn't discriminate against other decades, as evident on the impossibly uplifting... '60s retro soul of "I Feel Better," the '70s West Coast harmonies of the ethereal lullaby-like closer "Bronte," the '90s Beck-esque scuzzy garage rock of "Easy Way Out," and the 2000s hushed, claustrophobic dubstep of "Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You." But seemingly unaffected by the constant comparisons with the likes of Sting and Peter Gabriel, it's the era of early new wave, dub, and worldbeat which defines its 12 tracks. Unexpected chart-topper "Somebody That I Used to Know," a collaboration with New Zealand vocalist Kimbra, is an oddball break-up song whose stuttering rhythms, reggae hooks, and hushed vocals sound like the Police as remixed by the XX, "Smoke and Mirrors" echoes the avant-garde pop of Gabriel's So, with its pounding tribal drums, orchestral flourishes, and new age melodies, while there are also nods to George Michael's "Faith" on the acoustic gospel-pop of "In Your Light"; the impassioned Aussie rock of Midnight Oil on the ecologically themed "Eyes Wide Open," and electro pioneer Thomas Dolby on the strange, vocodered vocals, spoken word samples, and skank guitars of the trippy "State of the Art." Familiar they may be, but some credit has to go to De Backer for managing to weave these eclectic retro sounds into a cohesive affair, which proves that along with recent efforts by Art vs. Science and Architecture in Helsinki, Australia is fast becoming one of the biggest purveyors of quality experimental pop.
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Best R&B Album

Black Radio

Robert Glasper
2012 | BLUE NOTE

Pianist Robert Glasper has jazz chops sophisticated enough to satiate diehard purists and an affinity for hip-hop and R&B that has resulted in collaborations with Q-Tip, Maxwell and Mos Def. Black Radio scrambles these influences, with Glasper's Experiment quartet (including Derrick Hodge on electric bass, Casey Benjamin on sax and vocoder, and Chris Dave playing drums), laying unpredictable music beneath a bevy of high-profile guests. In this era of... Pandora-style musical-profiling, where listeners can narrow down exactly what they think they want, the project absorbs genres like a sponge and squeezes out surprises with a tinge of tang and froth. It avoids the sappiness of "smooth jazz," the stilted self-reference of "hip-hop jazz" and the suffocating cushion of "quiet storm," yet there's a lush sensuality that permeates the beats, bop rhythms and bracing moments of curiosity and intellect.

Glasper understands that this Experiment is best undertaken as a tactile experience - as Shafiq Husayn rap-drawls in the opener, "Lift Off," all you need is your ears and your soul. To drive home the point, the beguiling yawl and coo of Erykah Badu sends the Afro-Cuban classic "Afro Blue" into the air like a large kite in a steady wind, its tail trilling. Rappers Lupe Fiasco and yasiin bey (better known as Mos Def) variously distill verbal science and wig out on wordplay ("turtles from a man hole"?), knowing the live quartet can alter the texture and freestyle the route as the situation warrants, on "Always Shine" and "Black Radio," respectively. There is a throwback nature to Black Radio, and not only because Sade ("Cherish The Day," with Lalah Hathaway on vocals), David Bowie ("Letter to Hermione," featuring Bilal channeling Stevie Wonder) and Nirvana (a deconstructed and vocoderized "Smells Like Teen Spirit") are covered. There are moments reminiscent of the soul-jazz fusion of Bobbi Humphrey and Donald Byrd back on Blue Note in the late '70s, or Soul II Soul and Me Phi Me back in the '80s, or Alphabet Soup and Mint Condition in the '90s, with a dollop of 21st-century hip-hop on top. Why reinvent the wheel when you can modify the ride?
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Best Rap Album

Take Care (Deluxe Version)

Drake
2012 | Cash Money Records/Young Money Ent./Universal Rec.

Drake shot to the upper echelon of hip-hop fame by bypassing nearly every single rule of traditional cred-getting, and none of the ensuing jokes about his role as Wheelchair Jimmy on DeGrassi: The Next Generation or his own penchant for soft-batch hashtag-rap have knocked him back down. If anything, sophomore album Take Care actively doubles down on the things that make him so contentious among traditionalists — the emotional exposure, the singsong... delivery (now manifested more often as straight-up R&B singing), the lyrical focus on relationships — but infuses them with a subtle dose of self-aware ambivalence.

He still acknowledges success — the first line on the album is "I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man" — while "Underground Kings" and "Crew Love" are human-scale acknowledgments that he can afford nice cars and expensive vacations. Yet he still carries himself as though his main concern is connecting with other people without letting status obscure his intent. Most of the people in question are women; they get romantically flattered ("Make Me Proud"), ruefully drunk-dialed ("Marvin's Room"), anxiously reconciled with ("Take Care") and coldly, then regretfully, dumped (the Stevie Wonder feature, "Doing it Wrong").

In the process, Drake foregoes hashtag gimmickry and stretched-to-fatigue punchlines in favor of straightforward confessions, letting the guests — including top-form Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Andre 3000 and mentor Lil Wayne — fill in the pull-quotes. The production does the rest — a gauzy atmosphere of post-Dirty South beats, built around muted, glowing ambient tracks from Noah "40" Shebib, T-Minus and one-shots from Boi-1da, Just Blaze, Jamie xx and Lex Luger — and the sound complements the nuances of Drake's voice in a way that subsumes it almost completely. The end result is an album that feels like the most integral fusion of hip-hop structure and R&B soul-baring since 808s and Heartbreak.
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Best Country Album

Uncaged

Zac Brown Band
2012 | Southern Ground/Atlantic

In a sense, it's possible to measure the progress of the Zac Brown Band by the magnitude of their guest stars. In 2010, they consolidated the breakthrough of 2008's Foundation by enlisting Jimmy Buffett and Alan Jackson for duets — elders whose very presence suggested they were passing a torch (although, to be sure, Buffett has a far greater pull on Brown's sound than Jackson). Two years later, it is the Zac... Brown Band who occupy the power position, drafting in peers, not idols, to play alongside. And it is a diverse batch: twee, twiddly Jason Mraz co-writes the sprightly opening cut, "Jump Right In," with Zac, Trombone Shorty colors "Overnight" with some New Orleans funk, and upcoming folk/blues troubadour Amos Lee sings on "Day That I Die," each guest representing a different field for the ZBB, each suggesting the range of this ever-evolving nominal country band. And at this point, the Zac Brown Band would fit the grander stages of such worldly, knowing vaguely hippie enclaves as Bonnaroo better than they would a rocking country outlet somewhere in the Deep South. But Southern they are, in sensibility and sound, reflecting not the dusty beer joints and cutthroat honky tonks of the middle of the 20th century but the sports bars and sandy beaches of the present, the kinds of places where the kin of the Allmans feel as Southern as the descendants of George Jones...and where a bearded soft rock crooner like Zac Brown is happy to make evident his debt to James Taylor. Brown's sweeter side isn't hidden here but it's not quite as prominent as it's been in the past, either. He has plenty of soft, crooning melodies but there's a bit of bluegrass and a bit of reggae, a little blues and a lot of rock. Above anything else, Uncaged is a Zac Brown Band album, one that emphasizes the range of this quintet and its elastic interplay. It is the sound of a band operating from a position of considerable strength: they're confident, assured, even playful, having fun bending the rules and blurring boundaries, eager to please but never pandering. It's the rare album that suggests how good the band would be in concert yet still sounds vibrant on record.
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Best Jazz Vocal Album

Radio Music Society

Esperanza Spalding
2012 | Heads Up

Now Esperanza Spalding is making even the Grammys look hip. In her first outing since she was named Best New Artist in 2011, Spalding puts a dozen tunes into her stylistic spin cycle for a tour de force of pop glitter, jazz swing, folk moodiness and a dollop of hip-hop swagger on the dense-but-dazzling Radio Music Society. This is the work of an artist who refuses to choose, mocking genre labels with... guileless ambition. (Her original concept was to pair this disc with the classically-oriented, string-laden Chamber Music Society back in 2010, until her record company convinced her the menu would be too large for public consumption.)

By ignoring boundaries, Spalding upends expectations. She enlists august jazz tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano to provide a dulcet lilt to a Stevie Wonder cover ("I Can't Help It") and hip-hop titan Q-Tip to play glockenspiel and co-produce the jazzy tribute to her native Portland, Oregon("City of Roses"). Assembling a phalanx of 23 players and vocalists for a flashy, powerhouse "Radio Song," she sings about the giddiness of being seized by a new jam coming out of the speakers as her own electric bass wends its way through the song's buoyant center. Three songs later, with just the sparse backing of organist James Weidman, she tells the saga of a man falsely imprisoned for 30 years on a bogus murder conviction. On Radio, both extremes are fair game.

As was the case with Chamber Music Society, Spalding's vocals are her ace in the hole. Her range is limited, but her assured and agile phrasing is ideal for carrying out her talk/sung approach. It enables her to credibly pull off a bluesy, big-band-like torch song ("Hold On Me") and to surf atop a youth choir on the anthem "Black Gold." And then there's "Vague Suspicions," a dense and sophisticated number with Jack DeJohnette on drums, about the tacit accommodations Americans make to avoid thinking too much about the consequences of drone strikes and the other elements of remote-control war. It's a grim, simmering number, its closing moments featuring Spalding sarcastically cooing, "Next on channel 4: celebrity gossip." It's a typically astute and self-aware take from an artist who is the closest thing jazz has to a young celebrity.
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Best Jazz Instrumental Album

Unity Band

Pat Metheny
2012 | Nonesuch

Freedom from stylistic constraints has never been an easy thing for Pat Metheny. As one of jazz's greatest composers, guitarists and texturalists, he's compiled on a stockpile of characteristic compositional devices. Any Metheny fan can identify his white-noise-spewing guitar synths and Ornette-style "out" constructions from 40 paces. But Metheny's tools never become clichÃ©s; they're just steps from which he keeps climbing.

Unity Band is yet another example of Metheny's perpetual growth spurt. Metheny's... first record to feature a tenor saxophonist since the mighty 80/81 (with Dewey Redman and Michael Brecker), it sounds both familiar and fresh. Metheny sandblasts new creative paths through well-worn terrain, joined by tenor player Chris Potter, perennial Pat Metheny Group drummer Antonio Sanchez and inspired young bassist Ben Williams. Potter is a muscular foil for Metheny, inspiring him to comp and solo with abandon. The guitarist, though typically brilliant, can sometimes sound hamstrung by his dense PMG studio arrangements. But revamping his afore-mentioned compositional tools through new band mates, Metheny sounds truly inspired on Unity Band.

Metheny's bittersweet acoustic guitar (is there a better acoustic jazz guitarist?) opens "New Year" with a bossa nova lilt, quickly drawing you in. Metheny is soon subsumed by Potter's astringent tenor, followed by group solos over a Metheny-trademarked, high-flying vamp section. Fret-encompassing swoops ("vroom vroom") and guitar synth caterwaul infuse the funky Latin sashay of "Roofdogs," the band firing smoke and sparks as Potter's soprano sax solo winds through solar flare like explosions. Here on soprano, and elsewhere on bass clarinet, Potter shakes clean his hefty Brecker influences to improvise with originality. Sanchez storms Unity Band as well, constantly stoking the intensity level as Williams responds with graceful solos and empathetic support. His solo bass introduction (another Metheny device) to "Come and See" leads to heated solos all around over a feverish pulse. An acoustic guitar-driven ballad, "This Belongs to You," follows, then "Leaving Town," which touches on old PMG favorite "James" in its melody and overall shape. The bell-like chord structure of "Interval Waltz" recalls master guitarist Jim Hall, creating a lovely arc of an arrangement, leading to a beautiful guitar solo over a floating swing pulse. "Signals (Orchestrion Sketch)" is like nothing on any Metheny record, its clattering, Frank Zappa styled (Varese? Stravinksy?) orchestral bed emoting like humorous robots beating street percussion. "Then and Now" sounds a bit like Weather Report's "A Remark You Made" in spirit, followed by closer, "Breakdealer," which with its clunky race to the finish, is Unity Band's only deal-breaker.

Should Pat Metheny replace his main group with the freshly minted Unity Band? The guitarist is re-inspired by material that hints at years of development to come, and this is one killer band. But probably not. Metheny's vision is too broad to be contained by one band and one band alone.
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Best Reggae Album

Rebirth

Jimmy Cliff
2012 | Jimmy Cliff - Rebirth

In 1972, Jimmy Cliff's performance in The Harder They Come introduced U.S. filmgoers to the vibrant desperation ofKingston life, and his inspirational yet tough-minded songs highlighted the movie's soundtrack. Already an established hitmaker at the time, Cliff seemed poised to become Jamaica's first international superstar. Instead he misjudged American audiences, pitching vague homilies and pop professionalism to the AM crowd, allowing Bob Marley to leapfrog past him by assuming a prophetic mantle... and exciting hip FM rockers with his political defiance.

On Rebirth, Cliff now eyes a more judicious audience: middle-aged rockers weaned on punk and alternative. Shepherded by his producer, Rancid frontman Tim Armstrong, the 64-year-old rides the lithe throwback grooves of reggae revivalists the Aggrolites and Hepcat with a young man's grace, particularly on two smartly chosen covers — the Clash's "The Guns of Brixton," which transplanted Cliff's character from The Harder They Come into a London slum, and Rancid's "Ruby Soho." ("Rebel, Rebel" is good too, but it's not the Bowie tune.) Cliff's political complaints haven't grown much more specific — "World Upside Down" cries out against "Too much injustice," then proposes "love" as the answer. But his exhortations not only retain the warmth and humane spirit of old but have gained depths of pained sympathy with age, especially when he laments how "They took the children's bread/ And gave it to the dogs."
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eMusic’s Alternate-Universe GRAMMY Nominees

eMusic Editorial Staff — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:25:52 +0000

Let’s be honest: The Grammys are a great spectacle and fun bit of junk food TV, but few of us take it seriously as any kind of measurement of musical innovation. Even this year, when more indie-bred artists are on the ballot than ever before, with the notable exception of Alabama Shakes it still feels like the Grammy-nominating committee is getting to the party a little too late. So we decided to take 10 of this year’s nominees and use them to introduce you to your next favorite band. Like The Black Keys? See why we suggest Two Gallants. Loving the Lumineers? Read why we think Trampled By Turtles is a good next step. This way, when the 2014 Grammys roll around, you can say, “Those guys? Man, I was into them forever ago.”

Like The Lumineers? Try Father John Misty.

Nominated For: Best New Artist, Best Americana Album
On a recent Saturday Night Live, the Lumineers grinned and stomped their feet. Last summer on Letterman, Father John Misty’s Joshua Tillman swiveled his hips like a lecherous lounge act. But both the Grammy-nominated Denver folk-rockers and the L.A.-transplanted former Fleet Foxes crooner share a fascination with strummy Americana. And the Lumineers’ best moment so far, the aptly titled “Slow It Down,” leans toward Tillman’s own shadowy intensity. Father John’s debut showcases a broader range of all-American styles, from Gram Parson’s country-rock to Lee Hazlewood’s symphonic cowboy-pop comedowns. Luckily, though, Fear Fun isn’t so aptly titled. With the wild-eyed sincerity of a cult leader, Tillman riffs on sex, drugs, and his own newfound hometown for some of 2012′s wickedest lyrical wiseassery. — Marc Hogan

The Lumineers

The Lumineers
2012 | Dualtone
Fear Fun

Father John Misty
2012 | Sub Pop Records

Like Carly Rae Jepsen? Try Chairlift.

Nominated For: Song of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance
“Call Me Maybe” lords over an album — Kiss — that pleasingly serves up more than a few scoops of pink-and-purple Cars-indebted pop. Chairlift’s “I Belong in Your Arms” was a smash hit on a much smaller scale — it rubbed elbows with “Call Me Maybe” on various year-end lists, but not the radio dial — and similarly lords over an album that goes deep into the ’80s, though now we’re talking Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush. From both, the plea is the same: love the single, but pay attention to the album. — Jordan Sargent

Kiss

Carly Rae Jepsen
2012 | Interscope
Something

Chairlift
2012 | Kanine/Columbia

Like Taylor Swift? Try Waxahatchee.

Nominated For: Record of the Year
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” is Taylor Swift’s brightest blast of pop, a thrilling and antagonistic break-up exultation. But the foundation of her music — even last year’s Red — lies in the same type of bracing, lacerating relationship autopsies set to plaintive acoustic guitars that make up Waxahatchee’s American Weekend. Allison Crutchfield won’t soon be mistaken for a pop star that dates a Kennedy — her guitar tones are more ragged and her imagery much grimier — but in her songs the unrelentingly personal becomes universal all the same. — Jordan Sargent

Red

Taylor Swift
2012 | Big Machine Records, LLC
American Weekend

Waxahatchee
2012 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Like Gotye? Try Radical Face.

Nominated For: Best Alternative Album, Record of the Year
Xylophones? Who needs that first-world instrument when handclaps and a tambourine can craft an equally irresistible groove. On this stellar cut from Floridian Ben Cooper’s project, he matches Gotye’s inescapable tune in the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink department. But Cooper’s resulting rollicking anthem — powered by double-tracked acoustic guitars, rustic piano and Cooper’s high, keening croon — is less like wandering the Australian outback and more like cruising in a boxcar with a bunch of hobos. — Kevin O’Donnell

Making Mirrors

Gotye
2012 | Samples & Seconds / Republic
Always Gold - EP

Radical Face
2012 | Bear Machine Records / CD Baby

Like Kelly Clarkson? Try Corin Tucker.

Nominated For: Song of the Year, Record of the Year
Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” is a Nietzschean testament to the strength gained from overcoming a bad relationship. The girl-as-survivor anthem functions as heroic storytelling in pop, giving voice to female empowerment. But what about the struggle for respect that happens within a committed partnership? The Corin Tucker Band’s Kill My Blues celebrates strength in vulnerability by reflecting what it feels like when you turn your relationship into a family. And frankly, while Clarkson has never sounded better, nothing compares to Corin Tucker’s voice when it soars like a jet plane. — Tobi Vail

Stronger

Kelly Clarkson
2011 | RCA Records Label
Kill My Blues

The Corin Tucker Band
2012 | Kill Rock Stars / Redeye

Like Jack White? Try Dead Sara.

Nominated For: Album of the Year, Best Rock Album
Jack White seemingly rifled through his classic rock collection to create Blunderbuss, but that album’s guitar-god moments pale in comparison to Dead Sara’s self-titled debut. The Los Angeles quartet storms through gnarly hard rock influenced by bluesy grunge (“Test On My Patience”), punk (the snarling “Monumental Holiday”) and metallic twang (“Timed Blues”). Credit for this raw power goes to the talents of lead guitarist Siouxsie Medley and vocalist/guitarist Emily Armstrong. The latter’s gravelly, vibrato-laden wail especially commands attention; think Stevie Nicks possessed by a demon — or the ghost of a wizened blues warbler. — Annie Zaleski

Blunderbuss

Jack White
2012 | Third Man/Columbia
Dead Sara

Dead Sara
Pocket Kid Records

Like Mumford & Sons? Try Trampled By Turtles.

Nominated For: Album of the Year, Best Rock Performance
The dramatic sine curves of Mumford & Sons’ acoustic anthems, which begin quietly and progress straight to rousing climaxes, get tweaked and trampled on Stars & Satellites, the sixth album by Duluth, Minnesota, veterans Trampled by Turtles. Supporting Dave Simonett’s self-reckoning lyrics and earnest vocals, the band has grown into one of the most accomplished and ambitious string bands around. Each song here contains some lively flourish — the majestic fiddle cascades on “Midnight on the Interstate,” the tectonic rumble of cello on “Alone” — that shows these Turtles not only mastering the new folk genre but thinking well beyond it. — Stephen M. Deusner

Stars and Satellites

Trampled By Turtles
2012 | Banjodad Records / The Orchard

Like Frank Ocean? Try Elle Varner.

Nominated For: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best New Artist
A confident R&B debut that isn’t afraid to reach across genre boundaries in order to make its point — that might describe Frank Ocean’s much-ballyhooed channel ORANGE, but it also serves as an introduction to the first album by Elle Varner. Not only can she out-falsetto Odd Future’s resident crooner, tracks like the fiddle-strung “Refill” (up for Best R&B Song) and the saucy “Sound Proof Room” have a brash confidence that demands repeat listens. — Maura Johnston

channel ORANGE

Frank Ocean
2012 | Def Jam Records
Perfectly Imperfect

Elle Varner
2012 | RCA Records Label

Like fun.? Try Foxy Shazam.

Nominated For: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best New Artist
Like fun., this Cincinnati septet draw from glam-rock, pop and R&B for a holler-from-the-rooftops, glory-glory-Halllelujah kinda vibe that totally cops to its own exaggeration and earnestness. Foxy Shazam, though, rock a lot harder; in fact, they never do anything to less than extremes: When they embrace Queen-like overdubbed choirs and scuzzy Led Zeppelin-eque stolen blues riffs on this, their fourth and most realized album, they really, really go for them. And so any appraisal of their most popular song, “I Like It,” where singer Eric Sean Nally repeatedly wails Robert Plant-style, “That’s the biggest black ass I’ve ever seen/And I like it, I like it – a lot!” should take into account that everything Foxy Shazam stand for is larger than life, including the soulfulness that’s intertwined with their innate ridiculousness. We all have obsessions that others could judge harshly, and if one of his is African-American backsides (he’s featured them the cheerleader-adorned cover of Introducing and similarly themed “Oh Lord” video), he’s also bold enough to admit it. This guy does not hold back, and, in the bigger picture, it’s endearing. — Barry Walters

Some Nights

fun.
2012 | Fueled By Ramen
The Church of Rock and Roll

Foxy Shazam
2012 | CAPITOL

Like The Black Keys? Try Two Gallants.

Nominated For: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Rock Album
They say that you don’t sing the blues to wallow in them; you sing ‘em to rise above ‘em. This folk-blues duo’s reunion/comeback album draws its considerable power from a somewhat similar dichotomy. While embracing (really, for the first time) bloom as well as blight, they create a sound more crunching, grinding, shredding and thrashing than ever even as they are softer, sweeter, more soothing and intimate. So they come off as just like themselves only more so and there’s this whole new feeling. That ain’t easy, folks. — John Morthland

El Camino

The Black Keys
2011 | Nonesuch
The Bloom and the Blight

Two Gallants
2012 | ATO Records

Pillowfight, Pillowfight

Barry Walters — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:19:05 +0000

Dan the Automator and Emily Wells combine street beats and classical chops

Hip-hop and violins — those that haven’t been sampled or scratched in — now have a new chapter in their short history together. Dan the Automator and his new collaborator Emily Wells, an Amarillo-born singer-songwriter, are both trained violinists who’ve been combining street beats, classical chops and conventional song structures either on their own or, in Dan’s case, with Handsome Boy Modeling School, Gorillaz and other genre-bending studio projects. With turntable wizardry from kindred soul Kid Koala and background vocals from Oakland MC Lateef the Truthspeaker, the pair align forces on an album that recalls trip-hop’s melodramatic ’90s heyday via Portishead and DJ Shadow.

It’s hard — particularly at first — not to hear Wells’s raspy, singsong delivery and not think of Macy Gray, even if her lyrics detailing the lives of losers and their equally dysfunctional lovers do boast their own gritty appeal. But there’s so much rich, undulating stuff going on behind her that the instrumentation ultimately wins this Pillowfight: Gothic organ riffs, funky cold machine beats, syncopated live percussion, Spaghetti Western guitars, brass horn blasts and several varieties of strings all comingle in a smooth and savvy collision of low and high art. Like all trip-hop joints, Pillowfight is heavy on mid-tempo languor and shadowy ambiance, and that’s as it should be. Although it may not have much to do with the rest of the disc, album highlight “Get Down” circumvents both of those attributes to evoke the ’90s rock-funk jams of Luscious Jackson. In doing so, it does exactly what it commands.

Six Degrees of A$AP Rocky’s Long.Live.A$AP.

Hua Hsu — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:30:45 +0000

The Album

LONG.LIVE.A$AP

A$AP Rocky
2013 | A$AP Worldwide/Polo Grounds Music/RCA Records

We will look back on the early 2010s as a time when hip-hop became obsessed with style — not lyrical style or anything so old fashioned, but personal style. Good, bad or strange, billowing black capes or crisp skatewear, leather kilts or retro gold: It pays to have taste, or at least the appearance thereof. The rise of Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky has as much to do with his entrancing, hybrid Harlem-Houston... sound as his keen, confident sense of fashion — as he raps on "Hell," "We used to wear rugged boots/ Now it's all tailored suits." Everything is fluid and stylized, every nanosecond of sound an opportunity for curation. The lures are obvious: the meticulously dark title track, the vice anthem "PMW," the Clams Casino-produced mission statement "LVL," the booming, short-attention-span posse cuts "F---in' Problems" and "1 Train." This is hip-hop circa 2013: a voracious, all-at-once sound that swerves, swaggers and preens from street to street, from the Internet to all corners of the map.
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The Namesake

Follow The Leader

Eric B. & Rakim
1988 | Geffen

There were no baby-steps or first drafts; the teenage Rakim arrived fully formed. The singles that comprise his 1987 debut Paid in Full expanded the possibilities of rapping over a beat. It's a sign of the era's hyper-competitiveness that their second album, released the following year, didn't merely rehash their triumphant style. Instead, Follow the Leader feels much more minimal: the title track's guttural bounce, the straightforward, line-for-line wizardry of "Microphone Fiend."... A$AP Rocky's government name is Rakim Mayers, his mother's way of paying homage to the God MC. Follow was released a few months before Mayers was born, which is truly strange if your conscious memory reaches back that far. For someone of Rocky's vintage, perhaps Eric B and Rakim feel most inspirational as a series of poses: fearless, brash, cocksure. While the young Harlem rapper hasn't quite inherited his eponym's intricate rhyme scheme, there are traces of Golden Age gusto throughout his aesthetic, from his laidback confidence to the verging-toward-absurd style that plays like a modern-day Dapper Dan.
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The Home Team

Cam'Ron Presents The Diplomats - Diplomatic Immunity

The Diplomats
2003 | Roc-A-Fella

There's a clip on YouTube about the making of the Diplomats and Master P's "Bout It, Bout It…Part III" video and, near the end, a 15-year-old A$AP Rocky gleefully appears, jostling around with his friend in front of a bemused Jim Jones. The first Diplomatic Immunity posse album was one of the high points of the colorful Harlem clique's career together. There was massive, block-rocking fare engineered for the New York canon... — "I Really Mean It," "I'm Ready," "Dipset Anthem," "Real Ni***s" — and then there were the over-the-top moments that suggested an arena-sized, verging-toward-mad braggadocio — "Built This City" or the Winger-sampling melodrama of "Ground Zero," for example. "New Orleans and Roc-A-Fella: It's bout it bout it," Master P warns, and this mingling of "up top" with "Down South" sounded like a blueprint for the future. Circa the mid 2000s, the Diplomats were a ubiquitous presence, the rare New York act that boasted connections throughout L.A., the Bay, Houston, London (S.A.S.!), "Dayton, Youngstown, Cleveland, Cincinnati."
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The New Normal

Greatest Hits

Z-Ro
Rap-A-Lot Fontana

Representing New York might be A$AP Rocky's birthright, but he's far from a hometown purist. He came of age in the late 1990s and 2000s, when New York offered but one of many "regional" sounds. You can hear a swirl of influences in Rocky's music — the Uptown flamboyance of Dipset but also the creeping, John Carpenter-cribbing textures that haunt Memphis, the languid but dexterous sing-songs that soundtrack Texas's sprawl. Rocky acquired... his versatile approach to song structure by studying artists like Devin the Dude, U.G.K. or Scarface — the slowed-down choruses of "Peso," "Goldie" and "PMW," for example, all owe something to the South. A member of DJ Screw's original Screwed Up Click, the unheralded Z-Ro has one of the most disarming voices you'll ever hear. The perfect complement to Screw's syrupy sound, Z-Ro is hypnotic, enchanting, almost gentle-sounding. Time goes peaceful and languid, as he surveys his empire (the "Paid in Full"-styled "Mo City Don" or the classic "25 Lighters") or schemes to hit you with "the mule."
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The Scene

Fool’s Gold Presents: Loosies

Various Artists
2012 | Fool's Gold Records

The longest track on Long.Live.A$AP is "1 Train," a Wu-sized posse cut featuring Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, Yelawolf, Danny Brown, Action Bronson and Big K.R.I.T. It works as both a gesture of covering-his-bases realpolitik and a we-got-next manifesto, a bracing inventory of all that the present will allow. Loosies collects some of the hybrid-obsessed Fool's Gold label's favorite current hip-hop. Despite the diversity of acts, a shared aesthetic runs through these... selections: charismatic, Looney Tunes raps, EDM synths and massive, blast radius bass-lines. Danny Brown sounds ecstatically murderous on "Molly Ringwald," while Droop-E goes for cavernously lonesome on "Mind Gone." Action Bronson's retro "Twin Peugeots" and Flatbush Zombies' minimalist "36 Chamber Flow" flex two different approaches to being a New York rapper circa 2013, both Wu-indebted. The bedroom producer has more tools than ever at their disposal, and geography is no longer a form of determinacy.
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The Co-Conspirator

Born To Die

Lana Del Rey
2012 | Interscope

"I made it acceptable to wear braids and play JFK," Rocky recently told Pitchfork. It says something about him (and our times) that that's not even the strangest thing he says in the interview. The old language of collaborations and cameos is now one of brand alliances, tie-ins, cross-promotion, and there were few moves as brazen as Rocky's aforementioned turn as a pomo Kennedy in Lana Del Rey's 2012 "National Anthem" video.... While Del Rey has come under scrutiny for her seemingly inauthentic image, Rocky's done a masterful job trading off his rather fluid attitude toward authenticity and borders. The LDR track intended for Long.Live didn't make the final cut, but Rocky's clearly got a larger crossover audience in mind, rapping over Skrillex's frenetic strobes on "Wild for the Night" and heading out on tour with Rihanna. On "Fashion Killa," Rocky raps about his ideal lady, "jiggy like Madonna" and "trippy like Nirvana," someone who might appreciate his mastery of men's and women's boutique brands. Where his predecessors may have worried about shady label politics, Rocky has other things on his mind: Lanvin, Balmain, Isabel Marant, Alexander Wang.
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Interview: A$AP Rocky

Jayson Greene — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:16:58 +0000

None of us knew it at the time, but when the Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky swung through the eMusic offices last spring, accompanied by a good portion of his entourage, his major-label debut Long.Live.A$AP was nowhere near seeing the light of day. That day, it was slated for a July 4 release, and “Goldie,” Rocky’s glossy gold-plated lead single produced by Hit Boy (“Niggas in Paris”, “Clique”), had just hit radio. He was riding high on the buzz from his free mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, which had delivered on the promise of his tantalizing earliest songs. Those songs, accompanied by compelling, stylish low-budget clips, suggested a marketable phenomenon, but even then he was on his way to proving he was also a budding star.

It was early afternoon; he had just arrived from BET, and he was affable but drowsy, with extremely low eyelids suggesting some early-morning mood-lifting had taken place. He was circumspect about the album’s progress (“It’s about 75 percent done,” was all he would say) but lit up when the conversation strayed into rap and memories. Above everything else, Rocky is a music fan with exquisite taste, and our interview veered quickly into a series of rap-nerd rabbit holes. I could never have imagined that the interview would end with mutual giggling, trading of Diplomats trivia, and a rapturous, wordless listening session to David Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul,” but end that way it did.

Who was your favorite rapper when you were seven years old?

Shit, back then it was probably the Wu-Tang Clan or Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. I can’t really remember. A year later, though, it was DMX. When I was eight, it was all about DMX. Eight was the same year I started listening to Rakim. My name’s Rakim; he’s my namesake. Growing up, my favorite movie was Juice, so my favorite Rakim song is still “Know the Ledge.”

How about your favorite DMX song?

I think “The Omen” was one of my favorites; that’s him featuring Marilyn Manson. That record was dope. That’s back when DMX was just in artist form; no one could dilute what he was doing. I like Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood as much as It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot; He put them both out in the same year and they both did great; I don’t think that could happen again. I associate that era with just a lot of dirt bikes and four-wheelers, from those videos.

When was the first time you spit a verse in front of a group of people?

I was nine years old. I was spitting this written rhyme I had.

Do you remember it?

I could try! Let’s see. [Thinking]: “It’s like a fatality/ Every nigga wanna battle me/ Cops never catch me, they always catch my shadow, see/ I’m like a faculty/ Step into my reality/ If we standing on the line than you in back of me.” [Everyone laughs]. It was wack. But I was nine!

But when I was 13? Ooh. 13, I was spitting. [Laughs.] Thirteen was when I first rapped over the “Grindin’” beat. It was the first time I ever recorded. How’d it go? “Now firmly be standin’/ [Mumble mumble] fan in/ The blood on his head looks like burgundy dandruff/ Words they be slanted…something something…Niggas beast, now money gone/ Popped like Sonny’s dome/ I could turn into a beast like Honeycomb/ My songs will have you laughing at cryin’ at the same time, like if you’d got popped in the funny bone/ Aim you, shame you/ leave more red on your body than The Game do…I’m also the nigga to rob you and say thank you.” That was dope for 13, come on! They was going pretty crazy for that.

When I was 14, Cam’ron and JR Writer were my favorite rappers. Cam’ron, JR Writer and Fabolous. They were at the top for me. I had this really dope rap that basically bit Diplomats’ style. How’d it go? Waitamminit, waitamminit. [Pause.] Oh! It went: “For Zeus’s sakes/ I let the deuce scrape/ Straight for this dude’s face/ ‘AIM’ like the toothpaste/ You’ll be a new case/ The D’s hate my Dro, cuz it stay sticky sorta like tape or glue paste…I got rubber bullets but they feel so real/ Shoot around with the heat like Shaquille O’Neal/ I used to didn’t like hoes, they used to be too mean/ Till they saw me with 100-pair Evizu jeans/ The cars, the high-top Pradas, pea-soup green/ Long hair, oh my god, he’s too clean…All these jealous niggas know not to play me, dick/ Cuz the right hook’ll leave you with a Jay-Z lip/ I drop 80 quick/ I drive a gravy Six/ I sell powder, not the type you change a baby with/Oh you think son hot?/ I’mma let the gun pop/ When you see my tennis shoes you gonna think the sun dropped/ Thug you done popped/ I get dumb guap/ The only time you get a brick is when you miss a jump shot…” [Laughs.] Ahhhhh man, I don’t know! That’s dope for 14, though! That was some Cam’ron/JR Writer flow right there. I was a fan at that time, I’m not gonna lie.

You and the A$AP crew did a Vice Magazine feature awhile ago where you posed in a bunch of classic album covers. There were some interesting non-rap choices in there that I wanted to ask you about.

We picked out the records, but they presented them to us. Some of them I knew as a kid, though. I ain’t too familiar with Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, for example — I’m going to check it out, though! And then Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours? Man, what I like about that shit is that it takes me into a David Bowie kind of mind state. The cover is so dope, because I didn’t get what the fuck they meant by it. What the fuck is this guy on his knees for, and why is this guy drinking out of an empty glass with a cane? I was like, “I don’t get it. I gotta do this one.”

You mentioned David Bowie. Do you have a favorite David Bowie record?

I got a few. In the ’70s, he was the fuckin’ man. You’ve got to have balls to walk around with a pink fucking lightning bolt on your face and shit, with a blond haircut. And he fucking married a black supermodel and shit; that wasn’t even a cool thing to do back then! That guy was just a fucking rock star. He did what the fuck he wanted. And then he did a song with John Lennon, and you don’t even know John Lennon’s on the fucking song. It’s just funky as fuck. And who the fuck can act as Andy Warhol? That guy’s a fucking legend.

If we lived in some alternate universe where you could easily clear the sample, what track what you rap over by David Bowie?

“Lady Grinning Soul.” This song is killer. This shit is melodic, it’s intimate. I fucked a bitch to this. It was intense; the lights were dark, and she was high. She was on coke, I was on weed. It was passionate, man.

A$AP Rocky, Long.Live.A$AP

Jordan Sargent — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:16:12 +0000

The high-profile spawn of a mutating rap world that acknowledges no barriers

If there’s an avatar for what rappers will look like in the future, it’s probably New York City MC A$AP Rocky. He was born in Harlem as Rakim Mayers, namesake of one of the most famous rappers ever, but that’s where his traditionalism ends. Rocky is the high-profile spawn of a mutating rap world that acknowledges no barriers between regional sounds, or the worlds of hip-hop and high fashion or the streets and Tumblr. His intoxicated, slow-mo major-label debut album is descended directly from Houston’s screw scene and its omnipresent purplish-pink mixture of cough syrup and soda — a heady brew that serves as the perfect emblem for an album with so many influences that you can almost imagine it as iridescent.

Rocky spits with classic New York focus and ferocity, but that isn’t his main strength: You don’t listen to Rocky for quotables. This might seem like a problem, but the world of rap, now more than ever, often has little concern for how your lyrics read on the page. The game is now about branding and innovation — which, uncoincidentally, are the two things that really power Long.Live.A$AP. The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic.

And at the center stands the man himself — icily cool, joined by a bunch of his famous friends and spouting off the names of fashion brands most of us can’t even spell. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like Long.Live.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.

A$AP Rocky, LONG.LIVE.A$AP (Deluxe Version)

Jordan Sargent — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:39:57 +0000

The high-profile spawn of a mutating rap world that acknowledges no barriers

Rocky spits with classic New York focus and ferocity, but that isn’t his main strength: You don’t listen to Rocky for quotables. This might seem like a problem, but the world of rap, now more than ever, often has little concern for how your lyrics read on the page. The game is now about branding and innovation — which, uncoincidentally, are the two things that really power LONG.LIVE.A$AP. The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic.

And at the center stands the man himself — icily cool, joined by a bunch of his famous friends and spouting off the names of fashion brands most of us can’t even spell. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like LONG.LIVE.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.