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Friday, November 27, 2009 His Name Is... A few things Wayne for you all. First: above is the trailer for the upcoming Lil' Wayne documentary, the exact details of which (including release date) I'm not very familiar, but which I was able view in its entirety last weekend. I'm not sure that anyone right now is arguing the need for such a film, but I was surprised how compelling it was and how much I wasn't ready for it to be over when it ended. The number one thing about the man, above and beyond, is that he's no dope who lucked into fame by brashness and circumstance--Wayne is, without doubt, a truly creative spirit with the kind of ever-burbling brain from which ideas constantly spring out. I'm a person who generally dislikes docu-bios and biopics as concepts, for the sake of my frustration at the idea of summarizing hours, days or years into 90-120 minutes, and as such I'm inherently dismissive of any ideas posited on characters displayed in such ventures.... but all of which is to say that the Wayne of the World here is one who anyone should be able to see and take interest in. I won't give much away, but he certainly comes off not as a rapper but as a wordgenius whose life has collided with the world of rap. And if that ain't interesting to you, then it ain't. ------------ On possibly a more exciting Wayne front though, the Lil' Master has finally released a mixtape worthy of the cream of his "tween-Carter" 2007-08 tapes Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3: and he calls it No Ceilings and you can get it here. Many of you have already heard and rejoiced in this tape, and I'll join you there, as it's for sure a "return to form". I do have to offer a little skepticism and say that I don't think i'd call No Ceilings amazing, but it's definitely good, and refreshing to know that he hasn't bought too much yet into the "Prom Queen" crossover shit he put out earlier this year. But speaking of crossover appeal, one track on No Ceilings that has sort of stuck in my craw in an embarrassing way is the late addition not-titular cut "I Got No Ceilings", a feel-good pop hit that takes the instrumental from--seriously--the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling". I knew the moment my ears took in this track that I would probably feel guilty once I found out the source, but it didn't stop me from experiencing an immediate swell of, "Wow!" as I for the first time heard Lil' Wayne delivering on the potentiality of candy pop-rap in a way I'd never quite imagined... which, when combined with his ability to go big in a more or less non-trad rap way with the emo-darkness "Shoot Me Down", makes me believe that it is entirely possible that he's got a quality post-rap record in him providing that he works with the right folks (ie, people with taste and a sense for true hooks). On some level, this is the same point emphasized by the striking power of his best mixtapes when compared to his released efforts: that Wayne goes from Rapping to Killing Shit when his generally-fantastic words are combined at last with truly A-level (ie, non-Mannie Fresh) beats. It kills me a little that "Lollipop" is the biggest hit Wayne has had yet as it simply emphasizes the dearth of quality pop-worthy beats he's had on his officially released output. Here's to the future though... LISTEN: Lil Wayne - "I Got No Ceilings", from No Ceilings mixtape ------------ Finally, I've been hard at work on putting together a Wayne "best of" compilation for a friend, and in that spirit, below are my five favorite Weezy tracks, in no particular order. There are obviously way more than five great hits, but these I think are the ones that I'll put on if I have time to just put on one song before leaving the house, to tie my shoes, to go into a business meeting, etc. Stand alone and unfuckwithable. Jeffrey Beaumont's Five Favorite Lil' Wayne Tracks (in no actual order): 1. "I'm Me", from The Leak EP 2. "Off The Docks", from Lil Weezy Ana mixtape 3. "You Ain't Got Nuthin' On Me", from Tha Carter III 4. "My Name Is...", unreleased 5. "Shoot Me Down", from Tha Carter III Labels: Lil Wayne, loved sounds, mp3, music, random lists, rap posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/27/2009 02:05:00 AM 1 comments Friday, August 28, 2009 Fuck The Police? Sanam: "reading is the tool of the devil" JeffreyBeaumont: DON'T READ BOOKS JeffreyBeaumont: BAD FOR SOUL Sanam: GOOD FOR SAFETY Sanam: have you seen this new lil wayne video? Sanam: about him fucking a cop? JeffreyBeaumont: ................. JeffreyBeaumont: ummmmmmmm JeffreyBeaumont: no JeffreyBeaumont: what it called? Sanam: um Sanam: mrs. officer Sanam: it's kind of awesome Sanam: "she know I'm from the street" Sanam: "but all she wants me to do is fuck tha police" JeffreyBeaumont: i know the song JeffreyBeaumont: it's a pretty not awesome song compared to rest of carter III JeffreyBeaumont: but geez JeffreyBeaumont: i need to find the video Sanam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPb1JtslNpg JeffreyBeaumont: good lord, you are good to me Sanam: I do what I can JeffreyBeaumont: i need a good misogynistic lil wayne video right now Sanam: when 'a milli' came out Sanam: I spent a good few months trying to find that hat Sanam: the "don't tread on me" cap he wears in both videos JeffreyBeaumont: oh man, yes Sanam: because, obviously, it's the greatest hat on earth Sanam: it is sooo nowhere to be found Sanam: t-shirts: yes Sanam: hats: no Sanam: I ask you to keep your eyes peeled Sanam: next time you're in either an urban sneaker shop Sanam: or a suburban mega mall Sanam: because I feel like that's where it'll pop up JeffreyBeaumont: my eyes eyes are so peeled the lids are pinned to my forehead Sanam: haha gross Sanam: but much appreciated Labels: IMs, Lil Wayne, lolgore, music, rap, videos posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/28/2009 04:34:00 PM 0 comments Thursday, June 18, 2009 Clawed Bits Of Secrecy In The Binary Age  Friend: hola JeffreyBeaumont: word Friend has taken this chat off the record (from now on, chats with Friend will not be saved in your Gmail account or Friend's) Friend: know anyone who will pay good money for pain pills? Friend: This chat is no longer off the record JeffreyBeaumont: dude. dude. seriously. JeffreyBeaumont: hahahahhahahahahaha Friend: i love doing that shit Friend: makes me feel gangsta LISTEN: Lil Wayne - "Poppin' Them Bottles", from Dedication 2 mixtape Labels: fucktactics, IMs, Lil Wayne, lolgore, rap posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/18/2009 02:10:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Make Sure To Park Your Love Boat In the Right Lake JeffreyBeaumont: i fucking love "My Name Is" still JeffreyBeaumont: man that shit is great JeffreyBeaumont: all he needs to do is put out one great 3 min track every few months JeffreyBeaumont: and i will excuse the torrent of terrible mixtapes JeffreyBeaumont: Oh, wait. Erm. JeffreyBeaumont: Hi J, sorry, meant to send that to my friend jayson Intern-J: figured that out, yes, haha JeffreyBeaumont: that was probably inexplicable to you, unless you happen to like lil wayne Labels: fucktactics, IMs, Lil Wayne, lolgore, music, rap posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 6/16/2009 11:32:00 AM 0 comments Saturday, May 23, 2009 My Life In Reverse: Love Notes, Et Al Top Five Artists on Last.fm Over The Past Year By Track Plays: 1: Deerhunter/Atlas Sound, 1,138 2: Lil' Wayne, 878 3: Guided by Voices, 579 4: Bob Dylan, 553 5: Nine Inch Nails, 486 Guided By Voices appear, I believe, due to their consistent meat and two veg indieness (and me owning like nine of their 20-30 song albums), but the other four are there as great representations of the strange divergent craziness of my headspace over this past bizarre year. Future-thinking indie rock noise, thank-god-you're-alive-hiphop, songwriterly introspection, and headbanging take-the-bull-by-the horns riffage. The last year has been both strange and great, and these artists tell the story of the all over-the-map places I've been. The only thing missing is the steady steel pulse of reggae, and that's mostly because it has only come on recently and I've mostly consumed it via multi-artist comps. But I'm sure it will have its space when I check in next year. I look forward to finding out. Labels: BEAUMONT, deerhunter, Lil Wayne, music, Nine Inch Nails, statistics posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 5/23/2009 08:13:00 PM 0 comments Friday, April 24, 2009 The Beat Builds Slowly Toward Summer This is precisely the kind of thing I can imagine Doorknobs hating on but I think it's some cute kidshit: Nothing to write home to mom about, but it was apparently made with all college kids and was shot in one take. The rapping of Nyle is innocuously safe, but I'm comfortable with this all nonetheless. Labels: la cine, Lil Wayne, music, rap posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/24/2009 02:37:00 PM 0 comments Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Wayne, Can You Hear Me?  Dear Lil Wayne: I don't want to waste much time writing much on this topic, but let me join the chorus of dudes wishing you a swift recovery from shit-townitis with hopes that you soon return to the land of the creative and successful. Wayne, if I could make a suggestion that ending your affection with autotune would be a start, and then reconsidering your desires to become a "rock star" a close second, and then I think you might be on your way. Right now you are killing me--in the none "Killin' me, mama!" way--with your strange-sounding awful nonsense. All I can say in it's favor is that a surprising amount is not emo-crap bad (ala "Prom Queen") but weird bad ("Piano Man", "Rock Star", "Too Fly"). Yes, so you've surprised me. Good for you. But now it's nearly summer, so let's get back to the business of making SWEET RAP MUSIC, while there's still enough time for you to drop a hot warm weather nugget that will have me getting wasted and taking my shirt off and remembering why I will always be a lover at heart. Thanks for your consideration. Love, Jeffrey Beaumont Labels: disappointment, fucktactics, god letters, Lil Wayne, music, rap, thoughts posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/14/2009 06:43:00 PM 0 comments Monday, February 02, 2009 Unexpected Reactions / Power In Old Age  My musical tastes have always been all over the map, but in the past year they've really been something else entirely. For most of my life I never felt inclined to be obsessive about particular tracks or artists--there was always so much music out there that it seems too easy to always listen to "something else". Something has clicked within me though in the last 12 months though that has lead me to great obsessions, over artists and individual tracks in particular. I haven't the time to name them all but "It's All Over Now," "Sea of Love," "Untitled 2," "Isolation," and, most recently, "Dreams" (in covers, not the original) have eaten my soul alive with their infectious goodness. And beyond the songs are a few "artists" whose tunes have rained down upon my brain like drizzling napalm over the past six months are Deerhunter/Atlas Sound, Lil Wayne, Nina Simone, 50s rock/60s soul, and--most curiously--Nine Inch Nails. Deerhunter and Lil Wayne both came into my life in 2008 as new and previously unexplored artists who each share the talents of being both immensely creative and insanely prolific. Bradford Cox emits a nonending stream of albums, EPs, singles, "bonus projects" and internet-only nonsense under both Deerhunter and Atlas Sound outfits, and Lil Wayne drops a new mixtape more or less every time he sneezes. The quality control for both isn't amazing (Bradford sometimes too cute and boring; Wayne sometimes just terrible), but their genius is unquestionable and their tenacity unrivaled. Therefore, it's not too surprising how much these men have affected me, but that it took me so long to hear (and love) them. The 50s rock/60s soul comes as a direct outcropping of Bradford's obsession with both of these musics, feeding my brain both with his covers of such songs as well as his constant discussions of them. Hearing swaying, swooning reverb guitar, or soulful paeans to a time forgotten make me well up into a ball of fake-nostalgic nothing. It's a kind of haunting empty reductiveness that makes me think of my childhood, my grandparents, David Lynch, and a time that I imagined once existed but never really did. Which is to say the same general "theme" of shit I've cared about for most of my life. So that's all very sensible. But then we get to the outlier--NINE INCH NAILS. [Should I be writing that as "NINE INCH NAILS (!!!?!!?!)"?] Before Nine Inch Nails came into my life again this year, I last cared about them in 1997, when the soundtrack to David Lynch's Lost Highway came out and it not only featured the fantastic Nine Inch Nails "Perfect Drug" single, but was also entirely compiled carefully and lovingly by Trent Reznor as hands-down the best and creepiest "stands-on-its-own" movie soundtrack I've ever heard. Not just a collection of good or appropriate songs, but a disconcertingly spun web of malevolent sonic envelopement that matches perfectly the ghostly darkness and fear-driven disorientation of its cinematic twin. But I digress: because even then, in 1997, all the new music Nine Inch Nails fans got was this soundtrack, featuring one single Nine Inch Nails song. The last new NIN album to come out (not counting the reams of singles and remix collections) was the schoolmom-hating Downward Spiral in 1994, and the time that passed from '94-'97 was a pretty long stretch for a 15 year old boy. By the time Spiral sequel The Fragile dropped in '99 I had already moved too far on to even bother listening to it once. I was pretty ok with this--the second half of the '90s saw a shittening** of both the power of Nine Inch Nails bombast as well as the status of Guru Reznor, who seemed to put more focus on being an alcoholic and helping to further the career of Marilyn Manson (and thus 1,000,000 shitty, terrible, derivative metal/nu-metal/rap-metal/stoner-metal bands popular only in the Midwest). Frankly, by 2001, liking--let alone stepping up for--Nine Inch Nails seemed almost embarrassing. Flash forward many years to May 2008, when I got an email from a friend saying, "Hey dude, you might wanna check this out--Nine Inch Nails just released their first album for free, so grab it if you're interested." For whatever reason I went for it, and then waited three months before listening to the album for the first time, one late night coming home from work at 10pm in late summer. And BOOM. BOOM. BOOOOOOOOOOOM. I cannot for the life of me explain it, but from the beginning drum thuds of first song "1,000,000" I was just blown away. I imagined in my head I would listen to half the album, maybe even only one or two songs, just a few times and then delete it. But instead what I heard was an intense, enrapturing rock and roll assault that left me begging for more. It is clear that above all the success of this album, called The Slip, comes from its non-belabored immediacy. More than most "difficult artists" in the rock industry, Trent Reznor established a reputation over the years as having the Frank Zappa /Billy Corgan-esque maniacal obsession to detail while on an illusory quest for a kind of perverted perfection that would never be found. And frankly, the harder he tried, I think the more he struggled. The Slip just feels fast and fresh--yes, it's got the standard Reznor sonic sheen, but it feels gestational in a raw way that suits Reznor unbelievably well. My only knock against The Slip, if I have any at all, is the fact that it's really more of an EP--six powerful, intense rock songs before suddenly collapsing into an "At The Heart of It All" / "The Beauty of Being Numb" quiet period into >> instrumental soundscape for 5minutes. The disc closes up with one more burner, but the tracks prior just don't rock enough and don't hit the astonishing heights of album highlights, "Discipline", "Echoplex," or "1,000,000". But honestly, this is all quibbling, and there's an even an argument for the slowdown inclusion as helping to supply evidence of "what a 40 minute distillation of everything Nine Inch Nails have done could be". I'm not saying it's bad or even disappointing, I'm just pointing out what isn't perfect. And so my intense reaction to The Slip was such that it has now lead me running backward into the past, beginning first with Reznor's early 2008 double-disc album of shelved instrumentals Ghosts I-IV (ZZzzzzzz; see above) and continuing to 2007's Year Zero--which, after reading the Pitchfork and Allmusic Reviews, I was ready to love even more the The Slip. Sadly, Year Zero just isn't as good--a few good-to-great songs, some unmemorable fare, and a few clunkers--but I am at least, in this still-Slip adled phase, able to enjoy it as the next best thing to The Album I Really Want to Hear. Then, just last week I added the Year Zero remix album Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (umm yeah) to the feedbag and while it too is inconsistent, it contains a few tracks even more inspired than the source material, namely two remixes by--of all people--the Kronos Quartet and German experimental artist Fennesz. These two tracks, particularly the latter, make me excited for post-Slip future that I am already praying might come. So yeah, what the fuck?? This is probably one of the last musical developments I would have expected to have experienced in 2008. But in a bizarre way, I feel like Trent has helped blow the doors off my musical shack and I feel more ready and willing than in many years to seek out and slurp out the most intense and experimental sonic undertakings I can find. I feel a hunger for musical discovery that I haven't felt in probably five years, since I had my experimental electronics radio show in college (RIP, Postmodern Glitch) and i thirsted after new sounds each and every week. And it feels FUCKING GREAT. Hilarious endpoint for tonight's musings: my boss is about to start doing a media industry radio podcast, and I have been tasked as both producer of the show as well as creator of a theme song. I went down to our radio booth with our engineer and combed through the mess of free-rights audio loops in our library and put together a couple of samples, a downbeat jazz bit (which I thought was both talk-radio and age appropriate) and a second more upbeat 60s sounding funk guitar bit. Neither of them felt quite right to me and I had a feeling they wouldn't feel right to him either... and sure enough, they didn't. He said to me, "Look, I just want something edgier, more contemporary. Rocking. Like AC/DC maybe." And so I just said, Ok, fuck it: "Max, this is what I'd use if i were making a theme for my own radioshow" and proceeded to lay down the intro to "1,000,000"... and he absolutely loved it. I then cut the drums in half, looped the guitar riff, and dropped in the vocal parts and BOOM, there was our show intro, much to my astonishment and amusement. And best of all the song (and album) was released under a under a "Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial share-alike license," so I can use it royalty-free in any way I want. Totally fucking crazy! ----------------- Anyway, that's enough for now. I leave you with the following mp3s for your enjoyment and experiential knowledge-gaining: -- Download the entire Nine Inch Nails album The Slip here -- Nine Inch Nails, "Discipline," from The Slip -- Nine Inch Nails, "Echoplex," from The Slip -- Nine Inch Nails, "Another Version of the Truth (Kronos Quartet mix)" from Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D -- Nine Inch Nails, "In This Twilight (Fennesz mix)," from Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D -- Theme song to Max Media, featuring "1,000,000" FROM ABOVE: ** yes i just created the word "shittening" Labels: CRAZY, deerhunter, Lil Wayne, loved sounds, mp3, Nine Inch Nails posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 2/02/2009 07:34:00 PM 0 comments |
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