music

The Evolving Complexity In The Construction Of Rap Lyrics

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Right on the heals of this large hip hop mixtape dump comes an enlightening Vox video that explores the advancing complexity of rap lyrics and rhyme construction. Employing the research of Martin Connor and some helpful visual aids, the video explores how the best artists manipulate words, rhymes, beats, and motifs in continually sophisticated ways.

Here is a playlist highlighting songs used in the video and others that are choice examples of how outstanding rhyming in rap can be.

A Collection Of Thousands Of Hip Hop Mixtapes

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Chance The Rapper

Jason Scott has uploaded thousands and thousands of hip-hop mixtapes to the Internet Archive (almost 6,000 to date). He says he has access to over 17,000 tapes and somewhere close to that number might end up on the Archive over the next few months. There is obviously a ton of hip-hop culture to dig through here. Jason notes:

There’s a lot coded into the covers of these mixtapes (not to even mention the stuff coded into the lyrics themselves) – there’s stressing of riches, drug use, sexual drive, and oppression. I’m personally fascinated at the amount of reference to codeine and the purple color of “Purple Drank”, which, if you’ve missed that subject matter up to now… good for you.

If you’re new to the world of hip-hop mixtapes (as I am) the links below should get your discovery started

This is a great time to point out that the Internet Archive is an invaluable resource. In these times of link rot and the haphazard closing of essential web services (we miss you Google Reader) the Internet Archive is, well, archiving the web. The Wayback Machine now indexes over 435 billion webpages going back nearly 20 years.

The end goal here, like all the things I do in this realm, is simple: Providing free access to huge amounts of culture, so people can reference, contextualize, enjoy and delight over material in an easy-to-reach, linkable, usable manner. Apparently it’s already taken off, but here you go too.

Every Bob Marley Opening Drum Fill

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[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/260865541″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

The folks down at Goodhertz, Inc. have put together this supercut of every Bob Marley opening drum fill (In chronological order? Maybe) most of which were performed by Carlton “Carly” Barrett. It is true, the internet is a relentless giving tree.
via Dangerous Minds

Hamburger Helper Wins April Fools

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Yeah yeah yeah, I know, you think April Fools Day on the internet sucks. I get it, most attempts at authentic humor by major brands fall flat, are completely annoying, or even potentially harmful. And Paul Ford is right when he says, “As the number of users (of a service or product) increases, humor opportunities approach zero.” It’s true, laughter does not scale. And most attempts by major brands to appear to be authentically funny on funny day, just end up not being that funny.

However, that doesn’t mean all attempts aren’t funny, or at least enjoyable, even by the most jaded of internet denizens. Comedy is hard. Very hard. But if it’s good it doesn’t matter the size of the audience. This year, General Mill’s Hamburger Helper bucked the trend by dropping a surprisingly great mix on SoundCloud. I love this. Yo Glove, turn up!!

2016 SXSW Free Music Torrents & Radio

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In what has become a sort of tradition around here, I am once again posting a link to the torrents that have all the MP3 files publicly posted on the SXSW Website that will be at the music showcase this year. This year’s torrents include 1,593 files totaling 10.33GB, making it the largest to-date.

SXSW 2016 Showcasing Artists Part 1, 1,006 files, 6.50GB
SXSW 2016 Showcasing Artists Part 2, 587 files, 3.82GB

Links to torrents for earlier years can be found on The (Unofficial) Home of SXSW Torrents website.

If you don’t want to have all these songs on your hard drive but want to have a listen, use this SXSW radio to give a random selection a listen.

Emo For Emo’s Sake

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Rolling Stone has taken a shot at listing the 40 Best Emo Albums of all time. Emo seems to a pretty polarizing genre so I suspect many will have trouble with the list (and some will even protest it’s existence). There are always problems with lists like this, but this one seems pretty darn solid to me.

The top 10 rounds out like this:
10. My Chemical Romance, ‘Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge’ (2004)
9. Fall Out Boy, ‘From Under the Cork Tree’ (2005)
8. Jimmy Eat World, ‘Bleed American’ (2001)
7. Cap’n Jazz, ‘Burritos, Inspiration Point, Fork Balloon Sports …’ (1995)
6. American Football, ‘American Football’ (1999)
5. Braid, ‘Frame and Canvas’ (1998)
4. Jawbreaker, ‘Dear You’ (1995)
3. The Promise Ring, ‘Nothing Feels Good’ (1997)
2. Rites of Spring, ‘Rites of Spring’ (1985)
1. Sunny Day Real Estate, ‘Diary’ (1994)

For the uninitiated here is a primer called “What the heck *is* emo, anyway?”

Every Rose Has Its Thorn Played By An Actual Rose Thorn

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Michael Ridge does all sorts of interesting sound experiments. In this video he plays Poison’s classic 7″ vinyl single of ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn‘ through a mic’d up branch of dried rose bush amplified by a contact microphone connected to a Marshall MS-4

“But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose” – Anne Brontë

via Dangerous Minds

UPDATE: Attempting to play the 7″ vinyl single ‘Ice Cream’ by New Young Pony Club using an ice cream cone and attempting to play track one and two from Side A of the 1966 LP ‘The Band I Heard In Tijuana Volume 3’ by Los Norte Americanos using a lightly salted tortilla chip.

A Very Ween Valentines

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Valentine Ween

Ween made their triumphant return after not performing together for over four years and Denver is lucky enough to have had three days worth of reunion shows this Valentines Weekend.

The first night consisted of a whopping 33 songs (Dean promised 94 songs, no repeats, over he weekend). The night also offered a live début of “How High Can You Fly?” You can listen to Friday’s show below.

The second night Ween played a six song acoustic block (tracks 13-18). They also live debuted the songs “Kim Smoltz” and “Transitions”. The band also made a tribute to the late Lemmy Kilmister with a rocking cover of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades.” Listen to Ween’s Saturday show here:

The final show was a great Valentines Day surprise as well. The set was a total of 31 songs bringing the weekend to an astonishing grand total to 93 songs! Valentines night was made up of a live début of “Israel” and another six-song acoustic set (tracks 14-19). The weekend was topped off with a five song double encore.

Here are some stats from the three-night reunion weekend:
God Ween Satan (1990): 14 songs
Chocolate & Cheese (1994): 13 songs
The Pod (1991): 11 songs
White Pepper (2000): 10 songs
Pure Guava (1992): 8 songs
The Mollusk (1997): 8 songs
B-sides/others: 7 songs
Quebec (2003): 6 songs
Shinola, Vol. 1 (2005): 6 songs
La Cucaracha (2007): 5 songs
12 Golden Country Greats (1996): 4 songs
Covers: 1 song (Motorhead)

The Boognish is Back!

One + One

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Chris Cornell, of Soundgarden fame, combined the lyrics from Metallica’s song “One” with the melody from U2’s song “One” to great effect. I’m not a huge Metallica or U2 fan (more of a Soundgarden fan I suppose) but this combination is uniquely moving.

There is another video of a different performance of the song on YouTube. It has better sound quality but lacks the same emotion as the performance above.

Doo Ba Dih Bee Dwee Doo Daah

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The Lick

Referred to simply as The Lick this melodic element can be found in nearly all genres of music and played by all kinds of instruments. It has somehow managed to seed itself everywhere. It can be found as early as Stravinsky’s “Firebird” (1910). Player’s “Baby Come Back” and Santana’s “Oye Como Va” are based on variations of The Lick. Although the origins of The Lick are unknown, it has propagated throughout the entire musical kingdom as you can see from the two videos below.

I have come down hard on artists who use clichés too much. But I think The Lick proves itself as something greater than a musical cliché, something more like a musical meme. The best art copies, reconstructs, personalizes, mutates and owns up to other great artworks that came before it. Viva La Lick!

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