Tuesday, February 28, 2017

DANCEHALL MUSIC HYSTERIA #8: THE SONG THAT ALMOST GOT AWAY


Dancehall artistes, y'all need to step up ya social media presence. "Artillery" finally hits the web after getting played on Waggy T's show for months. Thought I'd lost it forever when my Shazams was fruitless, and you know Googling the lyrics is out of the question for a cultural tourist like me. I went home and trawled through Waggy's Twitter playlist, searching every potential candidate on Youtube in the hope I'd identify it through a process of elimination. But you can't identify what isn't digitized. I was like, "Yo, does this song even exist or is this all some cosmic joke?" I saw myself as a crazed 70-year-old man broken by a song he hallucinated in 2017 and spent the rest of his life trying to find. "He said something about a gun from Sri Lanka," I'd say to the nurse, teary eyed as she changed my diaper.

Mad airhorns went off when I identified the pleasant song as Pappy V's "Artillery." Unfortunately, Pappy V is the kind of guy who hasn't updated his Twitter since 2012. It ain't real until it hits the internet! In the meantime, I tried to succor myself with alternate takes on the riddim, but nothing matched Pappy's intensity. This the One Click era, Pappy, get with the times. Give me instant gratification or give me death.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

CLOUD RAP'S NOT DEAD, I KNOW IT'S NOT!


T.F is a rappin-ass rapper in the mold of his weed owner Schoolboy Q - an exponent of that kinda half-gangsta, half-pillhead streetwear rap I think I'm probably too old to understand. He's doing his li'l "Broken Language" rhetorical list-rap* on "Unprofessional Shit," but it's da beat that really stands out.

Think the squares used to call it IDM back in the day? Sounds like something the Earthtone boyz might cook up when Andre was in his I like Squarepusher phase, before he swallowed the taint-sweat kombucha and ascended to Heaven's Gate holding manicured hands with eskimo brother-in-arms Jay Electronica. Let me just check up on a crazy hunch I have...*Googles Shea Wooten, confirms he's a white nerd*.

Yeah I'm a cloud rap fan who never saw Clams rock the DAW on Yam$ blog, but I'm still an easier mark for the basic formula than a kid in head-to-toe Flog Gnaw. The 73rd best rap song of 2010 in 2016.
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* T-minus two until the "'Ha' is a direct descendant of 'Broken Language'" thinkpiece drops

Thursday, February 16, 2017

TRAPPIN OUT DA BANLIEUE



French rap ("Frap") has a long, inglorious history of schoolteachers tryna pull a Dangerous Minds (1995) and rly get thru 2 tha kids. Or maybe you slurpin on some 'scargot at a charming li'l bistro only you and other savvy urbanites know about, sippin some of that Bordeaux tryna get your Piaf on, but the restaurateur has Huang-Bronsonian pipe dreams of making it as a hip-hop foodie, and as you receive a plate of foie gras shaped in the Wu-Tang W, MC Solaar comes on the victrola rapping about John Ford.

Shit is weak any way you slice the baguette. This Cheu B & Pon2Mik joint is something of a bangeur tho, borrowing standard Atlantan trap moves and garnishing it w/ a melancholy piano loop. Blame Franco Montana for this sick development of cultural hegemony and imperialism*. Cheu B collabed wit Rich Homie Quan, so you know it's only a matter of time before Paris gets its own Magic City.

Promising I'll never write about German rap ("Grap"), RAP MSUCIS HSYTERIA rides away into the unknown.
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* Pon2Mik is actually from Guadalupe, but all French people look alike so w/e.