Okay, so, let me tell y'all about Screaming Jay Hawkins. Screaming Jay Hawkins is the closest thing we have to a black Vincent Price. Screaming Jay Hawkins was a guy who could paint a portrait with his voice and a few primal grunts at the right moments. Screaming Jaw Hawkins was a guy who would sing into a skull on several occasions.
He was the precursor to shock rock, as it's told, relying on a more racial element than his successors. He'd start his performances by popping out of a coffin on stage, and he'd be completely sloshed because you don't put a sober man into a coffin. It just isn't done. He'd put a fake bone in his nose, dress up in a turban, and bring in half a tiny skeleton, because his hit single "I Put A Spell On You" caused some moral censors to tut tut, so he decided to make all the moral censors tut tut for marketing purposes. Pissed off the NAACP too. Don't blame them for being pissed, to be honest, because playing into racist stereotypes is kind of a dick move. And so he was known as Screaming Jay Hawkins, even though he eventually sobered up and wanted to just be Jay Hawkins for a while without the Screaming.
And he had skill beyond pissing people off. He was originally trained as an opera singer, you know. So he had pipes proper, and a bit of the opera style mixes into the Little Richard grit and the grunts. And he wrote all his own stuff, and he could take anything and give it the Screaming treatment, and it sounded bloody great.
So yeah. Screaming Jay Hawkins, in the ground for 17 years now. Now he's someone you can see through.
does anyone know any good music blogs where I can download music in batches of some kind (be they whole albums or compilations of stuff or whatever) for free? I have been running suuuuuuper dry on samples the past few records and renewing my stock has only gotten harder over the years.
(And that's leaving out some really good ones like The Thing on the Doorstep where the material might be a little too abrasive on average for your tastes; Bleak Bliss is cutting it close, and And She Lied Again is pretty out there, but their respective focuses on obscure Japanese psychedelia and even more obscure ambient music respectively should serve you well.)
First: Months ago, I offered to share an album and an EP by the Californian band Map. Then I forgot about that like a dumbass. But as I was pulling my CDs out of storage, I finally remembered, and here you go:
First: Months ago, I offered to share an album and an EP by the Californian band Map. Then I forgot about that like a dumbass. But as I was pulling my CDs out of storage, I finally remembered, and here you go:
I finally got to listen to Deathconciousness today.
I liked it a decent bit, although I can sympathize with the "pillows" criticism Naney gave it forever ago. "Bloodhail" and "Deep, Deep" are really great songs, anyway.
I'm sorry that was pointlessly bitter I'm just having a bad day (again) and am frustrated no one ever responds to anything anyone else says in here. When I try to I'm ignored.
Me too. The last time they were on a song that I can recall (the aforementioned "Twistin'") Ugly Mane had the better verse by far but this time Denzel completely washed him.
Ofc Ugly has also had a rough past few years so I can't really be upset.
Dude is kind of #goals if I'm being honest with myself. "I'mma spearhead power electronics in Japan, retire for twenty years to make seals, then come back and tour with a full band just because."
I think from now on I'm gonna write my impressions things for records as I listen to them instead of waiting til Wednesday all the time for HHH's "what are you listening to" thread
2 Chainz - Pretty Girls Like Trap Music
"Contemplative Trap" is probably not quite a subgenre name yet, but Pretty Girls Like Trap Music makes a case that maybe it should be. It's an interesting left turn for an artist best known for trafficking in the same kind of "huh?"-inducing punchline rap that Lil Wayne used to be the king of (spitting lyrics like the infamous "tittyfuck--CHESTNUT!"), and who used to call himself Tity Boi. But put to rest any fears that this record is anything approaching dour, the strange brags that 2 Chainz is best known for are still here (he claims at one point to have a bank account that has a bank account, which itself has a third bank account), but they're tempered with a sort of mixed motivational speaker ("Rolls Royce Bitch" literally starts with him singing at you to believe in yourself, in the next song he tells us that "hard work beats talent") / contemplating-his-life kingpin vibe.
A lot of the record's instrumentals give off an almost dreamy, hazed-out nighttime atmosphere, all blurry strings and piano and bells anchored by bass drums that seem even fuzzier than usual for trap beats. And if you wanted to spin it that way, you could easily argue that there's an almost-concept here, you can kind of picture it. 2 Chainz hanging out with some famous friends (there are quite a few guests here) late at night, at a party that's perhaps stretched on too long, and thinking back, a how-we-got-here of a sort. There's the rare primetime jolt such as the second half of "Trap Check", but these usually have context, the aforementioned half-a-track harks back to Young Jeezy's Thug Motivation 101, a foundational trap record. He's even political on occasion! Threatening to "paint the white house" over the reggae-inflected "OG Kush Diet", and by the time the record rolls over to the penultimate "Bailan", you can make the argument that the sun's come up.
The fingerprints of the past are all over Pretty Girls, which is rare for a record rooted in the lightning-fast Atlanta Trap scene, where entire careers can begin and end in mere months (sometimes tragically). But increasingly, 2 Chainz seems to be reconsidering his place in hip-hop. Here he mostly sticks with fellow long-timers and other Atlanta MCs, but between the tone of this album and a few other moves in recent years (his collaborations with Raekwon and Statik Selektah come to mind) he does seem to want rap fans young and old to consider him in veteran terms. It's an interestingly focused and comparatively more serious record from a guy who's not serious about much. The man sums it up himself on the album's final track: "my mom was a dealer / my dad was the dealer / their son is that ni**a". Then he calls you, the listener, a miracle.
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Also, that interview is pure gold.
I know this is technically breaking thread rules but y'all need to watch this video if you're not familiar with this composer.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I only don't respond when I have absolutely nothing to say.
Dude is kind of #goals if I'm being honest with myself. "I'mma spearhead power electronics in Japan, retire for twenty years to make seals, then come back and tour with a full band just because."
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead