Fluxblog #289: Busta Rhymes | Four Tet | Ariana Grande | Mayhem Lauren
November 2nd, 2020
Bodied The Game
Busta Rhymes featuring Kendrick Lamar “Look Over Your Shoulder”
The most incredible thing about “Look Over Your Shoulder” is that it features Kendrick Lamar and Busta Rhymes rapping at the top of their game along with samples of a young Michael Jackson from the climax of “I’ll Be There” and you could take all three of those voices off the track and it would still feel overwhelmingly emotional just with the piano chords and strings in Nottz’s instrumental. The gut-punch of the song is in how he contrasts this very melancholy and nostalgic vibe with a very innocent sweetness and hope, and that’s just amped up by the presence of Jackson’s earnest and empathetic voice. Kendrick and Busta approach their verses from different angles but I love that both connect to the sentimentality of the music by talking about their commitment to rap as an art form. When given a track that has this purity and love at the core of it, they both think of the one thing they clearly love more than anything else in the world.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 3rd, 2020
Going And Going And Going
⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ “೧ູ࿃ूੂ༽oooooo(ଳծູ ̟̞̝̜̙̘̗̖҉̵̴̨̧̢̡̼̻̺̹̳̲̱̰̯̮̭̬̫̪̩̦̥̤̣̠҈͈͇͉͍͎͓͔͕͖͙͚͜͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢͢ͅ l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡| ̲̲͡ π̲̲͡͡ ɵੂ≢)_̴ı”
I stumbled into this song on Spotify and was immediately very excited by it, but confused and frustrated by all the text associated with it being in indecipherable wingdings. I was thinking about how self-defeating it is for some new artist to make something so well-composed and brilliant, like if Four Tet went kinda rave-y, and made it so impossible to know anything about them. I went out of my way to figure out how to copy/paste the wingdings from Spotify and then I found out that…well, it actually IS Four Tet. This shouldn’t be too surprising to me as Kieran Hebden has reached a very Aphex Twin/Luke Vibert stage of his career in which he’s been using a handful of alternate names to release his music, but it is disappointing in that I would have liked for this to be someone totally new. This is very plausible as music heavily influenced by Hebden rather than actual Hebden music – the melodic keyboard part is very him, but the track feels less dense and more symmetrical than usual. The vocal loop fits in with his M.O. but it’s less artful than his usual sample manipulation – rather than odd cuts and intervals, it’s more of an unbroken hypnotic repetition. But these are observations, not criticisms: This song is as direct and effective and fun as he ever gets.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
November 4th, 2020
This Ain’t Usually Me
Ariana Grande “My Hair”
There’s seven credited writers including Ariana Grande on “My Hair,” but the one whose presence feels most obvious to me Grande’s frequent co-writer, the R&B singer-songwriter Victoria Monét. The contours of the melody sound very Monét to me, and the arrangement fits into her general neo-soul wheelhouse. The jazzy chords and the verse melody fits Grande’s voice perfectly – you can tell how much she likes singing around the curves of it, and how that elegant slide into the chorus flatters the most mature and sensual aspects of her technique. Like pretty much everything else on Positions this song is overtly horny, but the lyrics get into a very particular aspect of intimacy for her as she gives detailed instructions to her partner on when and how to touch her hair. The specificity levels up the song a bit, making it feel more like a window into a person’s actual life rather than just some sexy boilerplate.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 5th, 2020
Built Like Velvet
Meyhem Lauren & Harry Fraud “Yucca”
“Yucca” is built around a looped guitar part that sounds desolate, despairing, and cinematic, like it drifted in from a nearby Godspeed You Black Emperor session. Harry Fraud keeps the track simple and lo-fi, giving the guitar part ample space to resonate while an understated beat supports Meyhem Lauren’s vocal. Lauren’s verses are all bluster and jokes, but in this context it comes out sounding hollow and haunted, like a guy trying to keep a brave face while he walks through some broken post-apocalyptic landscape.
Buy it from Amazon.