Fluxblog 447: it is now time for the holiday music
Plus new music by Ari Lennox, H31R, Westside Gunn, and Mick Jenkins
There’s no new playlist this week but as today is the day of the year when it officially becomes 100% culturally acceptable to listen to Christmas music I’d like to remind you of some holiday playlists I’ve made in the past few years.
JAZZY CHRISTMAS, BABY – a selection of jazz greats from the mid 20th century performing Christmas classics, perfect for your chill holiday gathering. [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
HAVE YOURSELF A FUNKY LITTLE CHRISTMAS, a playlist full of seasonal funk and R&B including music by Rufus Thomas, Otis Redding, James Brown, Clarence Carter, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Emotions, and more. [Spotify | Apple]
CHRISTMAS WILL CRUSH YOUR SOUL, a playlist of melancholy holiday music including songs by Aimee Mann, LCD Soundsystem, Neko Case, Cat Power, Phoenix, Fiona Apple, St. Vincent, and more. [Spotify | Apple]
BOPPIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE, a selection of holiday bops by some of the world's greatest pop stars including Ariana Grande, Destiny’s Child, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, and more. [Spotify | Apple]
A DUDES ROCK CHRISTMAS, a frequently goofy hard rockin' celebration of the yuletide that I hope is worthy of this cover art from a 1986 Chess King ad by Boris Vallejo. [Spotify | Apple]
Like A Lily Upon My Thumb
Ari Lennox “Get Close”
Ari Lennox is very good at working humor and mundane details into music that is otherwise extremely sensual and sexual, and in doing so grounding that eroticism in regular life rather than idealized screen romance. In the case of “Get Close” she sets the scene with the opening line “New York pizza, my Coke Zero,” suggests an interesting personality dynamic with “you like Tupac, I like Janet,” and then gets a little juvenile by singing “I laugh at it, boobies grab it.” It’s vivid language that strips away the glamor implied by the slick slow-burning R&B arrangement, but the lusty atmosphere of the music is strong enough that it’s more of an interesting contrast than a vibe-killer. “Get Close” sounds like a song about two specific people in a particular moment, and I think that makes it sound a lot sexier than something more vague – it’s a window into actual intimacy.
Buy it from Amazon.
The Sun Goes Up And Comes Down
H31R “Rotation”
The vast majority of rap qualifies as “electronic music” these days, so when I say H31R’s second album HeadSpace is a hybrid electronic/rap record I mean it in the sense that JWords’ production aesthetic is very Warp Records. Or Big Dada, which is the actual label releasing this music. “Rotation” is one of the more disorienting and clattering tracks on the record but it’s smoothed out somewhat by the presence of Maassai, who raps in a precise yet conversational cadence similar to that of Noname. She seems very calm at the center of this, but also very intense, so maybe it’s more “calm like a bomb,” as Zack de la Rocha would say.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Westside Gunn featuring DJ Drama “Suicide in Selfridges”
DJ Drama opens this song describing with two pithy lines that are better than anything I could come up – “this that Purple Tape mixed with codeine vibes, imagine “Murder Was the Case” in the Slum Village.” Yeah, pretty much! The Purple Tape of it all is what pulled me in, as Conductor Williams’ production evokes the particular abrasive minimalism and drunken rhythmic quality of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. This feels like a loving tribute to Wu-Tang to me, right on down to Westside Gunn emulating Ghostface’s tone and cadence, but not quite to the egregious extreme of Action Bronson.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
One Degree Of Separation These Days
Mick Jenkins featuring Freddie Gibbs “Show and Tell”
“Show and Tell” is built around a common rap trope – “people are talking shit, but I’m for real and I must show them” – but there’s an added layer on poignancy in the way Mick Jenkins spits out the phrase “ImaHAVEto” in the chorus. He sounds impatient and irritated, so stressed out by the urgency of his need that he regresses a bit and sounds kinda like a petulant kid. I like the way this little bit of childishness contrasts with every other part of the song, which conveys a grim and foreboding atmosphere and an adult pragmatism. And then there’s Freddie Gibbs, who hops on the second half of the song and seems stoic and self-possessed to the point that he doesn’t seem concerned about proving much of anything.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day wrote about Taylor Swift’s disastrous gigs in Brazil and how this information was warped by Swift being the center of, as Ryan puts it, a “global information ecosystem.”
• Todd in the Shadows returned to his Trainwreckords rubric this week to talk about about Nickelback’s flop era, and dig into why they’re exempt from a “poptimist” critical mindset.