Fluxblog Weekly #168: Muhammad & Younge, Video Age, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Smino
Just kinda catching up on some recent-ish songs this week.
July 9th, 2018
Am I Mortal Man Or Make Believe?
Ali Shaheed Muhammad & Adrian Younge featuring Cee-Lo Green “Questions”
If you’re familiar with Kendrick Lamar’s “Untitled 06 | 06.30.2014,” then you know this song. That’s easily one of my favorite songs by Lamar, so it took a bit to get used to hearing a version of this without him on it and to grow accustomed to different shifts in the song that give more space to Cee-Lo Green’s voice. And though I quite like both songs, I feel a little bad that “Questions” – despite being the source material – has to be secondary, simply because it came out after Lamar’s track. This is an exceptionally composed R&B tune that nods to ’70s soul aesthetics while having a very distinct feeling to it. There’s a tranquility to the chords, and Green expresses a remarkable humility while singing lines like “I am wonderful, let me count the ways” and repeatedly uttering the phrase “let me explain.” This not a song coming from an arrogant place – it’s more about self-love and clarity opening your heart to other people and things greater than yourself.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 9th, 2018
All I Want Is For Fate To Be Clearer
Video Age “Pop Therapy”
This song basically sounds like someone trying very hard to make their own version of Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly in their bedroom with no budget, no session musicians, and only a fraction of Fagen’s chops. But you know what? It works for me, and Video Age’s earnest desire to write a classy, swinging early ’80s sort of pop tune is very charming to me. “Pop Therapy” is certainly much more tender and sweet than anything Fagen would write, and the vocals and lyrics convey a neurotic desire for affection and understanding that’s a bit dweeby but still very relatable.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
July 10th, 2018
Only You Could Love Me
Unknown Mortal Orchestra “The Internet of Love (That Way)”
“The Internet of Love” moves at a languorous, hungover pace. It’s a slow drag of music, with piano notes and guitar chords that trickle out gradually as if the song itself barely has the energy to get up. The feeling of it is just as stuck as the sound. There’s a not a lot of lyrics, but what you get sketches out a portrait of someone who is alone and yearning for someone they’ve lost somehow. They’re lonely and heartbroken and retreating into themselves, imagining a future together that is just not going to happen. What really gets to me about this song is the self-awareness – he knows how bad obsessing over this is for him, and how it only makes the chances of getting what he wants more impossible. But he can’t stop sinking deeper into the feeling.
Buy it from Amazon.
July 13th, 2018
The Truth Sounds Like Curse Words
Smino featuring Mick Jenkins “New Coupe, Who Dis?”
“New Coupe, Who Dis?” seems to float gently in a cloud of sparse organ chords, with just enough bounce and swing to register as funky. The placid groove suits Mick Jenkins, whose verse slinks around the beat with a loose and playfully melodic flow similar to that of his Chicago peers Chance and Noname. Smino is a whole other thing, though – his voice is high and cartoonish in some moments, raspy and soulful in others. Once he moves into verses, his words seem to spiral around the beat like vines. There’s a lot going on in this song that sounds like just hanging around doing nothing on a pleasant night.
Buy it from Amazon.