Fluxblog Weekly #79: Twista/Jeremih, Lance Skiiiwalker, Pusha T, Ratboys, Lady Gaga
October 24th, 2016
Hot But Not Too Flamboyant
Twista featuring Jeremih “Next to You”
A lot of hip-hop love songs spoil the mood with random crude lyrics, but “Next to You” never falls into that trap, which is usually just a way to avoid seeming too vulnerable and soft on the track. This song is as sincere as it gets, with both Jeremih and Twista coming across as guys trying very hard to be courteous gentlemen. It’s sweet and generous without getting corny or undermining its sexuality. The key thing here is respect – Twista’s densely packed lines are assertive but not aggressive, and deeply respectful of this woman’s body and mind, as well as her personal boundaries. It’s all genuinely romantic, and that’s before you even factor in the chords and melodies lifted from Rose Royce’s 1976 hit “I Wanna Get Next to You,” which makes everything sound warm and gentle as well as smooth and seductive.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 25th, 2016
As The Moon Glows
Lance Skiiiwalker “Lover’s Lane”
Lance Skiiiwalker’s music has an odd wooziness to it that falls somewhere on a continuum between “way more stoned than you intended to be” and “coming down with a flu.” A lot of his first album, Introverted Intuition, is built around ambient tones, audio scuzz, and beats that seem as though they could collapse or disintegrate at any moment, but by the time you get to “Lover’s Lane” at the end of the record, the sound has gelled into something more sturdy and elegant. The string sample at the center of the song carries a lot of the tune, but it’s still very much about atmosphere – the negative space around the beat, the particular crispness of the snare hits, the way Skiiiwalker’s lover-man vocals feel slightly slow and off-kilter. It’s surprising that there aren’t more songs that conflate romance and disorientation in this way.
Buy it from Amazon.
Pusha T “H.G.T.V. Freestyle”
Pusha T’s style has always been well-suited to this sort of bare bones minimalism. It’s like cooking something with a distinct, highly nuanced flavor – you don’t want to drown it out by adding too many other elements. You want to showcase the character of the thing, and highlight nuances with subtle additions that frame rather than obscure the flavor. Pusha isn’t breaking any ground for himself – to keep going with that analogy, it’s more like a carrot just being a carrot, or a really excellent example of a carrot – but Mike Will’s production reminds you of how menacing and seductive his voice can be. The punchlines in the verses land perfectly, you can sense how carefully he controls the weight of each syllable, and you hang on his every word.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 26th, 2016
Aimless Like I’m Everywhere
Ratboys “Not Again”
This is a song about being surprised by your emotions, and wondering why things you let slide a few years ago now take a greater toll on your psyche. It’s a very being-in-your-early-20s type of song – it’s very rooted to the process of figuring out your own version of being an adult – but the way Julia Steiner sings about feeling restless and distracted is so vivid that it doesn’t really matter how old you are as a listener. That feeling contrasts nicely with the somewhat upbeat tone of the music, dialing down the melodrama but situating the confusion and heavy emotions in a life that is ordinary and decidedly non-awful. It puts a scale on things without dismissing them.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
October 27th, 2016
Mirror On The Ceiling
Lady Gaga “A-Yo”
Lady Gaga is a rocker at heart, and though that was obscured in her earliest, biggest hits, she’s been gradually foregrounding that aspect of her as she’s moved along starting with The Fame Monster. Some people cynically interpret this as Gaga searching for a way to reboot herself for the marketplace, but it’s really just her becoming more herself, and allowing herself the opportunity to try out types of songs – like, say, “Joanne” – that she couldn’t take a risk on when she was dominating the charts with straight-up dance pop. Gaga is at her best when she’s excitedly trying out new looks and sounds, testing the limits of her life, and being a proud freak. At a point, the conformist marketplace of mainstream pop is an unnecessary albatross for her, and being less prominent frees her of creative limitations. Gaga the cult figure isn’t going away, which means Gaga the rock star can finally thrive. This is good, just like how it was a positive development when Kanye West and Beyoncé gave up chasing hits and decided to just do whatever they wanted instead.
“A-Yo,” a collaboration with the veteran songwriter Hillary Lindsay and producer Mark Ronson, is exactly the sort of thing I want from Gaga. It leans into rock music quite a bit – it’s in her voice, it’s in the crunch of the chords, the nods to country, that vaguely Fripp-ish solo that sounds like someone playing a guitar that has neon tube lighting from a dive bar for strings – but the song is produced like a dance pop track. This is a contemporary version of the thing Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna did so well in the ‘80s, which is present pop music as a place where elements of all popular genres merged into something greater than the sum of its parts that welcomed all types of people. As catchy and joyful as “A-Yo” gets, I don’t think it has a chance at uniting people in that way, but I appreciate the gesture and feel like this big tent approach suits the utopian freakiness of Gaga.
Buy it from Amazon.