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Schoolboy Q Builds the Bridge

They use to say that rap was divided between the East Coast and the West Coast. The styles were different, the influences split, and the feuds between the coastal camps all too real. The East was defined by jazz samples often laid under brash sprocket-style percussion and darker grittier beats. Boom-bap delivery and smooth jazz were belied by the added beats, which were often shrill and treble-heavy percussion added as contrasting elements. Good examples include Mobb Deep, NAS, or Wu-Tang...

Wicked Neat Music Videos: Fujiya & Miyagi

  Rounding out a litany of periodics I wanted to start is the music video segment. No I am not from the East Coast, however, I would like to gainfully adopt the upper Northeast’s use of the word “wicked” and combine it with my annoying habit of using old-timey adjectives like “neat” and “swell” or outdated phrases like “what in tarnations” and “golly gee willikers”. Let’s just call it a “niche vocabulary”. Speaking of a niche, the English band Fujiya...

Sonikseek: Diffuse Soul by Nick Hakim

The best Lyft rides are the ones where I get to my destination….obviously…. but also the ones where the driver is playing really good music. In Denver we have this amazing radio show on 102.3 FM called OpenAir, which my Lyft driver Justin was playing last night. OpenAir plays new music off the beaten path, indie music that can only be described as “niche” and “not radio typical”. By the time I arrived at the theater to see Alien: Covenant...

Father John Misty is the James Joyce of Music

Why do we hold onto nursery rhymes? Why do we remember the fables of our childhood, or absorb the parables of old, or embrace the old wives tales that we somehow take at face value? I believe we embrace them because they are ultimately understood in the simplest of ways , as the core of the story relates to being a human, or in other words, the way the story always dissolves into pure humanity.  We disguise our greatest lessons in parable and allegory, yet we...

Hypercritical or Hypocrite- Kendrick Blurs the Line

To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) was a seminal recording. It ventured farther from the gangster and street survival tropes of Good Kid, Maad City (2012) both with it’s lyrics, themes, and sonic backdrop. There was jazz, soul, funk, and even a bit section of freeform beatnik poetry in the interlude “For Free?”. The album showed confidence in making an unconventional album with less popular appeal than previous albums. This was due in large part to the aforementioned departure from themes like...