Cassie: This Ain’t Yr Daddy’s Rhythm Nation

Oh hai there.
So…r n’b. I’m not a popist or anything, but I’ve crawled out of my hate hole far enough to appreciate (and even OBSESS OVER) some of the neighborhood dudes n’ divas. Usually it’s the hit single, or whichever-album track-Rich Harrison-produced jams that shine through (you know: “1 Thing,” “Ain’t No Other [...]

Parsing a Conversation about Middling Rap using Hypertext Links

I Google’d “mediocre rapper.” Seriously.
doorknobs: have you heard i get money rmx w/luda
doorknobs: ?
doorknobs: listening now
Tyco Nightglow: yeah
Tyco Nightglow: luda sounds great on it
doorknobs: “Lil Wayne – Waynes World Vol. 6″
doorknobs: it never ends
Tyco Nightglow: gawd
doorknobs: “Freeway – Flashing Lights Freestyle” wanna hear this though
Tyco Nightglow: I downloaded another one yeterday out of curiousity [...]

Regret is beatific.

And “Someone Great” is great. This might be my record of the year, which is an annoying, critic-y way of saying that I hold it lovingly to my chest and will probably treasure it for years. The song has a gorgeous, sighing rhythm, stemming from the gossamer layer of white noise that pulses quietly [...]

holy jesus those horns.

yeah, I’m a sucker for huge, vaulting grandeur. Maybe I can’t even distinguish the earned kind from the cheaply lyrical kind, the kind you see in Irish soap commercials and SUV ads. Maybe Danny Elfman scores get to me (well, at least the “aaaahing” chorus for “Edward Scissorhands”) and maybe the big Hammer-of-Thor obliterate-all-discernment cliches [...]

Is you is, or is you ain’t: Dubstep

Cubicle music is night music
I know dubstep is supposed to be, like, DARK and MENACING, but my fave tune of the moment in this microest of microgenres is a one-off comp cut that almost…flutters. “Unite,” from the anonymous dubstepper-of-the-moment Burial, is featured on Soul Jazz’s seemingly must-have Box of Dub comp. [...]