Because everyone wants to know.

This isn’t a “Top 10” nor is it ordered. It’s a list of songs and albums that I dug the shit out of this year. 

No Bird Sing - Theft of the Commons

City of Music: No Bird Sing perform “Basquiat Loves Company” from MPLS.TV on Vimeo.

In a year where I’ve declared several times that I’ve grown tired of live band Hip Hop, No Bird Sing comes along and does something awesome with it. I saw this band about a year and a half ago opening for Crescent Moon is in Big Trouble, and their set totally didn’t do it for me. So when I saw that they were opening at the Big Quarters CD release a couple of weeks ago, I kinda tried to get there late so I’d miss their set. And I’m glad I failed because they’ve gotten a hell of a lot better. Good enough to sell me a CD, which has been in constant rotation since. They blend Rock and Hip Hop in a way that doesn’t push one toward the other; both styles are uncompromised in an obvious comparison to Rage Against the Machine that sounds nothing like Rage Against the Machine. The lyrics are dense and deep, the guitar intense and bluesy, and the drums are furious. And while I may have little patience for most live band Hip Hop, I always have room for Hip Hop that tries something different.

The Weeknd - House of Balloons

This was a great year for musicians giving shit away for free, and the Weeknd is the king of giving shit away for free. Not one, not two, but three mixtapes this year. House of Balloons is the first and the best. It made everyone notice. It’s an absolute genius blend of straight up 90’s Hip Hop Soul and devastating Downtempo Electronica that doesn’t sound ironic or like it’s trying too hard. Download House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence here.

Jay-Z and Kanye West - Watch the Throne

This one’s kind of irksome. The two biggest titans of Hip Hop, noted for platinum-selling albums and respected for their skills and hard work, team up for a full-on collaboration. And, oh! Big surprise: it’s incredible. Like, fuck those guys. 

Hunters - “Deadbeat”

This kinda fell into my lap via my favorite mp3 site, RCRD LBL. It’s noisy, it’s got a tribal beat, the vocals consist almost entirely of call-and-response hooks, it’s short, it’s loud, and it’s fun. Download here.

Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes

It’s funny that Lykke Li went from Sweden to LA to record an album that sounds more desolate and wintery than the one she made in Stockholm. Teaming up once again with Björn Yttling (of Peter, Björn and John), Lykke turned the pop way down without losing the soft power of her voice. Which is not to say this album doesn’t bump — it bumps, but much darker and more complex.

Snow Patrol - “Called Out In the Dark”

I don’t know why this song does it so much for me. Pretty much everything on this list is really weird or intense and makes me want to punch someone in the face or make out with ravenous fury. But I’ve always got a soft spot for Snow Patrol, and this just makes me want to dance and giggle. And I’m more than alright with that.

Britney Spears - “Till The World Ends”

Forget her personal life, and forget that whole Circus album, or that she started the whole teen Pop star thing. Forget that she doesn’t really dance anymore, and that this song is about dancing. Forget that producers Dr. Luke and Max Martin are (ir)responsible for designing a vast chunk of the landscape of pop music for the past few years. Something good came out of all that, and it’s sadly not the video I’ve embedded above, but the song that plays to it. I’ve criticized Dr. Luke in the past — mostly for Ke$ha’s lesser, inexplicably popular hits — for poorly faking a Euro-Electropop sound. But he struck gold on this one.

Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

It always makes me fucking elated when an ambitions project turns out beautifully. It would have been easy to write a simple straightforward story in the Hardcore style and call it a Hardcore Rock Opera, and it would have been worth a listen or two. But to write a love story-turned metanarrative battle between protagonist and narrator in the Hardcore aesthetic is ludicrous. And to have it turn out as beautifully as this is a feat.

Battles - Gloss Drop

This was one of the best shows I went to this year. The keyboards are actually set up like that, and the one cymbal’s up high. And they’re absolutely mesmerizing and fantastic live. This album, too, stands as an example of music being weird, experimental, and still totally listenable, ceaselessly energetic, and downright fun.

SebastiAn, feat. Mayer Hawthorne - “Love In Motion”

A few months back, I declared Mayer Hawthorne this year’s T-Pain: he did guest vocals on all the cool tracks (last year was Justin Vernon). But this one’s my favorite. I’m a sucker for Electro House, and Hawthorne’s throwback falsetto takes it up another notch, making the funkiest track of the year.

Mystery Palace - Nervio EP

More free music! This time it’s from Minneapolis soon-to-be defunct Electropop trio Mystery Palace. I download as much free music that gets offered up by bands as I can, and this one stuck out. It’s geeky, which seems weird to say. They aren’t singing about Star Wars or D&D, but there’s something about the aesthetic quality that’s precise and complex and makes me think of awkward dudes doing a two-step shuffle. Download!

Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Yeah, I liked this one, too.

Doomtree - No Kings

I know: this one’s obvious. Matty loves Doomtree. But I was bracing for disappointment. I didn’t dislike the first track they put out, but it didn’t seem to indicate a great album either. The whole thing seemed rushed, honestly, and I’m such a fan of most everything they’ve done to this point that I could see a new crew record being overthought. But this shit’s tight. Tighter than ever. Far more than 2008’s self-titled full-length debut, Doomtree collaborated like hell on this one, and it comes off a lot more like a band than a collective. Every MC is at the top of their game. Usually at this point in a rap career, someone like P.O.S. starts trying too hard, or loses focus, but his fury’s intact. Sims already put out a full-length and an EP this year, and still had great lyrics left over. And I’ve always loved Dessa better as a rapper than a singer, so it’s thrilling to hear her focus on that. But I think the unsung hero of this album is Cecil Otter, not only whose rhymes continue to tear conventions apart, but whose production is getting insane. Between him and Lazerbeak, with assists from P.O.S. and Paper Tiger, Doomtree’s production is totally on an upswing toward making bangers that don’t compromise. And just to be clear, there are several albums in Doomtree ouvre that I listened to once or twice and left on the shelf. This is not one of them.

And that’s the list! Yay! I was going to do an “honorable mentions” section, but I don’t really understand how that would differ from the rest of this list, so I said “fuck it.” So, today I learned that I really like Hip Hop. I think half the stuff I listened to this year didn’t come out this year, though. I should have done a “stuff I liked this year that didn’t necessarily come out this year” list. Oh well.

As I type this sentence, I have 9,670 songs uploaded to Google Music. And counting. 

I’m a fan already, and feel the desperate need to spread the word. Mostly because I seem to have stumbled across it, and all I’ve really read about it has been stuff I looked up. I don’t read a ton of tech blogs, but I do read a bunch of music blogs, and I think I would have heard people screaming from the rooftops about it at this time. But I haven’t. Which throws me off.

Because Google Music is wonderful. And (again) as I type this sentence, only 843 people have +1’d http://music.google.com.

So, what is it? Google Music is an online music library. You upload up to 20,000 songs and you can listen to them on any computer and up to 10 mobile devices. For free.

I have some qualms, of course. The interface lacks “display” options, so scrolling through — which I prefer to simply searching — can be irritating, and it does that annoying thing where it includes articles when alphabetizing — so the Decemberists are under the “D” section of the “The” section, rather than just under “D” (this has already been rectified in the Android App, hopefully soon to be followed by the website. iTunes had this issue years ago, too, before they added a “Sort Artist” and “Sort Album” field to the metadata that automatically chops articles off the front of things.) As I stated at the top of this entry, I’m about halfway through an upload of my music collection, and I’m about 48 hours in. So, it’s taking a while.

Overall, though, I haven’t used iTunes or my iPod to listen to a song since Saturday. And I kinda don’t think I will. 

Try it out.

A diagonal cut makes a sandwich taste better.

I’m a huge fan of dual-flush toilets. If you’re unfamiliar, you have the option of a half-flush (for #1) or a regular flush (for #2). It saves a ton of water. This kit is cheap and easy to install. There’s very little reason not to convert your toilet(s).

FUCK YES.

tastefullyoffensive:

sofapizza

nevver:

Heath Killen

True.

You’d think a passing thought like this would, y’know…pass. Unfortunately, here we are. I’ve now spent an hour on this, and will thusly share my findings with you: the world.

I was at the unnamed nightclub where I work, sitting at the bar by myself, drinking perhaps my third of four shift beers. Then this choice hit song from 2003 came on, with accompanying video (side note: at classy hip hop joints such as the one where I work, corresponding music videos come on to accompany the music. They loop when the songs get looped, and they transition between videos as they transition between songs. It’s pretty cool, and gives me something to look at when I drink by myself.)

It reminded me of something I’ve always wondered, and I tweeted the following:

It received one “like” on Facebook. Which is probably all the attention it deserved.

But I, seeker of knowledge, had to know more. I Googled “Eastside Boyz”, and learned that they’re actually “the East Side Boyz.” Which is probably important.

They have no wikipedia page, which is indicative of their significance, impact, and relevance. Lil Jon’s wikipedia page didn’t even list their individual names. The lack of information on them in Wikipedia meant this was going to be among the more difficult stupid research projects I’ve assigned myself.

Watching multiple Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz videos attempting to glean any sort of indication of any contribution from either of them proved fruitless. I found this Facebook discussion:

So, I’m not the only one baffled by their presence. 

The best I could figure came from this ‘biography’ of them, which is apparently copy-pasted from an older version of liljononline.com:

 ”We’re not really considering ourselves rappers, so we got the best rappers in the game to get on the tracks. We do our chant thing, make the beats and let other people who really rap do the rap.”

With Jon handling the beats, Sam and Bo collaborating on the hooks and lyrics, they became a treacherous three, packing that club energy into each of their recordings.

So it seems…they chant. They write hooks, and yell them. Lil Jon makes beats, and serves as a hype man to whatever guest rapper they pair with the track, and Big Sam and Lil Bo…act as secondary hype men? Something like that. 

Watching a live hip hop performance can often leave a person wondering why there’s some other guy up there who seems to just be rapping along with the main guy, but the hype man is not an insignificant aspect of the show. They add texture to the delivery, fill gaps, and generally keep the energy going strong. It would be a different performance otherwise. 

Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz did something new that hasn’t been repeated: they made a the hype men the central focus. They did a poor job of explaining this, but it’s pretty fucking incredible. They brought attention to the other roles in the craft of Hip Hop music rather than the rapper. Non-rapping producers didn’t get much credit before Lil Jon, but few producers put themselves in the forefront like him.

But the East Side Boyz should not be forgotten either. Having a gang of dudes scream a short, repetitive hook immediately stacks up the power behind a song. It’s immediately catchy, and immediately dismissed as moronic, but it makes sense: it’s already a party, and you can come if you want, but we don’t really care because we’re having a blast anyway.

Following the group’s 2004 album Crunk Juice, Lil Jon continued producing before releasing 2010’s Crunk Rock under his name alone. No one seems to know what happened to the group in the intervening years, but no one really seems to care either. Like any other trend, the Crunk thing came and went, and so did the need for the East Side Boyz. They did some very important things for Hip Hop, but mostly remained mysterious figures in videos, and then they disappeared. I doubt we’ll see them again.

And I didn’t expect one off-hand tweet would inspire this, but I want to do more things like this.

Amusing yourself on the Tangential to clear your head doesn’t help when they tell you exactly what you’re thinking.

thetangential:

1. Overanalyzing everyone’s intentions/thoughts

What did your fifth grade teacher mean when she told just you that kids your age should start wearing deodorant? Did your brother know something you didn’t when he called you Gayson when you were a kid? Did your bestie not respond to your…

nevver:

Scott C.