Categories
albums

RTJ4

Artist
Run the Jewels
Album
RTJ4
Realse Date
June 3, 2020

After I finished writing this, when I went to create a featured image, I found that I already had one for RTJ4. Which means I already did a review. Apparently I did it over a year ago, but I failed to set the category to “Albums” when I posted it, so, I missed it when trying to decide what album to review. Since I spent significant time on this, and it’s interesting to see the evolution of my thought on the album, I’m keeping both, it’s my blog. You can read the other one here: RTJ4 [confusion.cc] and compare if you are so inclined.

I first became aware of Run the Jewels [wikipeida.org], or RTJ, as the MCs on the DJ Shadow song “Nobody Speak”. “Nobody Speak” is an amazing track and it has one of the best music videos ever! Go watch it now [youtube.com] if you’ve never seen it. After hearing “Nobody Speak” I went and found the RTJ back catalog. “Nobody Speak” was released a few months before RTJ’s third album in 2016.

So I was familiar with RTJ, and had songs from their first three albums in heavy rotation, when RTJ4 dropped in mid 2020. RTJ4 was released, a couple of days early, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests triggered by the death of George Floyd [wikipedia.org], at the hands of the police because police brutality, especially against the black community in America is a major, in fact the major, theme of the album.

There is a lot of commentary on police brutality on the album. I’m going to refrain from turning this post into a discussion of the politics of Black Lives Matter, or Blue Lives Matter or De-fund the Police or whatever social media convenient slogan you may or may not personally agree with. But… I do want to talk about a few of the lyrics that hit hard, especially hard given the real world situation that the albums was released into.

First off, in the song “goonies vs E.T.” Mike delivers these lines:

Which references Gil Scott-Heron’s, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” [wikipeida.org]. By adding “digitized” and referencing Twitter I think this is encouraging people to channel their anger into action, not just posting on social media.

Mike comes back to this sentiment in the very next song, the most powerful song on the album, “walking in the snow”, when he raps:

The most shocking thing about this particular verse by Mike is the lines that immediately proceed the bit on Twitter rants:

This album was dropped in the middle of the George Floyd Protests, protests sparked by the death of a man caused by a cop kneeling on his throat while he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”. So how can Mike reference that so quickly?

He’s not.

It’s not George Floyd he’s quoting.

It’s Eric Garner [wikipeida.org] who was choked out by NYC police in 2014. While complaining I can’t breathe.

You can see why “Walking in the Snow” became such a big song during the protests. (as an aside: there are no Wikipedia articles on any of the individual songs on this album, for most albums I look at there are at least a couple of the more popular songs that have individual articles.)

Now, I want to go back to the line The most you give’s a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy. And ignoring the irony, I want to use social media to back up Mike’s point that social media is the opiate of the masses and a false outlet for empathy and poor stand in for true action for change.

Hank Green once posted on Threads [threads.com]; “It would take a lot to convince me that the problem with America is that we’re not angry enough.” And another guy, Jason Pargin responded with a video on Facebook/Instagram [fb.watch] where he said something relevant here:

[…] With every strong emotion you can feel, there’s two versions of it and most people don’t recognize this.

There’s a fun version of the emotion and there’s a real version […]

[…] When he says the problem is not a lack of anger it sounds ridiculous because for some of you your social media feeds are nothing but outrage all the time.

But for 99.99% of us, it is not the kind of outrage that would motivate us to go attend a boring city council meeting every single week. That other kind of anger is the fun anger. It is its own reward. It is fun to sit around and imagine one day there being a revolution or imagining terrible things happening to the powerful people you hate. The system does not fear that kind of anger at all.

The system is terrified of the kind of anger that will motivate you to tolerate boredom and tedium. The kind of anger that motivates you to spend the rest of your life studying and becoming an expert and making yourself valuable in society so that you have power to effect change. The kind of anger that motivates you to sacrifice fun for discipline.

This is why Mike is talking about. That posting your outrage or support for action on social media will not help. That going out and working to affect change requires you to put down the phone and do something. To protest. To vote. To get involved.

The George Floyd Protests were action by a lot of people around the world. Unfortunately that action didn’t result in the right changes and it faded too quickly. Maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it was the feel good dopamine hit of watching people protest on social media. Maybe it was just defeatism in the face of a massive system and the backlash. Yes the fascist were defeated at the ballot box. But not for long. Four years on they stormed back, with a republican winning the presidential popular vote for the first time since I was in elementary school. And apathy is a big reason why, more eligible people didn’t vote than voted for any actual candidate, including Trump or Harris. So the pendulum seems to have swung firmly back in the other direction, towards apathy if we want to be generous, towards fascism and the politics of hate if we want to be realistic.

Anyway. I said I would not get too much into politics. So let me end this post now as every song I look at is filled with more politics. RTJ4 is a great album, like most great rap it’s highly contextual to its time and place. But it’s still relevant and hard hitting. One day, maybe the context will be lost on most listeners but it’s still fresh enough and, unfortunately, still relevant enough that it should leave an impression on you. If you haven’t heard it, take a listen.

On iTunes:

Or on Spotify:

Categories
albums

RTJ4

Artist
Run the Jewels
Album
Run the Jewels 4
Release Date
June 3, 2020

I posted a second review of this album, because I neglected to put this review in the correct category and therefore, I failed to find it when I was thinking about what album to review next. Rather than trash that review, I’ve posted it here: RTJ4 [confusion.cc] for you to compare if you will.

I came late to RTJ [discogs.com], I first encountered them via DJ Shadow’s song “Nobody Speak” on The Mountain Will Fall [discogs.com]. Still one of their best songs —and their best videos [youtube.com], I would put it up there with Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” [youtube.com] video. From there I discovered their back catalog and was eagerly awaiting RTJ4, listening to it from the day it dropped.

RTJ4 [discogs.com] gets a lot of praise as a soundtrack to the summer of protests over the death of George Floyd and the larger Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. The album was in fact released a few days early due to the ongoing protests. But, the protesting nature and the unfortunate an poignant way that RTJ4‘s broad themes and specifics fit the death of George Floyd can’t really be called a coincidence. The issues aren’t new, the anger isn’t new. Even the death by suffocation a al cop isn’t new, the most disturbing line on the album, given the way George Floyd died comes midway through “Walking in the Snow” at the end of one of Killer Mike’s verses:

“I can’t breathe” could have been written about George Floyd, and indeed the song became a sort of cathartic rallying call, but it wasn’t about George Floyd. Killer Mike himself clarified on Twitter that, “that verse was rapped in 2019.” It is in fact referencing the last words of another black man killed by police; Eric Garner, whose death was filmed in 2014 in New York City. Despite the fact that this was national news in 2014 [cnn.com] and again in 2019 [cnn.com] when the Justice Department declined to try the officers, people seem to have forgotten it until George Floyds death.

Anyway, if you want to listen to more on the album’s place in the protests you should watch this video [youtube.com] by Polyphonic over on YouTube.

Sitting in Singapore the protests were half a world away for me, I wasn’t listening to RTJ4 because I was protesting. I like RTJ. I’m not a Rap or Hip Hop aficionado, I’ve always loved the Beastie Boys and I like me some Eminem, Outkast and others, but I could never really get into the genre, neither the great popular acts like Dr. Dre or Tu Pac, back in the day or Kendrick Lamar and Drake more recently nor the more underground greats like MF Doom. But RTJ hits the spot. I love Killer Mike’s flow, reminding me of Big Boi from OutKast. And Mike’s southern flow pair perfectly with El-P’s New York style. I’ve listened to both artists solo work and while it’s good I find the whole greater than the sum of its parts. I started with Run The Jewels and worked my way backwards to 2 and 1, all great. But it seems that each album is surpassed by the next release and RTJ4 is my favorite. I can’t wait to hear Run the Jewels 5.

Ready to listen?

Categories
albums

Garbage

Artist
Garbage
Album
Garbage
Release Date
August 15, 1995

I have listened to a lot of Garbage [discogs.com] over the years —haha ;-)— and their self-titled debut album was, from its release a few weeks before my senior year, a favorite album. I don’t know how I found Garbage [discogs.com], I remember seeing the black and white video for Queer on MTV so maybe that’s it, but it sits at the apex of my high school music phase. Whenever I listen I am transported back to the halls of AHS. It is the defining album of my senior year. A perfect end to four hears of high school, from late 1992 to mid 1996, peak of grunge and alternative music.

I listened to Garbage while driving to school in the mornings, somehow I found time to listen between classes —I can vividly remember putting on my headphones and pressing play on my portable CD player as I left different classrooms. I listened to Garbage on the way to work after school and on the way home from work late at night. I know I listened to a lot of other albums: 311 [discogs.com], Sparkle and Fade [discogs.com] by Everclear, The Bends [discogs.com] by Radiohead, A Boy Named Goo [discogs.com] by the Goo Goo Dolls, DMB’s Crash [discogs.com] and STPs Tiny Music… [discogs.com] and there was surely a lot of listening to the radio, but I must have listened to Garbage more than many other album that year.

As far as the songs on Garbage, you couldn’t really listen to modern rock/alternative radio or MTV in 1996 and escape Stupid Girl or Only Happy When it Rains. They were massively popular songs, and rightfully so, they are some of the best on the album. But there are deeper cuts on Garbage, songs that were never singles, so even if you know the singles it’s likely you never head them. And you are missing out: Milk, My Lovers Box, Supervixen and As Heaven is Wide. I could name the whole album but these four will do, go and listen to them.

Garbage was so amazing that I was disappointed when Version 2.0 [discogs.com] came out a few years later. I came to appreciate it more over the years but it never lived up to Garbage for me. None of their subsequent albums do, they aren’t bad, but… nothing was ever going to scale the lofty pedestal I put Garbage on. It’s unfair but this is the perfect alternative rock album for me, the yardstick by which I measure all other albums of the era.

Like all the albums on this list I still listen to Garbage regularly. In fact I managed to get my older daughter hooked on it when she was younger, so that she listened to it between Taylor Swift and other more current music.

If you have never listened to it or haven’t heard it in a long time, take a listen. Garbage is at once unique and a great representative of the mid-90’s alternative rock.

Listen on iTunes:

Or on Spotify:

Categories
albums

Flood

Artist
They Might be Giants
Relaese Date
January 15, 1990

Flood [discogs] by They Might be Giants [discogs] may be the greatest alternative, indie, college rock album ever. TMBG might be known as comedy music, joke rock to most people, not serious music, but fans know that the music is as good as any mainstream rock band, the lyrics are —far from being jokes— often complex and meaningful, they have a lighter side but they are not just jokes. Also two of the songs on Flood had faux music videos on Tiny Toon Adventures [wikipedia.org] in early 1991, and I definitely remember watching those on Fox after school.

Due to the Tiny Toons videos I think Flood was a the gateway to TMBG for many people my age, much too young to have been in the core college fan demographic of the time. But Flood was not my gateway to TMBG. I do remember watching the videos for “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” [youtube.com] and “Particle Man” [youtube.com] on Tiny Toons —much later I found there was an “official” video for Istanbul [youtube.com]. But in 1991 I had just turned 13 and it was not a good time in my life, According to Wikipedia the Tiny Toons episode containing Istanbul” and “Particle” Man aired in February 1991… right in the middle of the Gulf War, or Operation Desert Storm, and my mom was serving. She was not in the Middle East, she was a reservist and was called up in late 1991 to replace the active duty people who were deployed to the Middle East. But my mom was away from home all the time stationed several hours away, and I did not get along with my dad. So, the whole period of late 1990 to late 1991 while she was on active duty was not a good time in my house.

Anyway, it was a couple of years later that I got into TMBG. My (re)introduction was via a couple of friends in high school: S████ and G████. S████ especially used to listen to them all the time, Apollo 18 [discogs.com] and John Henry [discogs.com] were more recent and I recall he listened to them more, but Flood was in the mix. And it was the album that made the biggest impression on me. It was the first TMBG album I bought for myself. It was in the little CD wallet I kept in my backpack in senior year, along with other albums that are or will be on this list of my favorite: Under the Table and Dreaming [confusion.cc], and Garbage for two examples.

As for the music, Flood is an eclectic album like all TMBG albums. Besides “Istanbul” and “Particle Man”, both excellent songs, my three favorite would be: “Birdhouse In Your Soul”, “We Want a Rock”, and “Your Racist Friend”. “Your Racist Friend” in particular is one of the first political songs I really listened to, getting in to the politically charged music of Rage Against the Machine about the same time, late in senior your of high school when Evil Empire was released. It also has to be said that “Minimum Wage” is a brilliant… song? I’m not sure it counts as a song, jingle I guess.

I will admit that the first half of the album holds my attention better than the second half. But, I still listen to Flood from start to finish regularly.

But take a listen for yourself, on Apple:

Or on Spotify:

Categories
albums

The Lillywhite Sessions

Artist
Dave Matthews Band
Realse Date
March 2001 (unofficially leaked)

The Lillywhite Sessions is my second favorite album [confusion.cc] by The Dave Matthews Band, my hometown band, and the second bootleg [confusion.cc] or unreleased album on this list. You can read the history of the album on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. I got my copy very early, I want to say even before it was released on Napster per the Wikipedia article, but I can’t recall for sure. I got access to the songs via a very short chain of people going back to the actual recording sessions in Charlottesville. I downloaded the songs from an FTP address a friend gave me and burned them to a CD.

I fell in love with this album immediately upon popping the CD into a player. The darker tones of many of the songs is what I love. This album is particularly heavy with the strings and horns that set DMB apart from most rock bands. LeRoi Moore brings an almost jazzy feeling to several songs. DMB has always been a jam band, their live shows filled with jazz-like improvisation —songs that are 5 minutes long on an album blossoming into epic 20 minute jams in a live setting— and this comes through even in the studios setting on The Lillywhite Sessions.

Many of the songs on The Lillywhite Sessions appeared a couple of years later on an official release, Busted Stuff. But, the polished versions don’t have the same power as the unmastered raw recordings of the original leaked sessions. The rawness works with the moody nature of the songs. And, anyway, a few songs never made it to official studio albums. To this day “Monkey Man” is unreleased.

I can’t provide an Apple or Spotify playlist, but someone posted the full album to YouTube: