Album Review: Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 2

It's been over a month since my last full on album review, which I think is kinda funny considering I started this blog by reviewing nothing but music. Either way, fuccbois beware, because this next album is about to go twin hype and do a dance on your wind pipe.

Run the Jewels have been my favorite rap group since they dropped their debut album, Run The Jewels last year. Consisting of two of my favorite rappers, one of whom is also my favorite producer, this is a duo that can't be beat in my books. Consisting of the odd combo of southern rapper Killer Mike and New York rapper/ producer El-P, this is one of those instances where two very different people come together and make something greater than the sum of their parts.

Run The Jewels 2 is a natural extension of last year's debut, bringing in more serious and socially conscious lyrics more akin to those in RAP Music and Cancer 4 Cure. There's religious imagery out the ass, and lots of content calling out police brutality, corrupt political and judicial systems, and racism in Western culture. Don't worry, though, everything that makes Run The Jewels the most metal rap group is still there. Between some of their most violent and raunchy lyrics and El bumping out some of his most aggressive (and most addictive) beats yet, this album doesn't show the duo softening up anytime soon.

Another thing RTJ has stepped their game up on is who and how they use their features. Rage Against The Machine's Zack De La Rocha, Foxygen's Diane Coffee, Three 6 Mafia's Gangsta Boo, Blink-182's Travis Barker (!), and Beyoncé's Boots all contribute monster verses, haunting hooks and melodies, or in Barker's case badass drum fills to RTJ2.De La Rocha and Gangsta Boo are the two standout performances on the album for me, although Boots cuts a close third. De La Rocha is actually sampled and looped in the beat to "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)", and Gangsta Boo drops one of the raunchiest verses I've heard, which is twice as powerful following Killer Mike and El-P's hypersexual lines in "Love Again".

I know I'm a huge fanboy and I hype Run The Jewels a lot, but this is by far my favorite album of the year so far. It floored me after my first listen, and every time I listen through it again, I pick up on more nuances in El-P's production, or catch more clever wordplay in everyone's lyrics. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

You can get RTJ2 for free (that's right, FREE) off of Run The Jewels' website. Catch Run The Jewels on tour this month, and if you see them on their Toronto date, come say hi (and buy me a beer)!

That`s all for now, folks!

-DG

Album Review: Kanye West - Yeezus

It's been a while since my last non-metal review, so I feel like I'm due for another one soon, and if y'all remember from before, I dug Kanye West's last album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. To be honest, Fantasy (and Kanye in general) has grown on me over time, and I jam his tunes pretty regularly on the old iTunes. Now, Yeezy is dropping his highly anticipated follow-up to Fantasy, Yeezus.

Yeah, I know this isn't the official album art, but it's so much better than the original. I mean come on, seriously?

So, Ye needs no intro, you all know him, a motherfuckin' wordsmith, and a voice of a generation, connoisseur of fish dicks sticks. Let's just get on with the review. This will probably be a pretty short one.

First off, this is not My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2.0. I thought it was going to be. I couldn't have been more wrong. Where Fantasy is a lush, bombastic album, covered in strings, horns, guitars, synthesizers, choirs and singing, Yeezus is its dark, dingy, and moody step-brother. It's interesting, because while this album drops some loud, obnoxious and cacophonous tracks, it also shows some really nicely laid out and almost beautifully produced sections, which stand out even more with the album's overall harshness. There are no strings, no big choirs, no shiny horns. There's Kanye, a buttload of autotune, a synthesizer, and a drum kit. Now, the synth takes on some piano and traditional keyboard sounds, as well as a screechy set of horns on the track "Blood on the Leaves". For the most part, the production here is loud and obnoxious, but I can handle it. But once these horns on "Blood on the Leaves" kicks in, I feel like I just downed a 40 of rageahol. They're tonally low, but they're the thinnest, screechiest horn samples I've heard in a long time. One of the parts that really stands out as one of the more accessible and beautiful parts of the album is the ending of "New Slaves" which features some absolutely awesome sampling of Omega's Gyöngyhajú Lány in the outro.

Even though there aren't many hooks and melodies on Yeezus (most of them are just samples, or Ye singing through some heavy autotune), the album has it's pretty catchy bits. Songs like "Black Skinhead" and "Bound 2" show their catchiness through solid drum beats, and awesome choice of samples. Now, even if Yeezus has departed from Fantasy's sonic style, Kanye is still a total champion at choosing samples. Blood on the Leaves" has even got some pretty controversial sampling. Kanye pieced in bits of the old song "Strange Fruit", a song about hanging African Americans. Surely, this poignant statement about race in today's culture must be the most though provoking and memorable part of the album, no? Well, no. Not at all. The part that I (and a couple other people I know) keep getting hung up on is the track "I am a God (feat. God)" is a tune that is featuring God. God, guys. Like, the big dude upsairs. Guys, guys, I think Kanye just ended the fundamentalist-athetist deba-- oh, wait, no, he's the only one who appears on this track. Oh, I get it! Yeezy is saying that he is god. Cool.

It's good to know Kanye West's ego can overshadow an entire civilization's history of racial prejudice and denial of human rights.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: Black Skinhead, New Slaves, Blood on the Leaves, Bound 2

On a Playlist With: Kanye West, Yeezy, Ye

Overall Score: 3/5

Douchebag makes decent music again. It ain't no My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but it's definitely something fresh. The more I listen to it, the more I seem to warm up to it, and the more I warm up to it, the more I listen to it, but I'm not sure if I'll be putting this on my top 10 albums of the year list in December. Check it out, it's definitely an interesting listen.

Yeezus comes out tomorrow everywhere, but leaked like, three days ago, everywhere.

That's all for now, folks!

-DG

Bandcamp Chronicles: Vol. 1

Bandcamp is an awesome site. It lets artists host their music to stream for free, and lets them sell (or give away) digital copies of their music as well as physical CDs, vinyl, or other merch. Bandcamp is stupid easy to use (even I use it), and keeps the musician's focus where it should be: on the music. Anyways, I'm not here to slobber over Bandcamp itself, but over some awesome artists I've found on Bandcamp. I'll try to briefly introduce the artists and then get straight to shutting the fuck up so you can check out their pages and let their music do the talking.

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GRINDCORE KARAOKE

Well, this actually isn't a band, but a record label run by none other than Agoraphobic Nosebleed's J. Randall. It's a label for tons of grindcore, harsh noise and powerviolence, but there are a couple unexpected releases hosted on it including Moose Children and the ever controversial Death Grips. There's a whole shit ton of stuff here, you can easily spend hours upon hours looking through different bands and albums.

The best part? Every single one of the releases on Grindcore Karaoke are free. Check it out here. Don't forget to click their logo at the top to check out even more titles!

BLACK MASK

This is some awesome rap, emceed by Maulskull. The beats are unique, the lyrics are great, and Maulskull has unbelievable flow. There are some sketch tracks on the album, similar to old school rap groups like Wu-Tang Clan, but unlike the older stuff, I find these sketches absolutely hilarious.

The album Us and Them is free on Bandcamp, or you can pick up two CDs for $10.

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Check out these mofos and let me know what you think! If you find any other sweet Bandcamp artists, don't hesitate to let me know!

That's all for now, folks!

-DG

Album Review: Jason James & Rodney Hazard - "Pyramids in Stereo"

It's been a while since I last posted 'cause I'm on winter break, so my schedule has slowed down to petty much just sleeping, eating, listening to music, and watching Burn Notice. It's been pretty sweet. I'm here to make my last post of 2012, but once 2013 swings around, I'll be sure to update all y'all with what's coming up. Cool? Cool.

Without further ado, today we dive into the latest release from Jason James & Rodney Hazard: Pyramids in Stereo.

Jason James is a Vancouver-based rapper who's been working with New York producer Rodney Hazard for a while. In 2010, they released Marvelous World of Color and now they're back with Pyramids in Stereo. I've got to be frank here. Pyramids is a fantastic album. It's the album I said should be on my Top 10 of 2012 list, but didn't end up there because I published the list before listening to this album. I honestly feel bad for not including it on the list now, but the list is already out there. Shitty on my part.

So, Pyramids is a sample heavy, production light album with the focus on James' lyrics. The beats and tracks are generally pretty quiet in comparison to the rhymesayer's voice, but that's not to say they're poor quality tracks at all. The production is carefully layered with tons of reverb laden synth and keys, minimalist drums and tons of samples. The samples are perfectly chosen for each track, with clips taken from TV's The Price is Right, various news casts and news interviews from the scene of a shooting tragedy, and Kubrick's masterpiece Full Metal Jacket among many others. Along with the samples, Hazard's studio wizardry helps give the backing tracks even more depth. A favorite of mine has got to be the song "This is my Rifle", where the echoing and reverberating synth conjures up thoughts of a lone bullet flying through the air. Hazard definitely makes some of most well produced tracks I've heard in a while.

Jason James handles his role as MC as well as Hazard handles production duties, too. James' has unbelievable flow. Like, it's ridiculous how fluid his rhymes come out of your speakers. That being said, no matter how fast he spits out lines, he's always articulate and intelligible. You can always make out every word James says on Pyramids. His lyrics are powerful and moving, mostly covering political and social issues with his words. Personal favorites of mine are the two first tracks, "Return to the Marvelous World" and "Life as we Know it", where the latter's chorus is a plea for honesty, good will and righteousness among people everywhere. Solid.

Pyramids has a few other artists featuring on it who bring some cool dynamics to the album. Most notable has to be Mark McGrath and Adam Nigro on the closing track "Bang Bang Boogie Men". The instrumentation is a blues-rock guitar riff that is just hammered into your head over and over again. It's something reminiscent of The White Stripes, The Black Keys or Clutch, and when the outro solo hits, it just straight up rocks. It's something unconventional to hear in rap or hip-hop music, and it really makes for a powerful closer to the album.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: Life as we Know it, This is my Rifle, Bang Bang Boogie Men

On a Playlist With: Childish Gambino, MF Doom, Madvillain

Overall Score

4.5

Pyramids in Stereo is razor sharp and dead honest in it's execution. Through Rodney Hazard's beautiful production and awe inspiring lyrics and vocal work courtesy of Jason James, it stands as one of the best rap/ hip-hop albums of 2012, bar none. It's a damn shame my Top 10 list was already published, or Pyramids in Stereo would without a doubt be ranking high up there.

You can listen to and download Pyramids in Stereo from DJBooth, AudioMack, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud. You can check out Jason James on Facebook here, too.

That's all for now, folks! Merry almost Christmas, happy post-Hanukkah, jolly every other holiday/ whatever the hell you celebrate! See you in the new year!

-DG

Album Review: Kanye West - "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"

Yeah. I'm reviewing Kanye West. The internet made me do it.

I'm not going to introduce Kanye West, because honestly, whether or not you've heard his music, it's almost a fact that you've heard of him somewhere, somehow. Maybe it was from South Park, maybe it was from his outburst at the 2009 VMAs. Either way, you've heard of the guy. I've never been a fan of the man; he's been way too much of a dick for me to care about his music. However, after finding what I thought to be a very inspirational YouTube video, I decided to give him a listen. Because hey, #YOLO, right guise?

I'll come right out of the gates, guns blazing with this one: I liked My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I thought it was a pretty solid rap/ hip-hop album. Now, I can never remember where I've heard this, but it's just ingrained in my mind that everybody just loves this album. I'm convinced that every music critic and reviewer seems to think that if you don't love Fantasy with all your heart, you're a soulless, distasteful, and shameful excuse for a person. Well, I can't say that I love Fantasy, but I did enjoy a fair few songs on it. The entire album runs for almost 70 minutes (excluding the bonus track), which is a hella-fuckin'-long album in my books. The running time is so long mostly because a lot of the songs run on for 7 to 9 minutes. I'm generally a fan of longer songs, but they really need to be done well to keep my attention for their whole running time.

Funnily enough, the longest song on the album, "Runaway" is one of my favorites. It clocks in at just over 9 minutes, but when the 6 minute mark hits, things get funky with some heavy strings and what sounds like someone's voice through a talkbox, distortion, and a sub octave. This is going to be a ridiculous comparison, but the ending of "Runaway" reminds me of the ending of "Straws Pulled at Random" by Meshuggah. Musically they couldn't be any more different, but it's just that sudden change of sonic direction that seems to grip me so furiously. Maybe I'm just a big wierdo. Who knows.

The beats, rhythms, backing tracks on Fantasy are probably my favorite part of the album, especially on the first half. "Power" has the badass-as-fuck chanting, tribal drums, and soloing guitars and piano pushing everything forward. The only thing I still don't like about this song are the samples from King Crimson's classic song "21st Century Schizoid Man". The samples fit the music, but I'm just not a fan of artists ripping bits and pieces from my favorite songs for their own music. Kudos to Kanye for knowing who King Crimson are, though.

The instrumentation on the rest of the album is lush and thick. Strings feature heavily all over the place, almost always accompanied by piano. Sounds from trumpets and other horns also come up sometimes, most memorably on "All of the Lights". Things swing from empowering and inspirational down to heavy and angry and back up again. The album seems to shoot all over the place emotionally, which kind of makes Fantasy seem a little incoherent. Luckily for Kanye, like, a bajillion people feature on this album, from Raekwon to Jay-Z to Bon Iver, and the featured artists fit perfectly with whatever tone he's trying to set with each track.

Bomb-Ass Tracks: Power, All the Lights, Runaway

On a Playlist With: Childish Gambino, Jay-Z, Death Grips

Overall Score

3.0

Like I said, I liked My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but I didn't find it the mind-blowing second coming of Jesus that some people seem to think it is. It's a solid rap album with wicked production, but too much of it is "just a another rap album" to me. That being said, the parts I like, I like a lot. Kanye might be a douche, but he's a pretty good musician.

That's all for now, folks! I'm going to go eat some fishsticks.

-DG

Album Review: Killer Mike - "R.A.P. Music"

If there are two types of rap I like, they’re:

1.  Funky, family friendly  80s style
2.  Hard-as nails South-Western style

Guess which category a man as subtly named as Killer Mike falls under.

Killer Mike is an Atlanta based rapper who has been releasing full length albums for almost 10 years, and has been featured in a gazillion songs from the likes of Immortal Technique, Sly & the Family Stone, and Lil’ Jon (really not as impressive as the other two). Killer Mike has worked also with El-P on numerous occasions, so it isn’t too surprising to hear that El-P produced R.A.P. Music.

This album has two main highlights for me and they’re the tone of Mike’s voice and the beats/ instrumentation.Killer Mike has this really commanding voice. I wouldn’t say it’s anything too special, but I think it’s pretty powerful. I always like the type of rappers who put enough force behind what they say that they slowly start sounding out of breath or strained. Weird? Maybe. Whatever. The production and instrumentation done by El-P is fan-fucking-tastic too. All the beats hit harder than adamantine boot heel, which is A-okay in my books.

Even though Killer Mike and El-P forge this seemingly gargantuan persona for R.A.P. Music, they can keep the songs varied enough that the album doesn’t seem to be a testosterone-fest. “Don’t Die” makes Mike sound almost scared and paranoid, while “Willie Burke Sherwood” still feels strong, but just listening/ reading the lyrics shows Mike’s more melancholic side. Lyrical content on this album varies from boasts, to conspiracy theories, to personal and family issues, to the power of music. All this variation keeps the album fresh and interesting, without ever fully diluting Killer Mike’s tough-as-fuck image.

Bomb-Ass Tracks:

Big Beast (ft. T.I., Trouble & Bun B): The intro track doesn’t waste time telling you not to mess with Killer Mike and co. Probably my favorite song on the album to blast while in the car with the windows down.

Don’t Die: While “Big Beast” might be my favorite to blast in the car, “Don’t Die” has to be my favorite on the album, period. The song goes from eerie and off kilter all the way until the fantastic audio sample in the middle of the song, then Mike seems to take control of the chaos and push out a powerful ending.

Willie Burke Sherwood: Just a great song to close your eyes and lose yourself to. Look up the lyrics. Just fantastic.

On a Playlist With: El-P, Childish Gambino, Ludacris

Overall Score

3.0

Killer Mike and El-P make a great rap album that pulls you in for the whole ride. Blast this when you want to pump yourself up, or just erase whatever’s on your mind. I’d recommend this even to people who aren’t huge fans of rap or hip-hop.

Album Review: Childish Gambino – “Camp”

As some of my friends know, I have a guilty pleasure for a little Hip-Hop and Rap every once in a while. “BUT DAVID!” I hear you scream, “HIP-HOP DOESN’T HAVE BLAST BEATS OR GUTTURAL VOCALS, HOW COULD YOU ENJOY IT?”. It’s true, I do like me some Hip-Hop from time to time, I’m going to be reviewing one of my new favorite albums from the genre: Camp by Childish Gambino (released November 15, 2011)

Childish Gambino is the stage name of comedian/ actor Donald Glover. Glover rose to popularity with his stand up comedy acts, and solidified himself as a comedy powerhouse by portraying Troy Barnes on NBC’s ridiculously awesome show Community. Gambino’s Camp was the first of his that I’ve heard, and it’s technically his debut studio album, but he’s released a bunch of stuff prior to this as well.

Dat simplicity.

Camp is a more straightforward Hip-Hop album, musically. There are no wonky rhythms and beats a là Death Grips (review of The Money Store coming whenever I get around to listening to it), and no over the top bass lines and bass drops a là every Bro-Hip-Hop and Bro-Rap artist ever. Gambino raps about whatever he feels like, from girls to the state of black youth in America, to his short shorts, to his philosophies. It might seem that since there’s such a wide breadth of topics covered in Camp, it might diminish the whole album as a whole, rest assured, Gambino keeps it surprisingly well focused.

The album holds a dramatic and somewhat melancholic vibe throughout, rising to anger on “Heartbeat” before swinging back down. The emotional mood cracks apart again and transforms into insanity on the track “You See Me” where Gambino’s delivery of the lines makes him sound like a mental case.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought his shirt said "Broom Rape" for a second. Please.

The album suffers in only a couple ways, and that’s in Gambino’s constant references to his dick and the processing on his voice at times. I have no problems with a few dick jokes, but when it starts to crop up in almost every song, it’s a little much. The processed vocals are simply run through some light distortion, but I feel like it really takes away from the quality of his natural voice.

Bomb-Ass Tracks

Outside: The opening track off of Camp really sets the mood for the entire album. It’s one of the more serious songs dealing with how it was like for him to grow up in various neighborhoods as a kid, and he tells the story flawlessly. The choir-sung chorus is absolutely fantastic, and when the piano kicks in, oh man, it’s just perfect.

Heartbeat: This song is just nothing but straight power. The calm choruses offer a nice contrast to the furiously spat out verses. Some of the lines in “Heartbeat” are just genius, too.

That Power: Spoken word over a beat/ track. As the final track, it sums up everything he (and this album) are about and closes off the album incredibly well.

Overall Score

4.5

Childish Gambino’s Camp is a great ride of ups, downs, twists and turns which really hits home with me. It’s not without its flaws, but I can easily overlook them for the great music that it is. Check it out sometime.

That’s all for now, folks. Keep being Awesome.