Curren$y: Internet Age Hip-Hop

From 2008-2011, Curren$y has released 16 albums or mixtapes. This is an almost impossible number to understand. Bands like Guns and Roses delay the release of a single album for decades (Chinese Democracy) and Dr. Dre has been working on the third album of his career, Detox, for about ten years now. This is not to mention countless other guest verses and other songs he has released unconnected to full projects. Most musicians don't even come close to putting out this much material during the course of their entire career. Like A$AP Rocky, Curren$y has a found a way to have a very profitable and successful career as an internet rapper (and they also both have dollar signs unfortunately incorporated into their stage names).

In the 90's and the early 2000's, the way to make it in rap music was to get a deal with a big label and they would promote your album and you could see the money flow in, but the hard part of the equation was getting signed, not making a great album. After bouncing around from label to label while waiting for his album to be released, Curren$y tried a different route, he just struck out on his own, independent of a label. He released seven free albums in seven months, and grew an online following. I am usually critical of the internet and the disconnect that it can bring, basic values and integrity can be kept at bay by a cloud of anonymity, but Curren$y defied my negative preconceptions. By working incredibly hard ("There is not an adjective to describe how I work/Hard is not enough, brother I'm tougher"), and focusing on the quality craftsmanship instead of major label promotion campaigns, Curren$y has made a career for himself by bringing old-fashioned values into the 21st century.

I think this video makes me sad.

Before I begin this post, you should all watch this video.

Okay, now while the baby was cute I guess, and the video might have been somewhat entertaining and funny, overall, I could not help but feel sad after watching it. The video depicts a little kid (maybe a year old) playing with an iPad, she is not doing to much on it, but she is engaged and having fun moving things around on the screen. Then she is given a magazine by her parents. She tries to move around the pictures, and after her finger fails to make the screen move, she pokes her own leg to make sure her finger still "works." Like it said, it's pretty funny but it's also profoundly sad. In my Media Theory class, we've brought up the idea that younger generations require constant entertainment, this is obvious, if this girl can't find a magazine interesting, I doubt she will be able to stomach a book without pictures when she's older. I fear that we're getting to a point where our education needs sound effects for us to care about it.

Will Rappers be Rich Again?

A$AP Rocky, a young rapper from Harlem, New York just signed a record deal for over three million dollars, this is the biggest signing in hip-hop since 50 Cent, which is really significant as most major labels find themselves in unrelenting downward financial spirals. What's even more unique about this, is that A$AP Rocky came to popularity not through co-signs, but trough viral internet success. The only co-signs he's received are from colleagues like spaceghostpurp and Clams Casino, who are not even close to being household names. Drake rose rapidly to riches, but that was largely due to the support of Lil Wayne, a rapper who first broke into Hip-Hop when it was still a highly popular profession. The internet changed all of that, now everyone expects a constant outpouring of free material (interestingly enough, Lil Wayne was one of the first artists to oblige, releasing multiple albums full of songs every year in his creative heyday). A$AP scored his deal largely because of his youtube videos, and now in addition to his record deal, he is he on tour with Drake and fellow internet sensation Kendrick Lamar. Hip-Hop is appears, is beginning to discover how to make a fortune off of the internet. Something many corporations have been trying, and failing to do for years now.

I Don't Understand Lil B

There are very few things that I consider myself respectably well-versed in. Really it's probably about three things: Detroit Tigers baseball, sitcoms, and hip-hop. But as much as I love hip-hop there is something that I don't understand on any level, and that thing is the popularity of the rapper Lil B. His music is unfathomably weird, and not in some avant garde way, no I understand and at times really dig avant garde hip-hop (Shabazz Palaces, DOOM, J Dilla, etc.), but this is Dadist if anything, and I hate Dadism. He yells the word "SWAG" after almost every sentence, makes songs about  how he looks like Miley Cyrus, or Jesus, or how he's the "based god." And the internet loves him. But how does these relate to the study of Media Theory? Well Lil B is the perfect case study for the awful trend of internet "irony." This sense of meta humor, and pretending to enjoy things because they are so ridiculous has gone too far, and Lil B is proof of this. I don't know if people really like him, or they just thing that he's ridiculous so they listen to his music for a laugh. I honestly don't know, and I don't know if the people who "enjoy" his music either. This same trend has come to movies recently as well. Is the latest Jason Statham vehicle a parody of action movies, or is it really just that bad, and why do people not seem to care? At the start of every song or movie, people should be required by law to state if this work was intended to be a serious effort, I should never not know if something is parody or reality. And I blame this all on the cynicism of some corners of the internet.

Art Oasis

Visiting Art Prize in Grand Rapids was pretty awesome. There was some talk about the competition being weaker than past years. However, the fact that the whole city had been transformed into an art museum was pretty incredible. And I thought that the art was impressive too. An entire city was dedicating itself to art, local restaurants were full of tourists and everyone seemed happy to just be wandering around.

I've never thought of Grand Rapids as an oasis for art. And that got me thinking about hip-hop (pretty much everything makes me start thinking about hip-hop). And in particular, I was reminded about Minnesota hip-hop. Like Grand Rapids and art, Minnesota and rap music are not two things seem to match up. But there are a good bunch of talented rappers from the Twin Cities. Three MC's in particular jump to mind, I posted three videos below so you can get an idea of what Minnesota's hip-hop oasis consists of.

Slug (of the duo Atomosphere): Modern Man's Hustle


Brother Ali: Take Me Home


Eyedea: amazing freestyle with Slug

Who are the ten most prominent women in music right now?

Before I start this post, I know there are plenty of great female indie musicians. Karen O, Victoria Legrand, Sarah Martin, Régine Chassagne, Lana Del Rey, and the Dum Dum Girls are all immensely talented and I feel that they are much more musically significant than most of the artists I'm listing below. However in the book, "Where the Girls Are" by Susan J. Douglas which I'm reading for my Media Theory class discusses the cultural impact of girl groups like The Supremes and The Ronettes, groups who were very much in the spotlight, who the public was very much aware of. This two groups pushed cultural boundaries and beyond that, they were immensely talented. Looking at the ten most prominent women in music today, based mostly on billboard chart numbers, the group seems to be lacking in terms of subject matter and in terms of the quality of the music:

Rihanna
Adele
Katy Perry
Britney Spears
Lady Gaga

Last.fm: quantifying my media consumption

Using my laptop's iTunes, I've listened to 1,331 songs by The Hold Steady. I've listened to 59 songs by Murs in the last seven days. In the past three months I've listened to 79 songs by Belle and Sebastian. In the past year, I've listened to the Guided By Voices record Alien Lanes, more than any other album.

I know all of this because, since April 29, 2009 I've been using the music tracking website Last.fm, and I've been loving it. iTunes play-counts are nice, but a new computer, or a hard-drive crash can erase those fragile records. Last.fm records every song as you are playing it on your computer, it records these plays, and allow you to statistically analyze your listening habits in a number of ways. My obsession with Last.fm reminds me of the baseball debate between sabermetrics (advanced statistical analysis of players), and a veteran manager's gut-feeling assessment of his lineup. How can I love band A more than band B when band B has twice as many plays in my last.fm library. Sometimes tracking your play counts can become embarrassingly addictive, and it's sometimes difficult not to let your Last.fm influence your listening habits (I should listen to two more songs by Mos Def, because that will get me to 200 plays).

List of the Day: 7 Hip-Hop Records to Look Forward To (sorting through the blog hype)

There is more music readily available these days than you could possibly listen to. The internet had forever changed the music industry and this change is especially evident in the hip-hop community. Rap has become the first genre of music to embrace a model of music distribution that provides a large quantity of free or cheap music to fans (in the form of mixtapes). As a result of this constant stream of affordable entertainment, keeping tabs on the genre can be almost overwhelming. So I hope this post can serve as a guide to focus your fanship on the best upcoming hip-hop records that are slated for release before the end of the year.

There has already been a lot of great rap music released in 2011. Watch The Throne is already a classic, Curren$y continued to release a steady stream of consistently impressive music, and Big K.R.I.T. is keeping the south alive with records like The Return of 4Eva. However a lot of the best music of the year is still to come:

7) Childish Gambino -- Camp
The only reason that this is ranked in the seventh spot is that there has not been a concrete release date attached it as of yet. I can't wait to hear a solid studio album out of Mr. Glover. The highlights of is EP record continue to blow my mind.


6) The Wonder Years -- 9th Wonder (Sept. 27)
The legen- (wait for it) -dary underground producer looks to continue his reign of dominance with his latest project that is set to feature former collaborators like Murs and Phonte (of Little Brother), legends like Raekwon and Erykah Badu, and young talents like Kendrick Lamar and Tanya Morgan.

5) Radioactive -- Yelawolf (Oct. 25)
Yelawolf has an unquestionable unique flow and above all else is madly in love with hip-hop (listen to his interviews). It remains to be seen whether is major label debut will be dumbed and watered-down for a mainstream audience or if he will stick to the aesthetics of his raw mixtapes.

4) Cole World: The Sideline Story -- J. Cole (Sept. 27)
J. Cole is one of the hyped MC's of the 21st century, this will be his chance to prove himself, and if his Jay-Z collaboration is any indication, this record should be solid.

3) Ambition -- Wale (Nov. 1)
I'm a little worried about Wale, he started off as a creative and socially conscious poet, and now he's signed to Rick Ross' MMG label and his rapping about women a cash a lot more. This is not a knock on Ross, he's justifiably dominated hip-hop radio all year, but he doesn't make timeless music. Wale has the potential to be one of the best lyricists alive, but it's hard to do that when you're rapping over Lex Luger sound-alike beats.

2)  Take Care -- Drake (Oct. 4)
Drake is setting himself up to move up to a whole new level with this record. 40's smoked out and faded beats are better than ever, and Drake sounds angry and hungry. Headlines is one of the hottest songs of the year and if you believe Drake, it's not even one of the strongest tracks on the record.

1) Love and Rockets Vol. 1: The Transformation -- Murs and Ski Beatz (Oct. 11)
I threw the wild artwork for this project at the start of this post. While the lyrical quality of Ski's second Karate School project may have fallen slightly, his instrumentals were arguably improved. Hopefully Ski can replicate what he did for Curren$y's career with underground veteran Murs.

Moment of Clarity

In my Media Theory class, we've been talking a lot about the distinction between art and entertainment. One proposed way to differentiate, was that art is something that takes effort to absorb, while entertainment is something you can get lost in without effort. Personally, I don't think that the difference is that easy to define, in fact in many cases I don't think there is a difference. To make something that successfully captivates and entertains an audience requires a great deal of artistry.

Another topic we touched on in the course was the idea that a lot of art is dumbed down so that it can be more easily understood and accepted as entertainment.

Jay-Z immediately jumped to mind as an artist who claims to dumb down some of his music, in order to connect with more people and to also sell more records. And I feel that to be able to be in such control of your abilities, altering the lyrical complexity of your work while maintaining the quality of that work, demonstrates tremendous artistic talent.

In his song Moment of Clarity, Jay-Z said, "If skills sold/Truth be told/I'd probably be/Lyrically/Talib Kweli/Truthfully/I wanna rhyme like Common Sense/(But I did five Mil)/I ain't been rhyming like Common since."

Here is is explaining that he would prefer to rap like Common or Talib Kweli, both of whom are renowned for their lyricism, but that lyricism doesn't sell records. On a number of songs over his career, Jay-Z has indeed displayed that when he wants to be, he is one of the best technical rappers alive. However when it comes to his singles he dumbs down his high art for the sake of the masses.

Morrissey, Kanye and the Media

This is a column that I wrote for Hope College's student newspaper The Anchor, it deals with the idea of following an individual's life as a form of entertainment:

Steven Patrick Morrissey was the lead singer of The Smiths and along with Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce, wrote and performed some of the finest songs that have ever existed. While The Smiths are no longer together and touring, Morrissey is still making music and touring the world. But the more I hear about Morrissey, the less I want to pay money to see him preform. He has described Chinese people as a “subspecies,” and after a mass murderer killed 77 people in Norway, he said that the violence was “nothing compared to what happens in McDonald's and K.F.C. every day.”

But should what Morrissey thinks or says influence what I think of his music? I've often heard the argument, and previously used the argument myself, that the art a person produces should always be evaluated on its own, that even horrible people can make beautiful art. The prototypical example of this being Michael Jackson and the controversy and allegations that surrounded him during the later part of his career.

However, I've recently come to the conclusion that there is no universal answer to the question of separating an artist's actions from that artist's creation. I now believe that it's a personal decision, and how you feel as an individual is the only evaluation that matters. If you knew someone who was killed in the massacre in Norway, it's not artistically close-minded of you to choose to never listen to Morrissey just because of what he said. Art is successful when it evokes certain emotions, that's how it connects to an audience, and when you have to shut off or ignore your own natural emotions to connect to a piece of art, I can't imagine that the net result is always positive one. Believe me, this is personally an extreme philosophical jump to make. I hate subjectivity. I don't even believe in subjectivity in sports, or when it comes to the quality of the music I like. If you don't think the Tigers are the greatest franchise in baseball, or if you dislike my favorite music. I think that you're wrong. I have never enjoyed a movie that has had an ambiguous ending (I HATED Inception).

Cramming for a Concert (I've returned to posting)

Kyp Malone

I've returned to writing here which is something I've been meaning to do for a while. I should write with more consistency here now that I have a motivation: I'm doing it for a grade. This may sound a little depressing but it's actually kind of cool, but I don't think it will in any way ruin the fun of writing about music, if anything it makes me feel like I'm actually being productive while maintaining this blog.

But on to the music:

This Friday I will finally see TV on the Radio, one of my favorite bands of all time. A band that has been my favorite at different points in time. However I haven't listened to them since April. I was in Detroit on April 20, incredibly excited to see the show. When I arrived at the venue with my now fiancee, we paid for parking and walked up to the door (where there was strangely no line). A sign very directly stated that the show had been canceled. I rang the doorbell, and a man came to the door and told me that the band arrived in Detroit but they had to cancel the show for personal reasons. I found out later that night that the band's bassist, Gerald Smith had died of cancer, he had not been touring with the group, and his friends canceled a handful of tour dates so that they could mourn their former band-mate.

I don't know why I stopped listening to the band after that. I listened to a lot of hip-hop over the summer and TV on the Radio didn't seem to mesh with that particular musical mood. My iTunes also emptied itself of music this summer and I was too busy to reorganize it for a while. I also think that I was so looking forward to seeing TV on the Radio, that hearing their music in any context other than a live show might seem like a letdown to some extent.

List of the Day: Top 10 Songs of 2010

In 2010 my music habits moved from reactionary to anticipatory. In other-words I stopped trying to play catch-up as much and even managed to pick up a few records on the day they were released, it was like I had a whole new series of holidays to celebrate. I know my days of catch-up are far from over and I'll probably be discovering great albums that were released in 2010 for the rest of my life. But I'd like to think I was at least a little more in touch with cool music that I have been before. So here is some of that cool music presented below in list form. As with my Top Songs of 2009 list there is a one-song-per-band limit.

Top 10 Songs of 2010

10) "Shutterbug" (Big Boi)
Big Boi assembled an all-start cast of southern hip-hop greats for his long-awaited solo debut. If he would have put out that record in a year that Kanye West didn't release an album, Sir Lucious Left Foot might have been the only album indie kids listened to in 2010 instead.

9) "Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John" (Belle and Sebastian)
Despite having one of the ugliest song titles of the year, this cut off of Belle and Sebastian's latest is a thing of beauty. Norah Jones dueting with Stuart Murdock also somehow makes a ton of sense after hearing it here.

8) "What's My Name" (Rihanna)
If you're toggling through radio stations, you can't take a ten minute drive without hearing Rihanna's voice, and honestly, she's pretty much the only thing making Top 40 radio tolerable right now. I never thought that I would miss snap-rap so much, or at all.

7) "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" (Arcade Fire)
So many bands have tried to replace a lack of meaningful lyrics with vague and abstract ones, Arcade Fire totally bucks that trend and instead is brutally honest and relatable. This track is a perfect example of that almost awkward sentimentality and straightforwardness.

6) "Hurricane J" (The Hold Steady)
At some point I will write at length about how slept on The Hold Steady's 2010 album, Heaven is Whenever was, but in the mean time I'll simply reference this track, which good enough to hang with anything Craig Finn has written.

List of the Day: Best Belle and Sebastian Albums

Belle and Sebastian are an unwieldy sized (currently seven members) bunch of Scottish bookworms who have been turning out consistently endearing albums of indie-pop classics since 1996. After falling in love with their first record Tigermilk an embarrassingly short time ago, I shot through their other six proper full lengths, and was not once disappointed. While I could enjoy writing a sizable essay about each one of these records, I will present brief thoughts on each, and rank their excellence relative to their siblings.

7) The Boy With The Arab Strap
I don't dislike a single Belle and Sebastian album, and this is no exception, but after releasing two subdued masterpieces to begin their career (Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister), a stylistic change was probably called for instead of a third record that examined the same ideas. After The Boy With The Arab Strap, the group did indeed change their sound by first turning darker, and then going for a popier sound.
Best Songs: "It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career," "A Summer Wasting," "The Boy With The Arab Strap"

6) Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
I've read a handful of derisive things that have been written about this album and granted, it may hold a couple of the weakest songs the group has penned, but it also contains a good bunch of unmissable tunes that contain some of the most powerful lyrics I've heard on a Belle and Sebastian album, which is saying something.
Best Songs: "I Fought in a War," "The Chalet Lines," "Women's Realm"

5) The Life Pursuit
The most accessible material in the band's discography saw a bit of a variation from their established classic sound without taking away too much of what made that sound great.
Best Songs: "Another Sunny Day," "White Collar Boy," "For The Price of a Cup of Tea"

Album Review: James Blake: James Blake

In late 2008 Kanye West released his drastic side-step of an album, 808's & Heartbreak. He decision to sing instead of rap was a emotional necessity, following the disintegration of his engagement and  the death of his mother, rather than an example of genre experimentation. The world-conquering hip-hop he had mastered on Graduation wasn't something he could harness to convey what he was feeling, it wasn't emotionally fragile enough.

British singer and producer James Blake has made a similar decision with his debut album, James Blake. Continuing his progression away from the more devoutly dubstep sounds of his earlier work, Blake uses more traditional and soulful vocals to express emotions that dubstep alone is not capable of evoking. 808's & Heartbreak and Blake's album also explore the idea of a simultaneously artificial sounding and spiritually damaged persona. This is particularly evident on album highlight "The Wilhelm Scream." As the track reaches it's climax, the pulsing layered waves of artificial noise that have been slowly building are pierced as Blake's very human voice echos through.

List of the Day: Who Should Play the Superbowl Halftime Show

After a break from blogging to facilitate my midterm homework/exam rush, I have returned with another great List of the Day:

The Black Eyed Peas performance at the Super Bowl XLV halftime show was a disaster. Between Fergie's mic not working properly, the absurd costumes, an awful appearance by Usher, and the confusing presence of the two non-Fergie/will-i-am members who were little more than boring hype-men.

This performance got me thinking about all of the great bands that would be great to see out on the 50 yard line halfway through next year's game, but first I had to establish two rules:

1) Among average Americans, the artist needs to have some level of name-recognition. Not everyone needs to like the artist, but a good number of people should at least know about them.

2) The performer needs to be relatively inoffensive, so as popular as Eminem is, the Superbowl-music-halftime-show-selection-lowest-common-musical-denominator-committee-people who are still gun-shy from Janet Jackson's malfunction would probably not be okay with him being on stage.

3) The artist needs to not be retired or (if a band) needs to not be broken up.

Who Should Play the Superbowl Halftime Show:

5) Beastie Boys
The Beastie Boys could absolutely destroy the Superbowl stage, Licensed to Ill alone has enough hits to make an amazing setlist, and when you thrown in other classics like "Sabotage" and maybe a more recent cut like "Ch-Check It Out" plus some matching sweatsuits, you would be guaranteed a show you couldn't turn off.

Track Review: New TV on the Radio!: "Will Do"

Resident rock music demigods TV on the Radio have decided to unleash a track from their upcoming album, Nine Types of Light upon the world by way of Seattle radio station 107.7 The End's website. In addition, the band's twitter feed is currently sporting a list of stops scheduled for the group's April 8-May 2 tour. An album release date of April 12 was also revealed.

On their first two official records, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes and Return to Cookie Mountain, TV on the Radio pounded swells of noise and energy into their listeners ears. Usually the tracks would be initially off-putting due to the the amount of musical information they contained. Their 2008 record, Dear Science, was more approachable and less dense but still managed to avoid sacrificing musical complexity. Based on their newest track, "Will Do," the band seems to be building off of the sounds of Dear Science, rather than reverting back to an earlier sound.

List of the Day: Top 10 Songs of 2009

Many people seem to get nostalgic about the music of the past few decades, even people in my age demographic (college-aged) often express their belief that they were born in the wrong musical era. I am not of a similar mindset, I firmly believe that the past ten years of music were the finest ten years of music the world has ever seen. I know that believing that the music you grew up with is the greatest music is about as stereotypical as believing that old music is superior but I'm sticking to my guns. 2009 was a particularly great year for music, which I realized on my college radio show this week, which featured music exclusively 2009. The following ten songs my top choices, with no artist being represented more than once.

Top 10 Songs of 2009

10) Treat Me Like Your Mother (The Dead Weather)
The Dead Weather's first album was notably stronger than their sophomore effort, and was replete with grimy blues-rock standouts. Jack White and Alison Mosshart argument of a song is the strongest track on the record.

9) Woods (Bon Iver)
Off of the Blood Bank EP, Bon Iver's excellent follow up to For Emma, Forever Ago. This song was recently sampled heavily on Kanye West's Lost in the World. The song's copiously layered vocals create a hypnotic gem of a song.

8) Cornerstone (Arctic Monkeys)
Alex Turner's lyrical storytelling gifts have never been more prominent than on this single off of his band's 2009 effort, Humbug. In just over three minutes, Turner recalls his attempts to meet women who resemble his ex-girlfriend, and his eventual and repeated rejection when he asks to call them by his ex's name.


7) That Look You Give That Guy (Eels)
Songs about unrequited love and the heartbreak that results from it, is not an uncommon topic in pop music. And his particular example of that sub-genre of song captures the agony of seeing the woman you love with another man.

Certain Songs: "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me"

"Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls." -Craig Finn

In this and future posts presented as "Certain Songs," I'll try to express the personal and universal importance of songs that matter to me. I'll try to explain, or at least reflect on the emotional reactions they evoked when I first heard them and when I hear them now.


"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me"

The first two minutes of this five minute song contains three elements: a simple laboring piano, tortured jeers, and a whale call (seriously). Initially, the brilliance and necessity of this introduction was lost on me, it was nice enough but I wanted to hear something witty and biting from Morrissey (whose lyrics were what finally drew me to The Smiths). The desire to streamline the song was not only mine, as the initial 7" pressing of this single removed the introduction. However, without these two slowly building minutes, Morrissey's initial cry looses the brunt of its impact.

List of the Day: 6 Greatest Bassists

This list is not intended to be an exploration of the most technically skilled bassists in all of rock music history, I'm sure Geddy Lee would probably have no problem playing circles around the below listed individuals. However, as David Berman famously said, "all my favorite singers couldn't sing." This philosophy can and should be applied to many sectors of life, and in this case I have applied it to my favorite bassists. Because if you don't think your favorite things are also the greatest things, there's something wrong with you.

Six Greatest Bassists:

6. Jack Lawrence
"Little Jack," the right-hand man of Jack White in both The Dead Weather and in The Raconteurs, composes dirty bass riffs that compliment the modernized blues-rock crafted by White.

5. Andy Nicholson
The first bassist of the Arctic Monkeys who played bass on their outstanding record, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

4. Andy Rourke
Rourke's weaving baselines complimented Johnny Marr's jangling guitar compositions perfectly in their work together with The Smiths. His finest work can be heard on The Queen Is Dead.

List of the Day: 7 Hip-Hop Acts to Watch in 2011

2010 saw the release of some of the most interesting and boundary-pushing hip-hop that has been seen in years. Curren$y and Ski Beatz released two cohesive and virtuosic Pilot Talk records, OFWGKTA tried to offend everyone (they succeeded in alienating me), Big Boi finally got around to compiling his southern rap opus, and Kanye West was more entertaining, more interesting and and just better, than everyone. A month and a half into 2011, there are a number of things to get excited about all over again.

7 Hip-Hop Acts to Watch in 2011

7. Mos Def
In 2009's when The Ecstatic was released, expectations were not very high for the Brooklyn MC's fourth solo album. After the overrated Black on Both Sides, which was followed up by two more mediocre records, any excitement lingering from the outstanding Black Star record with Talib Kweli had been almost entirely smothered. But creatively global production and previously absent level of excitement from the rapper let to a return to popularity and relevance. Now that he has allied himself with Kanye West, it will be exciting to see what he does in the coming year. It is also interesting to note that Mos Def has been seen supporting the young Odd Future collective on multiple occasions.

6. Pusha T
In his two verses on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and in his five other GOOD Friday appearances, the younger half of Clipse asserted himself as Kanye's second in-command. While no album release dates are set, it seems doubtful that Pusha T will stay silent for all of 2011.

5. Wiz Khalifa
With the unsurprisingly named Rolling Papers due out on March 29, it will be interesting to see if Wiz can keep up with the sudden popularity Black and Yellow has brought him.

List of the Day: 9 TV on the Radio Related Wishes in Light of Their New Album

I would like to begin by apologizing for the pun in the headline for this post. Brooklyn's excellent quintet, TV on the Radio have shattered their hiatus in dramatic fashion with the announcement of a new album, Nine Types of Light, due out sometime this spring. The group will play their first live show in well over at year at the Radio City Music Hall on April 13. To celebrate this news, I have compiled a list of nine things that I hope the band kept/keeps in mind regarding the recording/release of this record.

1. Release delays are limited (or nonexistent).
Anytime an artist claims their newest project will be released "early next year," or "sometime in the Spring," I tend to get a little weary. Even though I have a little more faith in the honesty of this announcement than I do for say, a rumored Curren$y mixtape release date, I won't be totally worry-free until a more definitive date is put on the project.

2. Wolf Like Me redux.
I love TV on the Radio. I love every intricate and gentle and layered and complex piece of music they've ever made, but their biggest hit to date; Wolf Like Me, proved that this group could also make passionate and comparatively straight-forward rock music. While an entire album pursuing this sound would be a bit much, a couple of songs that explore similar sounds would not be unwelcome.

List of the Day: Top 5 Lyrics on Stay Positive

My favorite band is The Hold Steady, in fact the name of this blog is pilfered from a Craig Finn lyric. Craig Finn, for the uninitiated, is the brilliant and lyrically gifted frontman of The Hold Steady. On the band's fourth record Stay Positive, Finn decides to "tell it like a murder mystery," as he portrays the emotional and physical toll a violent crime takes on the victims, the perpetrators, and the witnesses. This record took me a long time to get into, and in fact, I barely even enjoyed it that much until I finally took note of the complex narrative Finn was presenting. In light of my own lyrical conversion, here are the top five lyrics Finn penned for the album.

Top Five Lyrics on Stay Positive (The Hold Steady)

5. "Her friends all seemed nice. She was getting good grades. But when she came home for Christmas. She just seemed distant and different." -One for the Cutters

(The record's female protagonist begins her spiral into despair after witnessing the killings.)

4. "Sapphire, if St. Paul don't call we've always got Aberdeen. Because dreams they seem to cost money but money costs some dreams." -Yeah Sapphire

(A clever bit of Craig Finn philosophizing.)

Track Review: Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang

The recent resurgence of Raekwon as a relevant force in hip-hop has led many to point to the Wu-Tang Clan as a whole as an improved and reinvigorated collective. I disagree. From where I'm sitting, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II single-handedly managed to raise the profile of the group with little help from any of the other group members solo efforts.

List of the Day: Top 5 Songs on Alien Lanes/Blog Introduction

One of my favorite books, if not my favorite book, is Perfect From Now On by John Sellers. It's not a life changing novel, or a collection of sage advice from someone who understands life a lot better than I do, and because of this it's not the most impressive book to list as one's favorite. However, it is a book written by a person who loves music, and it allows him to share with the reader his intense love for that subject. It reads like a great conversation with a fellow music fanatic, and that's pretty much my goal for this blog. About 70 pages in, Sellers accurately states that, "Lists are the backbone of present-day music writing." So here's my first post in the form of a list.

Top Five Songs on Alien Lanes (Guided By Voices)

1. Game of Pricks
A near-perfect example of lyricist Robert Pollard's ability to produce simultaneously original and evocative melodies. (Bonus points for being featured in the brilliant British sitcom The IT Crowd)

2. Motor Away
Alien Lanes along with Bee Thousand are considered to be Guided By Voices two masterpieces because of songs like this which compact hook after chorus after riff into a two minute rock song and somehow multiply the band's energy.