| Fear is perhaps the most honest thing about the song. We all rail at the previous generation but somehow know it’s only a matter of time until we will become them ourselves. |
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| Rings of power: Lil Baby at Rolling Loud, Queens, N.Y., Sept. 24, 2022. "It's Only Me" is out today on Quality Control/Motown. |
| (Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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“Fear is perhaps the most honest thing about the song. We all rail at the previous generation but somehow know it’s only a matter of time until we will become them ourselves.”
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- Bob Dylan, on the Who's "My Generation"
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| rantnrave:// |
It’s Friday
And if you want to understand the work ethic, drive, lyrical talent and old-school A&R development behind LIL BABY’s rise from Atlanta drug dealer to A-list rapper and social justice warrior, you could do worse than spend an hour and a half with director KARAM GILL’s recent documentary UNTRAPPED, which is a little more raw, deep and just plain watchable than most of the electronic-press-kits-as-documentaries that litter streaming services these days. And which presents a sympathetic (of course) portrait of an artist whose hunger, as Rolling Stone’s Will Dukes memorably describes, “is so potent it’s like his tapeworms have tapeworms.” Amazon has the doc. The world now has his third full-length album, IT’S ONLY ME, out today on Quality Control/Motown... Prolific critic’s fave MACH-HOMMY describes DUCK CZN: TIGER STYLE, which quietly dropped earlier this week, as a winter hip-hop album. By which he means, at least in part, “you know the trees [are] gonna grow back, the leaves. But for some reason, the human spirit, it’s really emotional and motherf***ers be forgetting that they went through the fall before [and] that the trees is going to grow back in spring and then bear fruit at the top of the summer... So it’s a little bit deeper than just music. This has to do with wellness.” Also he wants you to know he isn’t a recluse. He just has better things to do than give interviews most of the time. He has, for example, big game (and, yes, ducks) to hunt and beef to butcher...
The acclaimed New York rock trio WILD PINK makes songs “with a heartland body and a mumblecore mind,” Stereogum’s Ian Cohen writes in his album-of-the-week review, and album number four, ILYSM, written and recorded while singer/guitarist John Ross was being treated for cancer, showcases three particular modes: “alt-country tearjerker, strobe-lit arena-rock, and Traveling Wilburys fanfic.” This duet with Julien Baker is beautiful... BRIAN ENO’s bleak and beautiful FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE is about the cancer of climate change and offers “long drones,” “slow, chantlike phrases,” lyrics that “favor open vowels rather than crisp consonants,” “measured calm” and “little comfort,” says the NY Times’ Jon Pareles... MIGHTMARE, which debuts with an eight-song breakup album, CRUEL LIARS, is country-rocker SARAH SHOOK minus their band and minus some of the band’s rootsy twang. In its place is a singer-songwriter’s promising experiments with pop textures.
Plus: Albums from Tove Lo, Tee Grizzley, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the 1975, Mykki Blanco, Mavi, Louis Cole, Lolo Zouaï, Ashe, M.I.A., Michael Blake, Eliane Elias, Lucrecia Dalt, Miko Marks, Bailey Zimmerman, Plains (Jess Williamson and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield), Cory Branan, Callista Clark, Bill Callahan, Todd Rundgren (with the Roots, Rivers Cuomo, Sparks and others), Lacuna Coil, We Came as Romans, Sleeping With Sirens, Ripped to Shreds, Orianthi, Nothing More, Birds in Row, Enumclaw, Lightning Seeds, Betty Boo (first album in 30 years), Mabe Fratti, Rival Consoles, PVA, Charlotte Dos Santos, Zella Day, Skullcrusher (aka singer/songwriter Helen Ballentine), Field Medic, Noah Kahan, Kodaline, Palm, the Big Moon, Press Club, the Umlauts... And “Here It Is: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen,” featuring Norah Jones, Mavis Staples, Iggy Pop and others.
Grammy Shuffle
All of the above albums arrive too late for the 2023 GRAMMYS, for which the nominating process officially began Thursday. TAYLOR SWIFT, in case you were wondering, is officially seeking re-nominations in multiple categories for her re-recorded RED. Established Grammy skeptics DRAKE and the WEEKND aren’t seeking anything, and neither, more surprisingly, is SILK SONIC, a big winner in 2022 who was expected to compete for top awards again next year, but whose BRUNO MARS, a longtime Grammy favorite, says, “We’d be crazy to ask for anything more.” (Is there a precedent for that?) NICKI MINAJ is unhappy her “SUPER FREAKY GIRL” was deemed insufficiently hip-hop and is being considered for a pop nomination instead. Billboard tries its best to make sense of the always-mysterious Best New Artist traffic jam.
Rest in Peace
Singer WILLIE SPENCE, runner-up on "American Idol" season 19.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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CNMlab |
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| Understanding Two Decades of Music Catalog Purchases |
| By Kaitlyn Davies, Henderson Cole and David Turner |
| Over the last decade, there has been an increase in interest in buying and selling of certain music industry assets, primarily publishing rights and master recordings. |
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VICE |
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| The Legendary Song That Became The Rick Roll |
| By Rick Astley and Dan Zabludovsky |
| Nearly everyone has been RickRoll’d. But few know the real story of the artist behind the 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” or the mysterious origins of the viral RickRoll video meme that exploded in the mid-2000s. VICE meets the creators of the song and the meme. |
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Trapital |
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| 'Rap Capital': The Rise & Reign Of Atlanta’s Hip-Hop Empire |
| By Dan Runcie and Joe Coscarelli |
| Atlanta's hip-hop dominance is discussed often, but not like how Joe Coscarelli covered it in his new book, "Rap Capital." The New York Times music reporter spent four years researching and interviewing over 100 sources to get the contemporary story about Atlanta's culture-defining scene. |
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SPIN |
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| Welcome to the Year of Indie Sleaze |
| By Tatiana Tenreyro |
| Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Santigold, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Alice Glass, Phoenix, Interpol, Foals, and many other headliners of the indie sleaze era have albums out this year. |
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Los Angeles Times |
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| Muni Long's long and winding road to R&B stardom |
| By Kenan Draughorne |
| A Grammys best new artist contender, Long is no stranger to the music biz, as a (country!) artist and songwriter. But her hit 'Hrs and Hrs' marked a new era. |
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T Magazine |
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| The Greats: Anderson .Paak |
| By Adam Bradley |
| One of America’s most celebrated performers, known for his genre-crossing collaborations and as one-half of the soul-funk superduo Silk Sonic, .Paak is doing nothing less than redefining what a pop star is and can be. |
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Water & Music |
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| A needs-driven approach to music NFT metadata |
| By Dan Fowler |
| A proposal for a more minimalist, needs-driven approach to ironing out a music NFT metadata schema, grounded in emerging contextual use cases around the artist/fan journey in Web3. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “I'm Tight” |
| Louis Cole |
| From "Quality Over Opinion," out today on Brainfeeder. |
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| Music | Media |
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| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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