Foodmantooth

Hiatus

2007-04-11T18:09:00.000-04:00

As you may have noticed, Foodmantooth hasn't been very active lately. We're going on hiatus so that Sordid Puppy and I can regroup. We need to get off blogger, host music, siphon Viacom chedder, etc. We'll update you on any developments. Hopefully there will be a new and improved FMT soon.

Salud.

The Two Hermits

2007-03-27T19:26:00.000-04:00

Master of the Grasses

S.P. doesn't generally get all worked up about battle rappers; most of the tripe that shows up on YouTube and mixtapes involves a lot of posturing and written rhymes and little creativity.

Iron Solomon isn't perfect, and there's a bunch of stuff I've uncovered from Scribble Jam and elsewhere that's pretty geeked out, but on the following NYC street DVD battles, he's impressive:

Iron Solomon vs Shirt N Tie

Iron Solomon vs Mic Assassin

Iron Solomon vs Flames

Iron Solomon vs G Sizzle

Iron Solomon vs Madness

S.P. hereby presents the 1st ever, soon-to-be-highly coveted Capybara award to Iron Solomon for his prowess, his nerve, his wit, and his insistence on criticizing his opponents' sartorial blunders. Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world, which is some fly shit, and they're pretty stoic looking, which is important. Congratulations, Iron Solomon.

FMT are accepting press passes for this summer's Rock the Bells show at Randall's Island.

S.P. News/Murda Mid

2007-03-23T12:07:00.000-04:00

Tapir trying to get money. Jockeying with the sea cow for FMT exclusive logo.

Back in the heartland for a few. Brother Ali rolls through town in a few weeks; S.P. will be back on his school grind by then, and the godforsaken refrigeratorville that's home to his chosen institution of higher learning never gets anything in the way of good rapping artists. Never, that is unless your boy S.P. makes it happen...

Your man's pater is a fanatical fan of cricket; for anyone completely unfamiliar with the game, it's sort of entertaining, but matches often go on for days on end, which is fairly ridiculous. The Cricket World Cup is going on in Jamaica at the moment (why I didn't think of that for spring break, I don't know), and the Irish enjoyed a special St. Patty's Day surprise when they, having entered the tournament for the first time ever, knocked off Pakistan, who are ranked #4 in the world. This was awesome. Sunday morning, in a tragic turn of events, the coach of Pakistan's squad, Bob Woolmer (an Englishman), turned up dead. This was not awesome. Yesterday, the Jamaican police revealed that Woolmer was murdered. This is sinister.

El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead dropped this past Tuesday. S.P. is striving to save up $13.99 so he can grab himself a copy. ISWYD has been garnering rave reviews since its release (Pitchfork needs to hire some writers) several days ago, and is even getting some shine over at XXL. El Producto has apparently been stacking some stilton since Fantastic Damage; the video for "Smithereens" (NYTimes what what) has some serious production value. As I'm sure you all remember, "Flyentology," El's collabo with Trent Reznor, got the ill cartoon treatment a few weeks ago from the folks over at adult swim. I would remind you to download Def Jux's free mixtape, Definitive Swim, which features bangers from Despot and Cool Calm Pete, but I know y'all already did that because I told you to. Proper review of ISWYD to follow, soon as I get that gruyere.

I've been wondering at the phenomenon that is NCAA tournament bracketing. I don't like rooting against underdogs just because I want to win $55. S.P. is thinking that this bracket shit might be a mite juvenile.

Hanging Out With Clapping Fish

2007-03-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

This was a big record for me in high school. A double album that probably should have been a 12". "G-Funk" (sorry, all I could find) is still a laid-back summer anthem.

S.P. was seriously remiss in failing to wish all you dedicated readers a Happy St. Patrick's Day this past Saturday. All you bloggartz that love S.P. for his blind fealty towards NYC hip-hop called down the elements in an attempt to make him stick around, and he had to go and get all Snake Pliskin on you. Your boy was stuck in Queens on Saturday, and the deep freeze left him with little motivation to do anything but drink some fine imports and mourn the raping of his NCAA bracket. The first rapper to shout out that Sosa dude from Louisville in a rhyme, maybe about how you, as Scarface, are going to turn the tables on Sosa like A&M did, wins an FMT prize pack. These generally consist of raw hippo meat and old Hothouse Flowers cassette tapes. Slainte. Up Munster.

Big shouts to Rick Mouhanus and his lady Amy for the Queensbridge hospitality this past Friday and Saturday, and anyone in the area probly felt the tremors from the convergence of corpulence that occurred at some bar when the illustrious Furman P. and yours trilly Sordid Puppy met up and drank up. F.P.S. has been drowning fools in Brooklyn since his recent arrival there, and it feels damn good to see FMT and its architects on the rise.

FMT ain't no political blog, yo, but S.P. would like to strongly endorse the stoicism in the face of truly awful news exhibited by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Vice Presidential candidate and current candidate for the Democratic nomination John Edwards. If you all haven't heard, after a flurry of media inquiry following Mr. Edwards's cancellation of a campaign event last night, today the couple announced that Ms. Edwards's cancer, previously thought to have been confined to her breast and removed, has returned. It's in her ribcage, and cancer in your bones is bad effing news. Apparently a lot of folks figured Edwards would chuck the race for the nomination in because of the diagnosis, but the couple are on some serious hardbody (no no homo) in their refusal to back down. S.P. is down with John Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards and hopes that they can do like J-Wiz and say "Cancer can blow me." That's what's happnin.

S.P. has never had to deal with the frustration, anger, and mortal fear that must accompany a cancer diagnosis. As some of FMT's more seasoned liseurs may recall, however, your boy has had a fright or two, and another arrived a couple of weeks ago. It is a terrifying and infuriating feeling to imagine that something is growing in your body and that it is trying to 86 you. Your man is all good for the time being, and S.P. definitely ain't looking for no pity -- how could I, when Elizabeth Edwards and countless other cancer patients worldwide face up to their problem with such courage? Human beans do some shitty shit, but also inspire on the deli.

Damn -- what the hell sort of blog is FMT, anyway, man? If you even made it this far through this post, I know you're miffed that you're not getting the same caliber of heat rocks that you did from Slothra's last offering.

FMT ain't just a blog, yo.

Bong Hits 4 Life

2007-03-19T18:55:00.000-04:00

Brought to you by the "Bono mullet" Google image search

To lead off, here's a great profile of the Arcade Fire. Simply great journalism. Great enough for a band that is now as great as U2, Bruce Springsteen, and other old political serious people that are always mentioned in reviews of Neon Bible.

Download - Marnie Stern - "Lyrical Volume"

I'm feelin Marnie Stern and her new album In Advance of the Broken Arm. She looks like a small, nice female person, as her name suggests, and she doesn't wear scary Hot Topic garments with godless imagery emblazoned on them, but she can play the guitar very fast and yelp well. Kelefa Sanneh of The NYTimes said her new record is the best rock thing of the year so far, and she was featured by another Times dude who did one of those trend pieces that articulates the zeitgeist for us so that everything makes sense. The trend in question: girls who play guitars fast and well. He had two and a half examples. Watch out, we're in upheaval. Anyway, put her song on your ears or I'll write you a letter with anachronistic slurs in it.

Download - Lil Wayne, Devin the Dude, Bun B - "Lil Girl Gone" (Mr. Jpatt remix)

Will Weezy continue being a masculine child, a la Luca Brazzi, and make an album of rap songs that will help people at parties create friction between their bodies and also smile at his wit. This song, via DJ Benzi, Soul Sides, and some guy named Mr. Jpatt, has Weezy doing that I'm-from-the-South-but-I-can-enunciate thing, and then the veterans have their go. One of the first really good rap songs I've heard this year. But I'm hungover on rap right now. Sordid Puppy will have something for us soon, I'm sure.

Download - Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter - "LLL"

Rock. Seattle again. Good.

How did God Shammgod not make the big dance?

2007-03-15T18:10:00.000-04:00

This had be seriously lolling. I mean I was about to eat a shopping cart.

Come On Motherfuckers

2007-03-09T13:13:00.000-05:00

FMT salutes the memory of a modern-day legend. He was gunned down on March 7, 1997, which means that for the last decade we've been without B.I.G., and since then his memory has been sullied somewhat by the actions of his one-time friend and reckless profiteer Sean Combs. The violence that ended Christopher Wallace's life is still rampant, but aritsts of his caliber are not.

R.I.P. B.I.G.

Collie Buddz - Come Around

2007-03-07T16:58:00.001-05:00

The snow is finally starting to melt. Summer can't come soon enough; hottest year ever, where art thou?

Let's Go Do Some Crimes

2007-03-06T16:49:00.000-05:00

Beach House - "Master of None"
Jeffrey Lewis - "Don't Let the Record Label Take You Out to Lunch"

First, S. Trout's got it right. With her ostensibly benign yet quietly devastating echo-croon, Victoria Legrand of Beach House seared the lowly visages of a bunch of people with haircuts and chucks standing around in the Mercury Lounge last night. Jeffrey Lewis' opened playing with this hilariously spastic guy named Peter Stampfel who's some OG folk dude who needs to hang out with me all the time and play hopscotch. Also the chick on bass really seemed to be the nicest person ever to wear pants. She was very small and sitting on a stool. Stampfel said he was working on an album made up of a song for every year from last century. Sufjan's got nothin' on this guy. Jeffrey Lewis had what he called "low budget videos" which were these big books filled with sequential crayon drawings. He turned the pages as he sang and the pictures corresponded to the lyrics. That took way too long to explain something very simple. Anyway, he did this song called "Creeping Brain" which was basically the funniest thing I've ever seen on a stage where guitars are supposed to be all serious. He also had a book for "Sifting" by Nirvana, which was equally funny. Just from that show it was clear that Lewis is one of the most pointedly and self-consciously clever songwriters around. So yeah, the Dave Eggers or Chuckles Kaufman of neo-folk. And man, he doesn't even try to sing. I hate when peeps try to do that.

Beach House basically made me feel like I was being slurped into the pillowy bowels of a benevolent God. All I got to say bout that.

Overall, Best show I've seen in awhile and I only had two beers.

Second, I'm not paying attention to this right now. But I am paying attention to this. This song bookends Zodiac, something else Trout already covered pretty well, considering his brain's only nutrients come from meat roll-ups. I couldn't find SP's favorite video of all time, the one for Donovan's OG version of the song, which is the one in Zodiac. This one has a tumescent belly-button though. All's I hafta say is, at least its not a tumescent butthole!

That's what she said.

S.P. News/Sick

2007-02-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

This is a good cover.

I'm sick, ladies, and by sick I don't mean sweet or cool or chicken salad. I mean I'm under the weather. This is an extremely inopportune time for me to be bedridden, so I've been strolling around infecting the unsuspecting masses with whatever it is that's ailing me. I am accepting get well cards, money, and leek soup, because like Ghostface, I eat that.

Remember when I told you to download Chrome Children Vol. 2 for free from Stones Throw & Adult Swim? Remember when you didn't do like I asked you to? That hurt my feelings, and now it's too late to make it better because Adult Swim took that shit down. Here's a chance to redeem yourself: Definitive Jux records, who release El-P, Cannibal Ox, Cage, Aesop Rock, etc. (apparently someone named Despot) have collabo-ed with the illest cartoonists in the game to bring you Definitive Swim. IT IS FREE AND THERE IS A SONG ON IT CALLED "GET RICH OR TRY DYING" AND IT IS AVAILABLE HERE.

Amon Tobin is a pretty cool musician. He just dropped a new album (I think just in the U.K. It doesn't drop here til later in March or April) last week that's called The Foley Room. He's used a bunch of collected, found sounds to make the record, which is more than you can say about your latest album. Anyway, it's supposed to have a DVD documentary coming out with it or after it or SOMETHING because here's a couple of video trailers for it: #1 and #2.

The Clipse just kicked off their tour last night, in Cambridge, MA, which everyone knows is the gulliest place to start a tour EVER. Malice & Pusha T are keeping it real hood this time around, playing shows in Wyoming, Utah, but not in New York, because they know like SP knows that Wyoming is a thousand times more gangsta than NYC.

I'm going back to sleep. Soup-ladies, you know where to find me.

FMT Matchmaker: Capo Status & New York

2007-02-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

The director of A&R at Warner Music Group puzzles over the contradiction in terms that is Pink Pinot Grigio

Jim Jones is a generally crap rapper, but I don't think that's ever been in contention. He's built a career on his proximity to Cam'ron, constant and unabashed co-opting of Dirty South beats and conventions, and a furiously maintained presence in mainstream and underground hip-hop media. He's not to be confused with Jim Jones the cult leader, who, along with 913 of his brainwashed devotees, committed suicide in 1978, two years after the birth of Joseph Jimmy Guillermo Jones III, a.k.a. Capo Status, a.k.a. the subject of this post. JJGJ III embraces confrontation and the opportunity it affords him to push himself further and further into the limelight cast by the hype of rap beef. As of this post, he is blissfully engaged in track- and video-propagated conflict with Jay-Z, Tru Life, and 50 Cent. I don't care much for Tru Life (matter of fact, he annoys the shit out of me), but he's a better rapper than Jim, and Jay-Z and 50 Cent are in a class of artist that Jimmy Blanco can only hope to be counted part of.

Jimmy's "We Fly High (Ballin'!)" was one of the biggest hip-hop records of 2006, and one of the very few that achieved any kind of popular success outside of BET's Rap City (not Tha Bassment, because Tha Bassment is dead) or Nahright.com. Most people probably got wasted at one point (or five) or another and did the "Ballin'!" dance and screamed it to the heavens. That was awkward. That was over. A while ago.

Jim never had a big record before that. I made the mistake of buying his 2004 On My Way to Church, and besides "Crunk Muzik" and some song he had with T.I. and Bun B, it was really bad. I don't remember the name of his second album off the top of my head, but it was the one with "Summer With Miami" and that song "Baby Girl" through which we were all introduced to random Jim affiliate Max B, who may be the worst singer/rapper/asshole of all time. Last year, Jones scored something of a hit with "We Fly High" and the album it's on, Hustler's P.O.M.E., both of which came out on Koch Records, a label that, allegedly, actually pays its artists pretty well. The LP is headed for gold, so Jim is making money, which means you can't hate on him, blah blah fucking blah -- that's exactly the sort of irresponsible attitude towards hip-hop as art that allows Jim to thrive.

Now that the relevance of "We Fly High" has faded away almost completely, Jim has spent more time posturing and talking shit than ever before, on the radio and on hip-hop DVDs (that I don't think anyone actually buys because you can watch the shit for free on Youtube/Onsmash). Jim knows that if he can continue to cultivate his tough guy (in tight t-shirts) image, a great part of the hip-hop community will be impressed enough by how "real" they're convinced he is and won't be discouraged by the fact that he sucks. They'll cheerily declare how "Ballin'!" they are til the end of their days, which will probably be long after rap is dead, but then as long as we're getting money (or claiming to), who cares, no?

Flavor of Love was a marginally entertaining, fairly unpleasant reality television program. Most of the people who saw that show probably don't know what Public Enemy is, and if they did they probably wouldn't care for P.E. because that shit does not make for good pop music. Flav was probably short on cash, and there's always a bevy of eager actress/model wannabes who are perfectly happy to pursue fame through the medium of reality TV. Flav's new reality TV career was going swimmingly, as he'd just spent some time masquerading himself and being publicly mocked for it on VH1's groundbreaking The Surreal Life. Some savvy TV execs and an eager-to-cheese Flav came together for Flavor of Love, and the show was a huge hit.

Inevitably, Flavor of Love's contestants, who were ostensibly vying for Flav's love, affection, and hand in marriage, were nothing but a bunch of posturing camera whores. They participated in the show in order to make themselves visible, and Flav (not sure he wasn't in on the joke) would occasionally lambast a soon-to-be-eliminated suitress for "being at the mansion for their career, and not for Flav." Whenever this happened, it was ironic and sort of depressing.

Tiffany Pollard a.k.a. Tiffany Patterson a.k.a. New York established herself as the star of Flavor of Love by her unmatched enthusiasm and the passionate animosity that the rest of the girls felt towards her. She claimed throughout to be the only woman on the show that really cared for Flav, and, at times, she was believable; her ardent professions of love for her man, along with her unbridled malevolence for her rivals, lent credence to her claims. After losing out in the finals of Season One to Hoopz (who dropped Flav like a washed-up hypeman after the show concluded), New York returned for Season Two, first as a surprise guest and then as a contestant once more. Again she made it to the finals, and again she was passed up by M. Flav, this time for a woman with one of the more ghastly mugs ever to sully my television screen.

Where New York failed to nose out Deelishis for the dubious distinction of the victor of Flavor of Love, she hit pay-dirt when VH1 signed on for a season of I Love New York, a show that identical to FOL in all ways save one. New York is the champion and prize, and the contestants are men, failed and aspiring entertainers who have chosen to drag their impotent careers through the mud in order to get some camera time. I Love New York is a really terrible show; where Flav played the older, seasoned entertainer who had at least something of a career to hold over the women vying for his amore, New York plays the exact same preening, malevolent character she played on FOL. It's her awful mother (who apparently teaches at Syracuse University or something weird like that) that steals the show this time around, polluting the screen with her visage and her ill will. Flavor of Love had one wobbly leg to stand on in that Flavor Flav was a celebrity (if B- or C-list); I Love New York has nothing but train-wreck appeal.

Is that a Spice Girl?

SP thinks that Joseph Jimmy Guillermo Jones III and Tiffany Pollard are perfectly suited for each other, and in this, the first installment of FMT Matchmaker, I'd like to propose that they propose to one another and have lots of awful, fame-grubbing kids with which to populate the world. Both will stop at nothing to keep themselves in the spotlight, and neither has anything in the way of legitimate talent, unless the ability to make oneself -- and remain -- sort of famous is a talent. I predict that "Ballin'!" and its awful remix are the only hits that Jim Jones will ever have, and that Hustler's P.O.M.E. will be the last record he puts out that sells more copies than FMT gets hits in a day. Finally, I foresee that on I Love New York season 3, your boy Capo Status will be among the contestants, along with Tru-Life and maybe Young Hot Rod. Capo will win, Hot Rod will go back to his banking job in Arizona, and Tru-Life will keep making mixtapes until he goes hoarse. Capo and Tiff will get married, and I Love New York season 3 will be hailed as the reality TV show that brought something more than pure narcisissm and flagrant self-promotion to our television screens: it will bring said qualities, each personified in New York and Jim Jones respectively, together, so that they will meet, conflagrate, and set off a chain reactions of wack people marrying each other all over the world. The rampant confluence of all the worst human traits will be too much for the balance of flyness and wackness that the atmosphere currently maintains, and the earth will eat itself. Don't say we didn't warn you.

*********************************
The inspiration for this post came from the undeniable similarity in mannerisms that these two miserable human beings share. Observe the way Capo & New York speak loftily of their personal traits and trappings of their moderate success, and giggle and stuff. Both idiots attempt to assert, with every sentence that comes out of their mouths, the "obvious" fact that they're superior creatures:

Jim Jones on Rap City

New York on Jimmy Kimmel

FREE DESSERT: Crazy timing; this just popped up on Nahright.com. Apparently some people think FOL and ILNY are worse than just shitty television. Eskay, you read my mind.

Premo Reverse DJs Brooklyn

2007-02-28T06:05:00.000-05:00

They opened Marsellus Wallace's suitcase and then poured cocaine on it

Gang Starr - "Flip the Script"

Last Thursday, DJ Premier spun (I feel strange using this term, maybe because I've never actually gone anywhere for the purpose of seeing a DJ) some records at the bar in my building, Sputnik. FYI, Sputnik is probably the best bar in NYC, and this only has a little to do with the fact that I can get there in a hop and a skip, and a lot to do with the portrait of Czar Nicolas on the bathroom door and the always stellar, mostly hip hop DJs there (who aren't superproducers). Anyway, Premo was there for this "Brooklyn Next" event, which also included an art show and this band Pagoda, which features the actor Michael Pitt, of The Dreamers fame, on guitar, vocals and hair-in-face postures.

This Pitt guy has a constantly pouting mouth and he was dressed like he was doing an impression of Curt Cobain, which is funny because he played a Cobain-like character in Gus Van Sant's movie Last Days. His band is on Thurston Moore's label, and their website features a note by Moore concerning how and why they are the shit. Too bad they kinda suck. They do, however, have a nasty cello player (cellist), who was encircled in pedals. After the show, my brother-in-law ordered a shot of tequila for the guy, on me, just because he played the cello. I told him he was the J. Mascis of the cello. Unfortunately for him, he didn't know who J. Mascis was.

Premo is 40 years old. He produces records for Xtina and, according to Nas, would've produced all of Hip Hop is Dead had he been able to clear his schedule. So I have no idea why he is actually DJing at a bar in Brooklyn. Apparently the owner of the bar saved his life once, or something. I dunno. Anyway, he was there, not terrifically late, and he played some motherfucking records for people to dance to and rap along to. I was drunk and it was fun.

He did a little James Brown tribute to open his set, which is always good, and better than Allyiah (whose name should be in spelling bees) or Left-Eye (who somehow managed to marry Ardre Risen after burning down his house) tributes. Then he basically just played all the biggest tracks he produced, doing some DJ stuff in between, but mostly just playing his songs and shouting out Brooklyn and Brooklyn rappers who are either dead (Biggie), less famous than him (Guru), or more famous than him (Jay-Z). People bugged out a little and there were a bunch of dudes in front of the DJ booth who rapped along to every song in a trance. I was mostly just struck by the odd nature of this situation.

DJing is a lost art. Turntablists are basically only known to other turntablists, aka irrelevant. The only DJs that are still relevant aren't DJs at all anymore, but producers. (Imagine if Quincy Jones played solo piano at a Bar, that's what this felt like) Big name producers don't go on tour with rappers anymore. 9th Wonder used to DJ for Little Brother, which meant that he produced them and DJed with them on the road. then he realized he could make a bunch of loot producing records for more commercially viable rappers and riding around in vans with Phonte. Now he's not even part of the group and when he makes a record with a quasi-underground rapper like Murs, he gets equal billing. The whole point of the DJ, as a precursor to the producer, was to play records that he didn't make, mix them together, and create a beat. Premo, however, just played songs he had made and let people applaud him. Luckily he's one of the greatest producers in the history of hip-hop; as in, without him, hip hop would be completely different. Along with RZA, Large Professor, Pete Rock et al, he literally created the sound of 90s hip hop. And now he's teaming up with Xtina and making some some pop records that stand up with anything Timbo is doing in that same genre.

When he got into his Gang Starr material, which was around 2 or so (he started at 12:30 or so), the crowd thinned out and a bunch of people left. This makes sense. Guru is not very famous.

Intractable and Adamantine

2007-02-22T17:16:00.000-05:00

If you haven't already checked out Ruined Music, please do so. The site is the unequivocal gem-like flame. They publish stories about music being killed by people, places, or things. Written under one of my noms de plume, my tale of the slaying of Ghostface's Supreme Clientele is up there on this fine day, so check that out. For you people who were directed here from that site, sorry, you have once again witnessed the circularity of the internet. Whoops.

Also, here's my favorite track from that album, with the infamous Ted Koppel name-drop.

Ghostface Killah - "Mighty Healthy"

Fuck Busta Rhymes

2007-02-21T18:08:00.000-05:00

Last night a documentary called "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" aired on PBS. It was a fairly interesting little doc, although the issues covered haven't exactly been ignored. You know, rap music, guns, hoes, videos, making society kill itself by the same means, etc. This part was not interesting. Also the guy who made the movie felt is was nessesary to include footage of himself playing high school football, and talking to high school kids about being good people and stuff. So yeah, not a very good film, but it had a couple of really interesting moments.

First, Michael Eric Dyson can spit darts. And when I say spit darts I mean say things things that are intelligent, barbed and delivered in a convincing manner, and also wear crooked glasses. Plus he's down with Killer Mike. Or Killer Mike is down with him. Either way.

Second, the part about homoeroticism in hip hop was funny and interesting. The filmmaker went to the BET "Spring Bling" thing, which seemed to mostly consist of guys lifting up the skirts of girls so that they could get a good angle with their cameras for anatomical study. This was pretty cool and scrupulous. There were some cross-dressers there, and the director asked them what they thought about homophobia in hip hop. One of them said he/she was turned on by it because it was so aggressive. That may have had something to do with a history of abuse. Adam Corolla would know. Then they said that they got the most attention from the guys at the BET thing who were the most thuggish/ruggish/bone. Dyson riffs about how rap is just suffused by signs of a latent homoeroticism, how the misogyny is not just demeaning the sexuality of women, but demeaning the sexuality of women not just for the freedom of ones' own rocks, but also those of "one's boys." It's like this brotherly cirle-jerk by way of objectification of female sexuality. I'm sure he's written a paper about this which cites Gramsci, Foucault, and Snoop. There were some LL Cool J videos, shown during a part when a gay rapper (about to blow up, forget his name) says something like "when LL Cool J is in his video, all greased up, shirtless, licking his lips under a waterfall, its not just girls watching that and buyin the record. Its guys too. And not just gay guys." Then there was all this stuff about 50 and Nelly on magazine covers with their shirts off, Game's pants saggin (he sags em more than most, I mean, they are just above his knees) and Dyson talking about the prison culture and how it obviously imfulenced hip hop style. The interesting thing here is that all this shit is somehow interpreted by dudes as really hard shit, despite the fact that it is actually very gay. So it's like, well, if he crosses his legs, that's gay, but if he's greased up, under a waterfall and licking his lips, that's okay, cuz it reflects his pimphood and pimphood is a sign that he's also willing to shoot someone in the face for no reason.

Third, (and I'm sure at this point you have forgotten that I was goin with the tripartite format, but fuck it, I do work) Busta Rhymes played himself harder than he has already played himself, which I though was impossible. The filmmaker is hanging with Busta, Mos Def, Talib and that hippie rap band, De La Soul. He starts asking about homophobia in rap, and Busta gets up from his chair, looks scared as hell and says "yo I can't even talk to you about that" and starts to leave. The guy's like "Why not?" and Busta says "yo, you know, the culture that I come from...uh...I can't...I can't answer questions about that...my culture...is just not accepting of that thing..." and then he just gets up and leaves. Like a Gump. I'm not sure who's worse, Busta or Tim Hardaway. At least Tim Hardaway came out and said it. Wait, that's not true. Hardaway is a raging ignoramus. But Busta wasn't even man enough to address the issue.

This guy is probably the biggest asshole in music, or maybe the world. He hasn't done anything worth a shit since his verse in "Scenario." Maybe I'll give him "Woo-Ha" and a couple others, but lately this guy has precipitated unbridled fury within my soul. One of his bodyguards is shot on set a video shoot and because he's so hard he holds it down for the streets, because you gotta make sure everybody knows that you're a thug, even if that means that your dead bodyguard's family doesn't get to see the shooter in jail. Then at the beginning of the video (which was for a shit song in the first place) he does one of those really heartfelt thug tributes (after all hip hop is all about death, couldn't survive without it). Wow, that's real justice for you. An introduction to a video, which gets cut off anyway. Next he goes around brawlin' in Manhattan and gets off scot free .

Busta, you're approximately 45 years old. You don't need to hold down the blatant homophobia and snitch prevention, the two forces of cohesion that keeps the streets solid...so they can buy you shit records. Maybe you should use those dollars you have to buy a moral compass and a couple of stones. You can get former at any Eastern Mountain Sports and the latter from any gardening supply store in Connecticut or wherever the fuck you live. Once again, fuck you Busta Rhymes.

When I Say "Porn," Y'all Say "Porn"

2007-02-20T12:15:00.000-05:00

One of Furman's belated, sorely missed ancestors. Pour out a lil Jame-o.

SP gets fed up with things a lot, and, in all fairness, it's more than a bit immature. Lately, Ive been feeling let down by rapping artists and the bloggartz that report on their every bowel movement (that is, the rappers' feculence. some bloggartz report on their own as well.), and my faith in rap in general has been tested a great deal. Furman's most recent post displayed the sort of head-down-eyes-forward dedication to the sort of eff-the-heifers-lets-just-listen-to-music attitude that is so crucial in times like these. We've spent too much time nursing our wounds from the 4th-quarter '06 coke-rap freezerburn; forward progress is what's needed now.
What follows are some frenetically assembled pieces of new music that don't suck.

Young Buck's 2004 Straight Outta Cashville was a decent record, and it had a few great tracks, like "Let Me In," "Look At Me Now," and "Shorty Wanna Ride." Buck's and Ludacris's verses on "Stomp" were awesome. Game's was not. Cashville also had a couple of hilariously strange moments, like when Tony Yayo (I think this was the first major release he appeared on after he getting out of jail and, going back in 24 hours later, and then getting out again) raps about having tanks of LSD in his van. This is (not) psychedelic rap. Anyway, Buck the World, dude's sophomore effort, is supposed to come out on March 20th, and it looks set to break G-Unit's recent string of hopeless releases (Blood Money, Rotten Apple), if the strength of the first two singles ("I Know You Want Me," "Get Buck") is any indication. I don't know how much creative control Buck has over his records, but someone's making great decisions with regard to beats, songwriting, and video direction, and I have a hard time believing it's the same people who called the shots here.

The G-Unit brand has been stamped on a whole lot of miserable tripe over the last couple of years, and it's befuddling to me that 50 has been willing to put out shitty singles and albums that don't sell (Get Rich or Die Tryin' OST, Olivia, Hot Rod, Banks, Yayo, Mobb Deep, etc.). I'll be surprised if Lloyd Banks, after releasing a couple of the most underwhelming singles of recent memory ("Hands Up","Help"), drops another album this decade. You know it stung when Cam called Cuurtis out for outselling Rotten Apple with Jim Jones's Hustler's P.O.M.E.; Banks's album, and Mobb Deep's before him, were embarrassments, and Cameron's affront to 50's legacy was a wide-open shot. I think 50's Before I Self-Destruct may turn out to be one of the best albums of 2007, and if Buck the World garners the kind of critical and financial success that I think it might, Cuurtis will be left on top of the game once again.

Amy Winehouse, the chick who sings on Ghostface's "You Know I'm No Good" (which is originally her track, in an arrangement that must have resembled Lil Wayne & Robin Thicke's "Shooter"), is FMT's pin-up gal of the week.

The bloggartz have been going crazy over the new Brother Ali album, The Undisputed Truth, for a little while now (featured on Status Ain't Hood, Oh Word), and so I won't say too much on this, except that Ali is a good rapper who brings out great things in Ant, the same producer from whom Slug seems totally incapable of extricating anything remotely tolerable. Ali's from Minneapolis, MN, and when Shadows on the Sun, his critically lauded 2003 debut, was released, I had the good fortune to be living in the Twin Cities area. I think everyone who lived in Minneapolis or St. Paul at the time was required to buy the record, and with good reason -- Ali comes off more sincere and heartfelt (without falling into the whiny, disingenuous vein of labelmates Atmosphere) than any rapper out, then or now. The Undisputed Truth is slated to come out on April 10th, and it's got my vote for independent surprise hit of the year; Ali embodies a lot of the things that people are despairingly looking for in contemporary hip-hop. It doesn't hurt that "Freedom Ain't Free" (right click, save as), B-Side to the LP's first single "Truth Is" (same), is an absolute monster.

Some dark, violent, throwback NYC rap provides a great and necessary foil for Ali and Buck's respective styles: Prodigy of Mobb Deep has been building a huge buzz for his March 27th pre-album mixtape-that-is-also-an-album, Return of the Mac. The first few videos for that album's first few singles have been making the rounds of the internets for quite a while now, and here they are: "Mac 10 Handle" (don't watch if you scare easily), "New York Shit," "Stuck On You." Mobb Deep's last album was pretty awful, but I like Prodigy, and it's impossible not to dig Alchemist's compositions. They're the kind of tracks that feel familiar and frightening, and they're perfect for P. Here's some more audio off the mixtape: "7th Heaven" featuring Un Pacino

More notable effery:

Three 6 Mafia feat Chamillionaire - Dope Boy Fresh
UGK - The Game Belongs To Me
Consequence - Scarred For Life
Strange Fruit Project - Pinball (The Healing was really good)
DJ Kentaro - Free

El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead is due 3/20
Ghostface Killah - Hidden Darts (Special Edition), 2/27. I don't know what this is, but I know some of the tracks. This is annoying. Furman, any insight?

Love

Sordid Puppy
Foodmantooth

Hey, remember songs?

2007-02-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

Sordid Puppy, always on a leash. ps, sweet border.

Here are some potent downloadables:

Dinosaur Jr. - "Been There All the Time" - (from Muzak for Cybernetics)

From the forthcoming Beyond, due in a couple months. The original lineup is back together, and they've recorded a new album so that Lou Barlow's kid can start a college fund. This will probably be one of the few albums I actually buy in 2007. Mascis still just rips the shit out of his Jazzmaster. I know at this point playing a unironic guitar solo is so eleven hundred years ago, but J. is one of the all time greats in any genre, and he doesn't jack off at all, which Neil Young, the guy J. is always compared to because of surface characteristics, did without anyone ever minding too much. That sentence was like a Neil Young solo. The melody is one that could only come from J. and it's solid, as Mascis usually does it. The only problem here is the production. The old D Jr. was so overloaded and tinny, the guitar attack just washed all over the place on the recording, the dynamics would come out of nowhere. This song has the rhythm guitars sounding regular and compressed, as they tend to sound these days. And Barlow's bass, which was as important as the guitars in D Jr., is not as protrusive. Still a banger, maybe I'll feel different after it settles in a little.

Kristin Hersch - "In Shock" - (from Warped Reality interview)

This is the best new song I've heard in 07. This should be a huge hit, but it is unlikely that too many people will care, which is always too bad. Oh well. Hersch, of Throwing Muses fame, is an indie rock goddess, and for good reason--her voice is unmistakably haunting and she could always do that thing called writing great little rock songs. Or big rock songs. From her recently released solo LP, Learn to Sing Like a Star.

R. Kelly feat. TI and T-Pain - "I'm a Flirt" (from Idolator)

Kells back and he brought the candle guy and the vocoder guy. T-Pain is annoying as fuck at this point, TI doesn't doesn't drop anything too splenderifical, and Kells is still doin that octave-jumping thing, but this song is still great, esp. if it is playing while you are actually flirting with a girl. You can be all Chuck Kaufman and say, "hey this song is about me" and she will say "you can't jump octaves like that" and then you will agree and go back to drinking by yourself.

J Dilla - "This is Dilla's World" and "5/8" - (from Soul Sides)

According to heavyweight blogger Oliver Wang, these are "presumably from the Donuts sessions." Will a good rapper please jump on these, rap well, and then put them back on the internet; doing so will be a better tribute to the late producer than putting a flier on your webpage that makes sure everyone knows you're down with the real studio auteur, even though you probably didn't know who he was until Ghostface was forced to shout him out on MTV by John Norris.

S.P. News/Happy New Year/FMT Hearts Sex

2007-02-13T13:31:00.000-05:00

Love is in the air.

Happy Valentine's Day from Furman P. and S. Puppy. I heard nothing tells a languid canine that you love him like a fresh pair of Nike Vandals, not that you salty bloggartz care. Do something nice for your loved ones today, and do it the FMT way. Men, buy your filly a bottle of wine, maybe some delicates that aren't awfully creepy, and some flowers. Just do it. We know you think that $35.99 Diplo import is supremely thoughtful, but she's never heard of that, and yes, that new Paul Robeson boxed set just screams elegant sophistication, but she's not impressed. Ladies, go easy on the puppy in your life; cop some bottles of Ephemere for your man, make him some vittles, and maybe snatch that The Departed DVD that just dropped yesterday. Giving gifts isn't the easiest thing in life, but keep this in mind: if you would really like it, your better half could probably give two shits that it exists.

Rappers DO NOT heart money: In the latest progression of hip-hop's latest ingenious scheme to keep its artists from making scrill, here's DJ Mick Boogie and Little Brother's And Justus For All (right click, save as), for free, in case you are into that kind of thing. Sort of takes the fun out of illegal downloading, if you ask me.

"Candy is bad for your fangs:" If you're interested in something WAY cooler, and want to talk shit to SP for flagrantly osculating the nether regions of Stones Throw records, download Peanut Butter Wolf's Valentine's Day mix. Then osculate the nether regions of someone you love. Scarlett, Slothra's in the big city, and I dare say, it's better to be Furman's first blonde ex than JT's umpteenth. Call him.

For fuck's sake, people, be good to your family and your loved ones, if only for today. All you chiddlers out there who are someone else's one and only, ackrite, because if you don't, that shit could be bad for their survival. For real.

Love, Foodmantooth.

Sway - Flo Fashion

2007-02-12T16:07:00.001-05:00

10 red letters in my name, but I doesn't mind. If they phone up, I'll just tell em that I'm colorblind.

Slothra Goes to the PLUG Awards

2007-02-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

Fellow blogger from the deep, Speckled Trout (of recent Type Slow fame) and I attended the 10 bones per ticket PLUG awards show, which is the awards show for cool music. I don't know why they give out these awards, what the criteria are, who votes, etc. but the lineup was Malkmus, Deerhoof, El-P (and two other shitty bands that both had guys who played little synths and bobbed their heads vigorously during choruses) and for ten bucks I was there.

David Cross hosted it and did a good job of making fun of how stupid/boring/unnecessary everything in between the performances was. I never understand why people every try to put comedy on a bill that people come to for the music. The last thing anyone wants to hear when they are waiting for a rock band to bring some discomfort are well-written comedy sketches. Also there was this thing called an "iPod battle" which was by far the worst excuse for entertainment this side of that Everybody Loves Fuckbasket spin-off show. Two teams or two people just played songs on their ipods though the PA back and forth and then the crowd was asked who was better. Everybody booed both teams and the next round (yeah apparently it was a preliminary round) was cancelled. Thank God.

First band I could give a fuck about. Deerhoof played about 4 songs. I love this band. They gave the lead singer, who is a tiny japanese woman who sings like one, a birthday cake. That was cute. El-P played two new songs, both of which sounded pretty rich, and got me fired up for his new album. But two songs, goddamn Producto, give the people what they want. He even had a horn section and didn't wear a trucker hat. Whatever, bring on Malkmus. Trout was the most fired up drunk person I have ever seen. He was grabbing random people and screaming in their face, which expanded his personal space considerably.

Oh yeah I saw the bass player from Pavement so I thought there might be some Slanted and Enchanted action (which didn't happen, much to Trout's chagrin) and there was a guy standing behind us who was almost 7 feet tall, so we thought it was Status Ain't Hood. I mean how many seven foot tall people are there period, nonetheless at an indie rock awards show. He claimed he wasn't him, but Trout wasn't convinced. If that was him and he didn't want to be harassed cuz he's a famous blogger, then fuck him. We'll see if there's a post about a screaming drunk kid wearing a brooklyn dodgers hat later.

Silversun Pickups was higher on the bill than 'Hoof and El-P. Fuck that. This kind of middling indie rock band is beyond boring at this point. Cross interviews Malkmus as James Lipton. Kinda funny but hey, again, we're here for guitars. Malk plays new shit, no Pavement. Has a mustache. Trout is pissed. No Pavement. He did play his Yul Brynner song however. Later Trout spends about $89 to download Pavement songs on this jukebox in a bar that did not wake up that day thinking "hey I think I'm gonna play somethin other than Bon Jovi and Europe tonight." Then Trout made the "I slept with your sister, oh not really" joke and almost got punched in the face by this fat Mexican who looked like Alf. Bad night for Trout. It ended with him spreading Nutella on a Tortilla and then not eating it, probably because it looked like poop.

FMT Interviews Grimace

2007-02-05T17:36:00.000-05:00

Most people think it is very funny to have the conversation where one talks about Grimace with one’s bros and asks the question, “what the hell is he anyway?” so that one’s bros laugh because no one really knows. One bro will say “an eggplant, definitely an eggplant,” and then another bro will say, “no, you’re wrong he’s an elephant seal,” and then someone will say “he’s Vice President of the United States,” and that person will most likely be a homeless person who sidled up to the conversation unnoticed.

This sort of idle banter ignores the man behind the corpulent, neckless, purple, conical body. And it ignores one of the richest American lives that have been lived since we declared our independence from our oppressors. In terms of said richness, experts have ranked Grimace somewhere between Jack LeLanne and Sidney Portier.

FMT took it upon ourselves to track down Grimace, see what he’s been up to these days, and talk with him about his battles with drug abuse and obesity, his dabblings with high-stakes espionage, and his interest in horses. It took us awhile to find him. The McDonald’s people wouldn’t talk, and the public library was not very helpful, besides a reference librarian who opined “I think he’s a gumdrop,” before we told her that “YOU DON’T KNOW THE MAN! HE IS NOT CANDY!” and shook our fists at her vigorously. “Well,” she said, “it seems like you don’t know him very well either, if you’re at the library trying to find him.” Touché, reference librarian. Touché.

We finally caught up with Grimace at his lakeside cabin in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, where he has been living for over 15 years, occupying himself with vintage coloring books and guide boat refurbishing. During our interview, he wore jean shorts, a tan madras shirt with the sleeves rolled up and Teva’s with socks. His manner was calm throughout, but when recalling certain of his life’s adventures, he smiled brightly and looked up at the roof of his cabin, as if reliving the witness he bore to certain turning points in our great nation’s history.

FMT: You started doing commercials for McDonalds in 1971, and you were originally cast as one of the bad guys, armed with two sets of arms and an insatiable appetite for milkshakes. After that first campaign you were recast as a good guy and Ronald McDonald’s best friend. Were you worried that you’re audience might perceive you as a fickle flip-flopper?

Grimace: No not at all. By the time I got the McDonald’s gig, I was a seasoned actor. I relished my versatility. I could be a leading man, I could be a villain, I could be a purple hill in the backdrop of a quasi-psychedelic children’s show. And I’m not going to lie, it was fun being the guy who could steal many, many milkshakes. It was a thrill, there were girls, there was a lot of fan mail, some of which was accompanied with erotic photos, because, you know, I was the bad guy who didn’t care. I mean, I stared down the consequences of burgling A LOT of milkshakes, like ten at a time, and I didn’t flinch for a second. So yeah that was attractive to the opposite sex.

FMT: Which is…

G: Female.

FMT: So, did you get tired of playing Ronald’s docile buddy?

G: I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. I missed those days when I was on the run, milkshakes in one hand, bitches on the other three. Like Vishnu if he was a daredevil outlaw pimp. But it was tiring. I could do it because I was young and ambitious. I was really burning the candle at both ends. And coke was just around then. We didn’t know it was bad for you. I thought it was, well maybe not the brother of sugar or flour, but maybe, like, the crazy cousin who was in jail, but not because of an inherently mean spirit—just a incidental misguidance, in the wrong place at the wrong time. So…yeah…what was the question?

FMT: Did you get tired of playing Ronald’s retarded buddy?

G: Oh right. Well no, because I was usually asleep or so fucked up that rabid concubines could’ve been defecating on my face and I wouldn’t have known. I really just phoned it in. It paid the bills and as the company grew, I was able to maintain a exorbitantly prodigious coke habit. But I didn’t really have to do anything. I moved around a little, smiled and grunted a little, but other than that, I didn’t exactly test my virtuosity. And at that point, acting in general was boring me. Brando, myself, James Dean, I really felt that we had exhausted the medium. I didn’t really think there was anywhere else we could go with it. We had literally fucked that dead horse until it was asking us to stop.

FMT: Why literally?

G: Oh I didn’t mean we actually fucked a dead horse until it spoke to us. Just meant that it sorta moved a little and we were pretty excited and I think Jimmy got his hands on some peyote from Dennis Hopper. I don’t really remember it that clearly, but…

FMT: So you suffered from equine necrophilia.

G: Yeah it was hard, you know. But I got help. I struggle with it everyday.

FMT: When was the last time you…

G: Oh I haven’t been inside a dead horse in 10 years.

FMT: So, when acting became boring, what did you do?

G: Well, I had always been quite a B-baller, so I moved to New York and started hustling on the courts of Harlem. I had a tremendous first step, I could really just lacerate the lane, no could mess with me. I had a little hustle I used to do with Kareem, actually. He would dress up as Hitler and challenge the highest rollin’ street ballers in New York to games, five large minimum. It’s funny, they wouldn’t notice he was seven feet tall and one of the best basketball players of all time because they’d just focus on the fact that he was dressed as Hitler. And then he’d double the bet by saying they could pick his teammate. And then I’d walk onto the court looking clueless, and inevitably, they’d say, “Yo, you got the fat, cone-shaped purple guy.” They’d be sorry about that choice, and ten grand in the whole. Kareem and I would be off playing Mancala, waist deep in drug-addled sluts.

FMT: Then where did life take you?

G: I picked up some freelance espionage work, in the early 80s. By this time, Ronald had grown so sick of my disinterest in the whole advertising world that he began using my body double for most of the ads. By 83 or so, my contract ran out and I had little interest in renewing it. We had a good run, Ronnie and I, but I was so beyond acting. Ollie North and I were old buddies from Annapolis, and when he heard that I was done hocking burgers, he called me up and said “hey ‘Ace, I’ve got some work for you if you want it. Might be dangerous, but the Central American poon will be worth it, let me tell you.” Believe it or not, that segment of my belt--the one that was labeled “Central American poon,” was notch-less—I mean, I had every notch there was. Hell, my main belt was festooned with smaller belts for sub notches…

FMT: Like the “dead horse” sub-notch.

G: Right, branching off from the “mammal” notch.

FMT: So, were you involved in the Iran-Contra affair?

G: Is a Nicaraguan whore’s cunt sweeter than honey?

FMT: ...

G: Yeah I learned my tradecraft down there, as the CIA was mustering the Contras. I became a valuable asset to them immediately, as my celebrity status and odd body shape and color came in handy whenever laundering the drug money, moving arms across check points, that sort of thing. The Sandinistas were oblivious hacks really. They just wanted to pet me. We could sneak anything right under their nose as long as I was there. They thought I was from Disney World or something. I could literally snatch documents out of their breast pockets at they stared slack-jawed at my nonpareil aura of glitz and artistic genius.

FMT: But you were never convicted of any crimes?

G: Only by a jury of angels.

FMT: What were you charged with?

G: Being too sexy for the good of Man.

S.P. News/Industry Wind Chill

2007-01-31T15:08:00.000-05:00

Sordid Puppy, in a gesture befitting of his reputation, steps out to meet -- and amaze -- his adoring fans.

S.P. is not going to fib -- he was enjoying the tropical lifestyle afforded us all by weak fourth-quarter '06 coke rap album sales. However, with the arrival of snow and cold and winter throughout the U.S.F.M.T., I'm genuinely pleased with the return to seasonal normalcy. Worrisome were projections of the 007 as the hottest year ever, and 75 degree weather in December doesn't bode well. I apologize for the dearth of updates as of late, but my coat of (allegedly) 100% faux fur had been stunted in its proliferation by the warm weather, and is only now in full effect.

If you don't care about Stones Throw Records, then you probably don't care much for S.P. News, but, then, if you don't like Stones Throw Records and don't like S.P. News then you probably don't like fun. Here's all of Chrome Children Vol. 2, available as a free download on Stones Throw's website. While you're on the site, buy Chrome Children Vol. 1 if you don't already have it, because it's a damn good album. Just forego the biggie-size option next time you're at your favorite fast food eatery. Music is better for you than high fructose corn syrup.

S.P.'s been bumpin that (DJ) Greyboy as of late; he's a guy who, like, makes ill beats and sometimes lets rappers -- who, let's be serious, are predominantly douchebags at this point -- spit over them. Fortunately, the tracks tend to dominate.

I'm also willing to listen to John Legend occasionally, but I don't like to admit it, save when cloaked by the anonymity that FMT provides. Here's "P.D.A. (We Just Don't Care)." Shut up and impress a girl with it.

I've been thinking a lot about all the effery that was made of the DJ Drama/Don Cannon RIAA shakedown fiasco that occurred a lil while ago (millenia in hip-hop bloggart time). The bloggartz seem to be missing the point: the RIAA is bugging the fuck out because no one's buying rap records any more and they're scrambling for an explanation/solution. They've been picking up illegal downloaders for a while now, and it's not that surprising that mixtape DJs came up in discussion as to who to go after next. I agree that the way Fox News handled the story was on some straight racist/classist/fuckingasshole shit, but I can't believe that no one saw this coming. People aren't buying albums any more -- particularly not people who spend all their time downloading the latest, illest leaked track off so and so's hot new record -- and the hip-hop industry is dying. S.P. predicts that pretty soon, the major department stores like Walmart and Target, not to mention the chain bookstores like Border's and B&N, will shrink their music sections significantly and eventually eliminate rap from their inventories altogether. These places care about only one thing: the success of their corporation, their Christmas bonuses, and the happiness of their shareholders, and they could give a fuck if some rappers can't buy the newest Escalade. Repeat: they do not give a fuck about how you feel about the Dedication series or how cool DJ Drama is.

FMT's rival bloggartz will probably respond that real music fans don't shop at stores like the ones mentioned above, that I don't understand how the rap industry works and that I should eff off with my DJ Greyboy and my Chrome Children. The fact is, though, that the hundreds of millions that the powers that be over at the major labels (should be) make(ing) at big chain stores are the same ones that fund Styles P's (nonexistent) music videos. In the late '90s and early '00s, peripheral members of Bad Boy, Ruff Ryders, Cash Money and No Limit Records were going platinum, and the big stars were selling spectacular units. Granted, a great deal of the music that fueled this explosion was mainstream pop-rap that lacked depth or longevity, but the fact that RAP was POPULAR widened the shelf space for the genre at Best Buy and KMart and wherever and thus opened the door for cats that were actually worth listening to. Only a small handful of rapping artists sold well last year, and with less demand comes less supply -- the hip-hop industry has dwindled and will only continue to do so, unless rappers start making great pop records that 15 year olds devour and purists shake their heads at. Whatever happened to the days of your favorite MC dropping one bouncy megahit to sell the album to teenyboppers and then filling (most of) the rest of the record with the shit that you really wanted to hear? Apparently, the music industry in general isn't struggling, and fucking High School Musical sold something like 4 million copies last year and I worry that, in a couple years, it's only records like that, My Chemical Romance, and maybe the latest Tony Bennett joint, that will be sitting on store shelves, let alone moving off of them.

This bozo -- and I call him a bozo because he writes things like "cultural sea change" -- points out that rap album sales dropped off by twenty percent, which is a spectacular amount, but rap lost yet again because New Age experienced an even worse year. All the hip-hop bloggartz have been in a frenzy about all of this, but they seem to fail to understand that their relevance, and indeed their occupations, are in jeopardy, that if no one cares to buy the Lupe Fiasco album then they certainly don't care about how they feel about it.

Finally, Disco D died, and that really blows. "Ski Mask Way" is an amazing song. The hip-hop community may miss him, but it probably didn't deserve him. R.I.P.

FMT up.

It's unlikely I've seeded you, the moon is in transit.

2007-01-26T00:42:00.000-05:00

yo where my warm globe be at?

Get the Fuck Off the Commode

2007-01-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

Rage Against the Machine are getting back together...if for only one show. Well, you might say, who gives a poop? Well we do. I read a couple things things on blogs this morning that were like "oh Rage is getting back together to play a show, they were kinda good but we're afraid to risk cred with people who don't like rap and loud guitars and admit that they were pretty much a dynamo of spleen busting music." I would link to these things but blogger is a big fucking idiot who won't let me do that on my Mac without typing the code in.

I remember distinctly walking down the hall in middle school, listening to the radio on my walkman because I had a skin disease and my peers often yelled derogatory remarks in my direction. When the radio disc jockeys would play the soft music, the remarks wouldn't be drowned out, and I would cry a large single tear that took longer than usual to run down my face because of the adhesive properties that my skin disease lended to my face. When Nirvana and Offspring would come on, I would be happier because I would hear plaid shirts instead of insults that hated my soul. Nothing compared to the moment when I first heard Rage. I was walking to the wing of the school where the science and math classes were (read: nerdspace) and I was walking down a ramp that was installed for those kids whose legs were run over by trucks when they were little. I used the ramp because I had a particularly precocious case of Osgood Slaughter's disease so my knees were already giving out on me. So I was walking down that ramp and "Bombtrack" came on. I thought for sure one of my vital organs had failed (I was was quite a hypocondriac and really wasn't equipped to handle this kind of excitement). When I woke up in the nurse's office and she called me a "little pussy," I was galvanized and inspired. I still cried, but the tear was smaller, for I needed to hear that shit again.

I didn't know what the song was until it came on the radio again, and I summoned all my powers of homeostasis not to pass out from the excitement. The band sounded like the name of something cool, and I went to the local record shoppe to purchase the record with the co-pay that I withheld the pharmacist the previous day, telling them that my mother would take care of it the next time she was in. The album that I bought had a picture of a self-immolating monk on its cover. I thought this was a charming parlor trick, until years later, when I found out the monk was doing that because the Zapatistas were being oppressed in Mexico. I listened to the album over and over again. I had also recently discovered the rap music w/o the guitars and sons of revolutionaries, and I liked how the Rage guy yelled about how I was going to "Boin, Boin" me on "Bombtrack" I thought he was speaking french or something. Again, years later I found out that this was more about immolation. I bought a Rage T-Shirt and wore it to school. One of my teachers noticed the Molotov cocktail on the back and asked me about it. He was one of those cool young teachers who seem like the apotheosis of humanity when you are in middle school, and he told me what the picture was. I thought it looked like a sunset of something. He told me it was something that was made so that explosions achieve political ends. He asked me if I knew who Noam Chomsky was, and I said "bless you."

By the time Evil Empire came out, I was already a seasoned RATM fan. My skin disease had cleared up somewhat, and I had talked to a girl. She worked at the post office and she was at least 35, but I figured that was like, extra points or something. So I had gained confidence and when the jocks and cool guys started to listen to Rage I acted all uppity and asked them if they knew who Noam Chomsky was. Sometimes they did, which was kind of humiliating. In 1997 Rage went on tour with the Wu-Tang clan. To me, this was like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus teaming up to do Wrestlemania XVLXMI. Unfortunately about a third of Wu-Tang showed up for the first couple shows of the tour, and then Zach de la Rocha broke his ankle or something when he jumped across the stage and landed on a speaker. The rest of the tour ended and they never made it to my neck of the woods, which caused my skin problems to relapse.

The Battle of Los Angeles came out, and that covers album, and then Rage broke up. At this point, I had discovered Joy Division and Sonic Youth, and so I didn't really care that much about Rage anymore, because I basically thought that big guitars meant the same as big phallus. Zach started working on his solo album, which he has been working on for 348 years now with zero results, and Chris Cornell joined the rest of the band and came up with a terrible new name. This band sucked, but I think I still bought the record, because I had begun to feel nostalgic for those bands that I discovered in middle school that helped me get though my various heath problems and pariah status. Listening to Rage now, I realize that Zach was a good rapper, even though I now know what he's talking about. Morello made some great rap beats with his guitar and the drummer helped him with that. I hope they get back together and Chris Cornell becomes a hairdresser so that they can make another album. It can be called Barack Obama for President 08 and it can have a picture of Hillary Clinton being bludgeoned with Das Kapital on it.

Lewis Parker - Mr. Parker's Siesta

2007-01-19T21:07:00.001-05:00

If you haven't checked the Champions of Nature track a few posts ago, do so now. This shit is some good shit.

Cut the Grass on You Effing Snakes

2007-01-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

Someone made a movie of this, and the movie they made is good

I used to watch PBS when I was a kid, and I was allowed watch little else. My parents didn't have cable, and they were less than keen on letting us chiddlers view anything on the nefarious networks. In retrospect, I'm sorta glad ma and pa took this approach, but at the time, I felt deeply slighted. When my parents left the house for any period of time, no matter how brief (read: ma walking to the mailbox), the TV was turned on, and for a glorious moment I basked in the glow of televisual vittles that weren't "Homework Hotline" or about gardening or news or whatever. Sesame Street was an amazing show, and I managed to grow up just before Barney could suck me into the hivemind, but all in all, PBS is pretty lame when you're eight.

There was one important, incredible exception to the above rule, and it was Mystery. Each Saturday night, SP and his littermates would gather around the ol' picturemaker and devour the latest crime thriller, mostly imported from across the big pond. For one uninterrupted hour a week, abominable acts were committed by the slimiest of villains and the cases were blown wide open by the best of minds. I was never much good at figuring out who'd done what, but I respected the heroes -- the detectives -- of these shows because they all had their own distinct crime-solving style. This is less than shocking, because Mystery wasn't some drama series that has the same people writing and producing it each week; instead, the best of mystery shows from the U.S. and the U.K. would rotate in and out every couple of months to keep things fresh and interesting. I used to observe the forensic ingenuity of the likes of Agatha Christie's Poirot (played by David Suchet, longtime friend of FMT), Inspector Morse, Cadfael, Maigret, and P.D. James's Dalgliesh. This was truly great television.

When I was really young, I was most impressed by Suchet's Poirot, in the way he would get everyone in a room at the end of each show and break it all down with impossible discretion, and Cadfael, because it was set in the Middle Ages and there were lepers and damsels etc. As I grew a bit older, however, it was Ms. James's Dalgliesh, played by Roy Marsden on Mystery, that really earned my respect. He's a really private guy, preferring to write poetry and not talk to people when he's not busy solving murders, and he's something of a tragic figure, a widower whose wife passed on during childbirth. He's a lonesome type of cat, and not the type of bozo that you're likely to catch on the next episode of CSI: Arctic Adventures, but that's what makes him awesome, not to mention somewhat beievable.

P.D. James also wrote The Children of Men, which I haven't read because I'm still bogged down by this tome (no Thomas Pynchon), but I did catch the fil-um adaptation of it, and it's the best movie of the year thus far (then again, I haven't yet seen Primeval). It's bleak and earnest and thought-provoking and scary and intensely sad and thoroughly entertaining. The application of James's vision to contemporary political climes is frighteningly real, but one doesn't get the feeling that the filmmakers were out to push any particular agenda. In fact, the story feels like an indictment of the narrow-mindedness of those that pursue only their own ends and lose sight of the fundamental ethos of right and wrong, of solidarity between humans. I feel as though the reigious, ethical and/or political types are probably having a field day over the issues raised by this film, and I'm sure myriad interpretations have been and will be drawn up.

In the meantime, SP says that P.D. James and the folks that turned her novel The Children of Men into a film called Children of Men probably thought and think that the vindictiveness that prevails in our world these days is guiding us down a path towards permanent division between and misery among the people of planet Earth. Respect your fellow man and woman, and admire them for their differences instead using incongruities as a rationale for hate. It's also a good effing story, and a damn good film.

Great New Positive Rap Albums

2007-01-16T23:56:00.000-05:00

Mos Def and Talib Kweli both have one of those things called rap albums in the marketplace. Well, actually this isn’t really true. Def owed Geffen an album, so he made one. Then one of the most bizarre record release controversies I’ve ever heard of followed. [1] Kweli’s album is free and produced by Madlib, who, if you don’t know, just won the Nobel Prize for Urban Musics.

Mr. Def, whose name is an abbreviation for the street slang “most definitely” and Mr. Kweli, whose name means “I talk the truth,” were part of a rap duo from the nineteen-nineties called Black Star [2], named after Marcus Garvey’s Black Star shipping line, which aimed to repatriate railroad tracks back to China. Black Star (or Black Star) told us truths about the world and used production from DJ Hi-Tek, a WKRP personality and the son of Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott. Mr. Tek’s work was clean, minimalist and nice, but also menacing in the way that Jack Johnson (the surfer not the boxer) is menacing [3]. Mos Def then split, because he had a feeling that his personality was bigger than Kweli’s, who was really kind of a bore. Def made an album called Black on Both Sides, which he recorded while wearing a fedora hat. BoBS was an album that told people about evil people in the world who conspire to quell fun, but it also had a song with an Aretha Franklin sample in which Def talked about coitus and heavy-petting, so you could play it at mid-afternoon sex romps. Like 3rd Bass and Steven Tyler before him, Def proved that rap could be liked by people who only used pyrex cookware to make muffins for the PTA bakesale, and 9mm’s to shoot “only people who were in the game already.”

Meanwhile, Kweli kept working with Hi-Tek and released an album without any actors on it, called Reflection Eternal, which was titled after the Buddist idea that if one reflects on oneself and the world forever, one will one day get to wear a robe with a hood and live on a mountaintop, where boomboxes are not allowed. This day never comes, however, because one would have to reflect forever before one is rewarded with the hooded robe and the boombox-less mountaintop, and since there is no “after-forever,” it’s a paradox. Anyway, that album was pretty good. Kweli actually brought the gem-like flame with “Move Somethin’”

After that initial bunch of critically acclaimed [4] LPs from Def and Kweli, then came the post-millennial, lets-make-shit-albums-because-either-we-don’t-care-about-rap-anymore-because-we-are-now-broadway stars-or-we-were-kinda-boring-in-the-first-place era of their respective careers [5]. Def released The New Danger, which tried to reclaim rock music from Europeans, who, according to Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, were able to co-opt a music that came from displaced Africans because of the particular layout of mountain ranges in Europe. There was a parody of Jay-Z’s “The Takeover,” from The Blueprint, in which Def said that lots of things are “runnin this rap shit” including “tall Israelis” and “quasi-homosexuals.” It was so cognizant that I nearly killed my hairstylists with an enormous mallet. Like Andre 3000 shortly thereafter, Def seemed disinterested not just in rapping, which was supplanted with his not very good crooning, but also in hip-hop, which he didn’t think could make him a famous enough artist. So a half-assed self-conscious crossover record it was, and we stopped caring about Mr. Def.

Kweli stayed with hip-hop and rapping, and made Quality, which featured Def on one track. At this point, however, the Native Tongues seemed like a refuge for college kids who figured rap had to tell them things that weren’t about “da club” or “da trap” to be good. Fearing irrelevance, Kweli make The Beautiful Struggle, which he thought might be able to ride Kanye’s College Dropout coattails into mainstream success. Unfortunately he made a flabby, awkward record. He tried to make a party album or something, but Kweli is a sober eunuch, so it wasn’t an apt look.

Finally we are up to the present, and after the deluge of albums by “rap kingpins,” the Black Star boys are back. Def’s album is called Tru3 Magic, apparently influenced by Numb3rs, the TV show, and normally I wouldn’t pay attention to it. There is more singing and a recreation of GZA’s “Liquid Swords,” which is a song that is too good to even approach, even if you had a gaggle of robotic elephant-superproducers who have The Wu-Tang Manualprogrammed into their circuits—let alone “cover” it or whatever he’s doing. However, Geffen either pulled some wily shit, or just fucked up royally and in a very odd way--some excessively shady record company dealings--I paid attention to that. The label shipped a few thousand copies out on a goddamn Friday, between Christmas and New Years, when the media sits at home and bathes in egg nog and people have no money anyway because they bought gold plated ceilings and priceless truffle-hunting pigs for their loved ones. Also, the album case was shipped without a sleeve, which may reflect the album’s rejection of superfluous consumerist imagery, but Mos Def is not a post-punk band with allegiances to Marxist theorists, so we can surmise that Geffen just didn’t give enough of a fuck to stick a piece of paper inside the case. Publicists for the label reacted strangely, saying that this meager offering was actually a “pre-release” limited-edition…uh…release, and that the proper album will come out in the spring. Soundscan tells us the album sold about 11,000 copies. A song on the album called “Undeniable” was nominated for a Grammy, and lots of people cared about this because the Grammy’s are great.

This bizarre situation was covered by The Village Voice, which, after firing Robert Chirstgau and Chuck Eddy, has opted for a music section with no credibility and a bunch of Pitchfork writers [6]. Makkada B. Saleh, who wrote The Voice article, is not a Pitchfork writer as far as I know, but he or she goes for some formal experimentation, which is not out of the ordinary for the very creative modernists at ‘Fork. The article is mostly quoted messageboard posts and blog comments that are hard to differentiate from the actual article, which is quite deferential and at times an all out laud-job. Here’s some great music crit: “despite its occasional lax moments, the album as a whole has an intensity and rambling impromptu-ness that few artists ever attain” I’m not one of the lucky folks to have picked up a copy of the LP, but man, it sounds like the album is as good as “Like a Rolling Stone,” by Bob Dylan. At the end of the article, Saleh writes that Def needs to stop singing and caps things with “all these motherfuckers tryin’ to be Al Green.” Wow, yeah, that’s true.

Kweli latest effort is not bound in controversy at all. That’s because it doesn’t cost money, that thing that usually makes humans yell at each other and challenge each other to foot races and stuff. The album is called Liberation, and Stones Throw, the label that likes cartoons and Texas High School funk bands, is releasing it. Madlib is at the helm, as he is with basically every rap album Peanut Butter Wolf puts out. There are 9 songs, and none them are very good because Kweli’s humorless talking has nothing to do with the Madlib’s beats, which aren’t his best anyway. Kweli talks about cous-cous and Bluetooth, namechecks Larry, Angela AND Ossie Davis, and says things about societal ills with pointless voice distortion. As is often the case when voices are put on top of Madlib’s compositions, Kweli dilutes the whole affair. Melvin Van Peebles samples and a squeaky-voiced alter-ego would’ve done better.

Things aren’t goin that well for rap in general, but it seems almost impossible that a “positive” Native Tongues-type rapper could have much impact now. It’s like trying to beat someone up with a sock without quarters in it, while reading from a book by Cornel West. .

Notes:

[1] And I was alive when the now infamous Hell Hath no Foxtrot controversy went down. The album was, upon the truncated terminus of a corporate listening session, defenestrated by Columbia Records for its “artsy fartsy inaccessibility.” Then, the story goes, a bum on the street, named Pickles Bob, picked it up out of the gutter. Thinking the tape was a correspondence from the CIA, who for years had been trying to steal his alchemy equation that turned Gak into a critically-acclaimed coke rapper, brought the tape to a fellow bum, unironically named Mentally Stable Lucious, who Pickles Bob thought was the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the one who could make all bad things good. Mentally Stable Lucious listened to the disc and saw it for what it was; that is, the thing that would save music and make it the art form that geniuses prefer. In a fit of entrepreneurship, Mentally Stable Lucious decided to stop being a bum and start a Record Company, which he titled Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti Records. He rounded up a bunch of fresh-faced subway car b-boys and taught them how to lip synch and wear cut-off denim jackets. The group, named Yuri Gagarin and the Space Racers, played a few shows with re-mastered versions of HHNF blasting behind them, at malls and ice-skating rinks. Despite the album’s limited pressing on boiled-down toenails, the record was met with universal critical acclaim. At first it was ignored by Rolling Stone, Spin, The Source and pretty much every other large-circulation periodical; however, the grassroots praise grew to a point where national magazines couldn’t ignore it. Yuri and the Racers were suddenly the hottest musical act in the world.

Then everything crumbled. Mentally Stable Lucious, it turned out, was a Russian mole who had been planted in the gutter by the KGB to wait for any uncompromising albums discarded by the American major labels, so that he could steal them, bury anti-American slogans in them during the re-mastering process, and then feed them to the unwitting American intelligentsia, who would accused of blasphemy by the government after lavishing praise on an album rife with pro-soviet messages. The plan didn’t work very well, since Mentally Stable Lucious forgot to translate the pro-soviet slogans into English, and critics fawned all over the random Russian phrases because, as one critic wrote “Yuri and the Racers are aestheticizing the Cold War, to the point were Russians and Americans might as well spooning on a bed of nuclear weapons in MoMA.” When the KGB heard the album, and Lucious' conspicuous blunder, he was murdered immediately and unceremoniously.

Ironically, it turned out that Pickles Bob was right, sort of. The CIA did record the album, with their house band. It’s just that it wasn’t a correspondence about Gak alchemy; rather, the Agency had been tracking Mentally Stable Lucious all along, placing agents at Columbia years ago. Lucious didn’t forget to translate the anti-American messages. A young agent named Rick Rubin snuck into the studio after Lucious was finished and changed it. Of course, the whole affair has been covered up thoroughly, as if it never happened. But yeah that was quite a controversy.

[2] Or 'Black Star' was just the name of their only album, it always seemed unclear to me which was the case.

[3] So menacing that you don’t even realize that you are being menaced until you no longer have a face.

[4] Rolling Stone gave all of them between 3 and 4 stars.

[5] I think that the whole really-long-hyphenated-phrase-joke-thing is so engrained that it warrants a CAPS LOCK-type command that eases the annoyance of forsaking the space bar for that small key in the Siberia of the board, where the clumsy ring finger reigns.

[6] At this point it is a cliché to accuse Pitchfork of bad writing, questionable journalistic ethics, and generally annoyance, but now that a lot of the writers are working for The Voice, including Tom Breihan, Chris Ott, and Zach Baron and the old guard of Eddy and Xgau are gone, its impossible not to see The Voice music section as a co-opted bunch of pages.

Pop Levi - Sugar Assault Me Now

2007-01-16T20:10:00.001-05:00

SP gambles credibility by endorsing non-coke-rap, tight-jeans-wearing white man.

S.P. News/Effery

2007-01-16T18:28:00.000-05:00

Tarantino & Rodriguez team up for B-movie splatterfest, to be released later this year. Here's the preview.

It's mid-January, in the year of the Thunderball. Bizarre, botched executions are going down in Iraq, except this time around they're state-sanctioned. Winter finally arrived, but that hasn't done anything for coke rappers, which leads me to believe either that my theory was wrong or that what snow has come is just too little, too late.

Fat Freddy's Drop isn't a coke-rap outfit. They are, however, a reggae or funk or something band from Wellington, New Zealand. Gilles Peterson has been up on them for a while, apparently, which makes me look a little behind the times, but whatever. He's got more people. If FMT had BBC (no, not that BBC) gouda running through it, we'd be showcasing the best of what's next before all yuz other bloggartz wake up in the morning. For now, here's a video for FFD's "Wandering Eye".

Hot on the heels of their god-awful December 2006 "Big Cat" leopard print release, Lids keeps it bizarre, albeit less garish, with their January Fresh Goods Fridays release: MLB Moonman

Ever since this roguish mongrel was just a little pup, SP's been rocking Reebok Classics. I don't hate AF1s or Nike SBs or Dunks or whatever else, but the Classics were always more affordable and comfortable and came in nice enough colorways (though these sometimes took a little bit of tracking down). Reebok's been doing the design-your-own-shoe thing for a while now, but the new RbkCustom shop is truly nice, particularly because of the inclusion of the Ventilator model for manipulation. The unofficial FMT custom soldiers are on order, and the trademark colorway is coming soon, so I recommend you bloggartz get your sneaker game way up.

French non-coke rappers TTC receive FMT commendations for hot French women, expert use of Tyrannosaurus Rex cutout, great t-shirts worn by chubby bald guy, and a banging track.

SP's not positive about this one, as it lies a little bit outside of his, admittedly, narrow field of vision/scent, but there's been a fair bit of buzz surrounding Mika, and I can imagine this being a good song, so here he is on FMT certified U.K. media icon Jools Holland's late night television show. I reverently defer to Furman on this one -- thoughts?

Read FMT every day, eat lots of food, drink good inexpensive wine, and try, for once, to be nice to one another.

Champions of Nature - Salsa Smurf

2007-01-16T11:30:00.001-05:00

U.K. export from the 000

Ab-Liva, Slick Pulla Blamed for Lackluster Ski Season in Swiss Alps

2007-01-08T14:27:00.001-05:00

Or, An Incongruous Truth: Global Warming Melts 4th Quarter Coke-Raps

SP flew back from the motherland yesterday. This cur's itinerary had him quarantined on a barstool in Newark, NJ for a seven and a half hour layover. Shouldn't bars that are called "Budweiser" be like outlet stores, full of discount beers in aesthetically displeasing bottles? They should fill all the rejected longneck designs and send them to such places; instead, pints of Bud were $6.83 and before long I shrank back to a seat in the terminal area to read about proselytizers and other such gangster shit. I didn't make it outside, but apparently it was something like 55 degrees, a chilly change from Saturday's tropical high of 73. I'd be telling tall tales if I claimed to be bothered by shedding the heavy winter gear for once, but predictions of continuing sultriness throughout the 007 have me a bit worried. What's to be expected for the upcoming summer months? 120 degrees and 98% humidity? Normally, Slothra and I don't mind a bit of extra warmth, as we're aquatic mammals and so we're way more concerned about powerboats and keeping the female manatees happy keeping us happy, but this is getting ridiculous.

This winter has been bad news for a lot of creatures, particularly for people that own and work at ski resorts in Europe and also particularly for people that rap. If there isn't some confluence of contributing factors here, someone punch me in the face. All these mofos over in Courcheval, France, talkin 'bout "We got that snow" and "Round here it snows even when it don't snow," you know, because they can make fake snow and shit, better believe that when it's 65 degrees that junk will melt. Same with The Clipse and Young Jeezy and all those trendy kingpins-turned-rapping artists; when it's hot outside, you don't want snow, because that shit will melt and make you all wet and who knows what's in the snow these days anyway and being wet and dirty is definitely not the Nilla wafers.

It should come as no great surprise to anyone that no one's buying rap records any more. In the '90s and the early double-o's all the major labels dropped records as if they were involved in a competitive business or something crazy like that. Now every company seems like a one-rapper show, and former independent contenders sign deals with majors in what should be great career moves and fall further into the bowels of anonymity. Don't even get me started on Dr. Dre, who obviously sits around all day thinking about how great The Chronic was and pressing the "strings" button on his MPC-shitbag and charging people more money than they will make off their albums for one mediocre beat. Remember when rap was a legitimate commercial art form, and store shelves were regularly loaded with new records, most of which were bad or awful but some were good or even, occasionally, great? Ha. I'd almost forgotten about that. That was awesome.

I killed my dinner with karate

2007-01-05T18:42:00.000-05:00

Better than TV on the Radio

Nahright informed me that The Killers turned down Ghostface’s collabo offer. I assume the Tabernacle choir already had the Vegas moustache boys booked for that day. Joe Smith-sweatin motherfuckers. Too bad for them. Ghost just wanted to do it because he’s the Killah and they’re the Killers. For once Ghost is misguided. He should round up Killer Mike and Cam’ron and go knock on Jerry Lee Lewis’ door with a bucket of Percocets and a bottle of Jim Beam. They could play on the front steps of the IRS HQ.

The Idolator “Jackin Pop” poll is up. Basically they’re trying to take over the Voice’s Pazz and Jop poll which was always the standard, but disappointing in its ignorance of the whole spoonerism thing. Spoonerisms are pretty much the most fun thing you can do without a spiked collar asphyxiating you. Anyway, Xgau’s ballot is there (he always ran the Pazz and Jop until he got canned). Amongst Dylan, Sonic Youth, Ghostface and Outkast, lies Crunk Hits vol. 2 at # 4. That’s not a joke. Chuck Eddy, the other music editor the Voice canned last year, is on here too. His ballot is great. He’s got Paris Hilton at #6 and all his Artists of the Year are all websites (youtube, Pandora myspace)…and Walt Disney. That guy is the man. Fuck Village Voice Media or whoever those overseers are.

The OC got cancelled. I don’t care about this, really. Laguna Beach blasted that show out of the water and for good reason. Mischa Barton always reminded me of a meerkat. A highly attractive meerkat, but a meerkat just the same. It was interesting how they had The Walkmen and Death Cab for Fuckface play in the High School’s cafeteria or whatever. The Max only could only manage Casey Kasem, and he was just there to judge a dance contest.

The Arcade Fire sold out 5 shows at the Judson Memorial Chuch in NYC in about .000000004 shakes of a lamb’s tail this morning. Not sure if that church is as big as a the behemoths in Salt Lake City, but obviously this is that serious indie band that people who don’t really like music that much listen to and go online to buy tickets to, while critics were snoring about about 7 blog posts about them. I saw them basically bring the house down just as the hype was gathering steam. They had no roadies at this point and they took about 9 hours to set up all their quirky Xmas decoration-like stage props and then their keyboard broke. It was 300 degrees in the place, but Win Butler, the lead dude, never took off his jacket, which had a skull drawn on it or something. All the kids knew the words to every song, the band played their hair off, and my lungs were eating sweat from the air. It was pretty sweet. Too band Funeral is pretty boring now.

FMT: Massive

2006-12-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

Sounds from the big P-E-R-F-I-D-I-O-U-S-A-L-B-I-O-N

Your main clairvoyant canine Sordid Puppy has been checking the U.K. Hip-Hop scene for some years now. I spent the first of my nascent years in Salford, Limeyland, and the extended (and, indeed, immediate) pooch family tree mostly begins and ends in the Rebel County, so my connection to that side of the pond remains stout. Along the way, during holidays and whatnot, I've done my best to bless friends and relatives over yonder with the best of the American crop of rapping artists and to smuggle any and everything the U.K. has had to offer back stateside.

Rappers from the perfidious Albion have had a difficult time winning any sort of airplay or commercial success from us puritans, and the scene as a whole has had an impossible time making any sort of impression. Yes, Lady Sovereign got signed by Jay-Z, and yes, she is English and raps, but she seems more a novelty act than a legitimate ambassador for U.K. Hip-Hop, so in this Puppy's opinion she doesn't really count.

Dizzee Rascal won the Mercury Prize, England's top honors for music of all genres, a few years back with Boy In Da Corner, and built up enough hype to sell a coupla records in the U.S.A., but he wasn't exactly invited to pretend to freestyle on Rap City. Dizzee's still putting out material, and 2004's Showtime, while not as good as Boy In Da Corner, was a decent album (a couple of classic videos: "Stand Up Tall" and "Dream"); since then, he's popped up here and there, selling out shows at Irving Plaza in NYC and continuing to put out records. Point is, Dylan Mills is a good rapper, but you're not likely to hear him on the latest Big Mike mixtape because we'd rather listen to derivative douchebags than something with a bit of originality and style.

There are a couple of other acts to mention, such as The Streets and Kano and maybe a couple others (Roots Manuva?), among the number of U.K. artists that have made some impact in the U.S. They're all distinct from one another, and a few, on comparison, don't even seem like they'd fit in the same genre of music, and maybe they don't. What's similar about all of them, though, is that, despite critical acclaim and reasonable stateside commercial success, they haven't managed to open many doors for their own countrymen. They're not seen as fit for comparison with American rappers, and I'm not entirely sure why.

U.S. hip-hop is stuck -- no, entrenched -- in a bit of a creative rut at present, and the formula of venerable yet aging rappers making records to revitalize rap doesn't seem to be working. The current standards keep plodding along, making the same sort of music they've always made, and the public steadily loses interest.

It's likely that the aspects of the U.K. scene that I find so appealing are the direct results of its failure to achieve commercial success and thus enter the fold of the corporate music industry machine. U.K. hip-hop records get constant play from venues like Channel U, but MTV, even over here (and even on its strictly rap/r&b station, MTV Base), is much quicker to play the latest Chingy ballad than the latest homegrown rap. The same goes for the selection at your local HMV or Virgin Records stores. My point is that though I'm sure U.K. rappers get much love from their local fans and make money selling mixtapes and playing shows, it's hard to imagine any of them being extravagantly wealthy, and most radiate ravenous hunger.

At its worst, U.K. hip-hop is a shameless, empty imitation of its U.S. cousin and elder. U.K. records that blatantly attempt to reproduce American tracks fail in every way, and often end up biting styles that are dated and/or lacking in credibility. Imagine a pack of English characters doing their best St. Lunatics impression. Worse still are the acts that espouse the most negative aspects of U.S. hip-hop, and do so for the sake of having done so; absent from such music is any shred of soul or artistic integrity.

At its best, U.K. hip-hop is a great and refreshing thing. The relative youthfulness of the scene proves capable of translating not into immaturity but rather a new sound and attitude, one that represents a marked deviation from the rap that dominates the American mainstream. Roll Deep, a U.K. crew with whom Dizzee Rascal was once affiliated, has the number 3 or 4 video on Channel U at the moment, titled "Badman," and it's an exploration of the negative effects of gun violence on English communities. It also feels like an indictment of the belligerence and one-upmanship that a great deal of (American) rap glorifies. After the video runs, an advertisement for www.stoptheguns.org flashes across the screen. This is a great song with a great message, and, what's more, it doesn't come off as insincere.

I'm also feeling Craze 24. "Ghetto Hotels" is blowing up on Channel U and U.K. hip-hop radio at the moment, and yes, it's a bleak and forbidding portrayal of life in inner-city London, but it's also hopeful; Craze raps about conquering the boundaries that exist between him and his folk and success. Drug dealing and addiction are confronted, not celebrated.

As you'd expect, U.K. hip-hop -- good U.K. hip-hop, at that -- isn't all concerned with examining social ills. I've posted about Sway in the past, but he's good enough to mention again; "Little Derek" is one of my favorite songs of the past couple years, and I appreciate his expressed frustration with the impervious nature of the U.S. scene. A-Tola's sound seems a bit more derivative of the American MCs he undoubtedly admires, but his swagger is decidedly U.K.-by-way-of-West-Indies, and the music is fresh. The "Rep Ur Endz" series of tracks, one for each of London's various regions, is unlikely to leave you scratching your head at the complexity of the MCs' rhymes, but the earnestness of the songs is infectious.

U.K. hip-hop's detractors have adequate fodder for their criticisms. Its MCs and beatmakers are relatively young and unseasoned and, quite obviously, the scene simply hasn't evolved to the extent that its American counterpart has. However, at a time when hip-hop fans thirst for something stylistically and musically original, U.S. rap continues to disappoint, and the U.K. scene offers a burgeoning alternative. While this Puppy certainly hopes against hope that Papoose's debut album isn't utter tripe and that Killer Mike releases something other than a mixtape in the next twenty-five years, in the meantime you can probably catch him bumping an import. I'm in need of some soulful music, and I don't mean Common rapping over Will.I.Am beats about how soulful he is. I mean MUSIC that has a SOUL.

Happy Thing with the Earth and the Sun

2006-12-29T14:56:00.000-05:00

This is how Santa do on New Years

Sordid Puppy and I were anxious midwives to a bouncing baby blog back in the summer and since our beloved Foodmantooth has undergone the trials of internet infancy: irrelevance, growing pains, almost the shit, and finally at the half-year mark, officially the motherfucking donkey poop.

So the life of FMT has been basically mirrored the career of Lily Allen, even if she kinda sucks and FMT does the totality of actions that constitute the negation of sucking. Many things have gone down in the last half year, and some of them were good. I’m not indulging in the old top ten this or that of the year, because those are usually bad or wrong. I’m just gonna throw up five good things, five bad things, and one beautiful thing, which is Slothra himself. That shall be the year in Slothra’s eyes.

THE GOOD:

ONE: OG indie rock from the early 80s bringin it back home.
Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped and Mission of Burma’s The Obliterati were two of the best albums of the year. Dinosaur Jr. played the best show Slothra saw this year. J. Mascis wore a powder blue t shit with feathers on it. And he destroyed Slothra’a brain with his Jazzmaster. Old dudes who think guitars make art actually do make art. Young kids should take lessons. This is some late style shit. These bands couldn’t care less about conceit, they just do the same shit they’ve been doing, without the burden of proof that comes from bands who are trying to get blog hype and “bands to watch” pieces in Spin after touring for 5 years and releasing 7 albums (“have you heard of this new rapper E-40?” I shouldn’t talk actually, I though E-40 was Too Short’s hypeman until that ghostriding the whip thing on the TV).

TWO: The Wire
Slothra doesn’t understand why all the talk about The Wire always refers to its “intricate plots”? Since when is this show hard to follow or off kilter in any way. Slothra is a retarded, larded sea mammal and he can can solve Poincare’s Conjecture, whip up a soufflé that’ll clean behind your ears, and cast his next rap opera all while following the goings on in Simon’s Bmore. The appeal for Slothra is the engrossing, streamlined plots. Nothin new in it really, (still no Homicide), but the sheer breadth is unparalleled. There are basically 7 shows in one. The first scene, where Snoop buys the nail gun, was utterly, transcendentally, almost sublime. The season was made in the first five minutes.

THREE: Brick
Now, this movie is something that’s hard to follow. Slothra’s fav of year. Wait, was Cache this year? Slothra’s not looking that up. Those movies are good, either way.

FOUR: Ornette Coleman
Hey, remember Jazz? You know, the one with the instruments and the heroin. Old dude named Ornette hooked up with his son and two bass players and recorded a concert that is probably the best album of the year. You don’t like Jazz? Oh you do, you own a Miles Davis album AND a Coltrane album. Wow, you cultured fuck. Ornette’s about 384 years old and you’ve been sleeping under his bed eating ice cream the whole time. Turn off that music with people singing on it and wake the fuck up to the master. Holy shit I’m fucking pissed.

FIVE: The Hills
Laguna Beach was good enough. Stupendously seminal even. But LC and Heidi brought it to a another (whole nother) level. Or maybe they were just hot and relatively charming and it is the geniuses at MTV that put it together. Either way, so far this is the best reality show I’ve ever seen (except Man vs. Beast, but that wasn’t a series). The episode when Heidi’s boyfriend comes over and balls his face off, then Heidi just brushes him off and we never see him again—probably the best moment of the year on regular cable. And the reentry of Beard Kid into my consciousness. The episode when he was wasted, wearing a top hat for some reason, and saying things to LC like “hey, yo, like you always act like this, and I don’t know how I act to make you act like this!” And he’s obviously too retarded to be acting! But LC broke my heart when she took Beard Kid over the internship in Paris. We all know she’s shooting for the pseudo celebritydom that her LB couterpart Kristen parlayed, and you don’t exactly need an ill CV and a properly phrased cover letter for that sort of employ, but come on, girl, what in God’s name were you thinking?

THE BAD

ONE: Tom Breihan
The internet hate all over the rap internet about TB almost made me become a Mennonite. None of it really had to do with anything, although it really spun things up and got people slingin ones and zeros like I’ve never seen. But pointless as all that was, Breihan himself ended up pissing me off more than any of the messageboard fools when he didn’t even address any of the issues brought up, which are ultimately much more important than his own aloof standing. That shit when on for a week straight and he’s writing about fucking Ian Makaye and carefully crafting his Pitchfork best of 2006 list, like there’s nothing to say.

TWO: Rap albums released in Dec.
More Fish has a few tracks that are up with Ghostface’s best work (“Block Rock”, “Alex [Stolen Script]) but I have less interest in the Theodore Unit that I do with Jay-Z’s supposed unimpeachable status. Hip Hop is Dead is not bad at all, maybe his best since Illmatic, but there are a couple points on there that ruin it. Why the fuck is Will I am allowed anywhere near a self-respecting hip hop album. I don’t understand this. Clipse came up with the best of the bunch, for sure, and anyone who paid mind to the “hey indie rock blogsters like this, so it makes the album worse” thinking is a straight gumptruck. Pharrell redeemed himself with some of those beats, and the overall coherence that rap albums have been so allergic to of late. A truly punishing album. Not sure Pusha and Mal philosophize too much about glocks and keys, more about the cold delivery than anything, but I appreciate the balls not to have a real single or any frivolous blubber.

THREE: Kneejerk praise for TV on the Radio and The Hold Steady.
The indie rock world swallowed these two underwhelming albums whole, took their surface characteristics and convinced themselves that these equal some kind of elusive cool genius. Not so. Both of those albums are average, but the indie infrastructure, which at this point has entrenched itself beyond repair, latches on to consensus for its own good. There’s no criticism involved here.

FOUR: Slothra’s broken CD player
I had my 5 disc changer in my trunk and our twinky train, of which I was the caboose, got bogged down in some seaweed, nahmsayin. Needless to say, there was some turbulence, and by the time I got home and threw in NOW 2354 with all the Nelly Furtado songs on it, I was getting no love. The tray wouldn’t even come out. FUCK. Slothra hasn’t been able to play CDs ever since. His computer has a sound card that makes everything sound like early Guided By Voices, so he’s gotta re-up the iPod everytime he cops the latest hit LP at the local record shoppe. Since his computer is a Commodore 64, it takes a fortnight to go from unwrapping a CD to juice out the pod, so now Slothra is weeks behind all the other bloggers who get enough traffic and google ad clicks on their sites to pay for CDs made out of Golden Manatee toenails (yes we have them), if they didn’t get all that shit for free anyway. Slothra wishes his blubbery fins could hold a Phillips head so he could break his Sony open like your auntie’s dome during that scuffle in ’83.

FIVE: Blogs
Blogs don’t have editors. Slothra can refer to himself in the third person and write things that are stupid and no one tells him he has to go to grammar school. But other blogs don’t write things. They post pictures of concerts and the 23485th remix of “My Love” but not many words. Slothra doesn’t understand why anyone would bother remixing “My Love” or any such banger. Why take the bang out of a banger, and change it into a lounger. Actually “My Love” might be a Barcalounger outfitted with cartoon mallets. Slothra understands less why anyone would post mp3s of my love remixes and then many people care about this. Anyway, FMT is getting calls from Palo Alto VCs left, right, and center, so SP and I aren’t gonna hafta worry about all this pretty soon.

THE BEAUTIFUL:

R.I.P. James Brown/Happy Birthday Jesus

2006-12-25T09:58:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays to all from your favorite aquatic mammals. James Brown, one of the most influential and imitated artists of all time, passed away today. We have witnessed the passing of a true icon. Today's date is better known as the anniversary of the naissance of another man, a man whose actions shaped, in great part, the world we live in today. On future 12/25s, we should be sure to celebrate JB as we cut the turkey in memory of JC.

In these violent and strepitous times, I hope 12/25 can provide us all with a moment of clarity. The world is divided along religious lines in very real and terrifying ways, and it seems that many of us have missed the point of all the Sunday School, Hebrew School, etc. teachings that we heard when we were young. It's mercy, forgiveness, and love that are needed to guide us all to peace, not vindictiveness, paranoia, and hatred. It's much easier to resent others for the differences we see between them and ourselves than it is to promote mutual understanding, but it's hard work that's needed to set things right.

Foodmantooth ain't no religious blog, yo, (no Richard Dawkins) and this message isn't exclusively for Christians or Muslims or Jay-Z stans or whatever. SP and Furman wish you and yours all the best this season; open your minds and hearts to the people in your lives and you may be so lucky as to witness human nature at its finest.

S.P. News/No Yelling

2006-12-23T15:31:00.000-05:00

The Foodmantooth of DJ mixtape albums.

I feel like a dumbass for having neglected this site for so long: Undergroundhiphop.com (No backpack cheeseheads) is worth keeping up on, particularly for their Top 40 singles chart. Seriously good tracks on here. Search the site for all the underground joints that you used to love (remember Push Button Objects???).

The anti-Breihan backlash has taken on many forms, not least of which is the criticism of his alleged "fetishization" of the more negative aspects of hip-hop. Sordid Puppy ain't taking sides, but this movement seems to be gaining steam: Dallas Penn weighs weightily in, and the NYTimes have a story about a film on the subject. Fascinating insights on the influence of corporations (and white people in general) on this trend.

Pharrell's live show sounds excruciatingly boring.

The Juggaknots are one of my favorite hip-hop groups of all time; their 2003 Clear Blue Skies (Re:Release) counts among the best albums I've ever heard. This past October, they released Use Your Confusion, their first studio album in three years, and I stupidly failed to pay attention. Their Myspace page has a bunch of audio. You may know lead MC Breezely Brewin as the narrator of Prince Paul's 1999 A Prince Among Thieves (check for Xzibit and Sadat X in classic form at the end of the flick. not to mention everlast...jesus).

Friends, lovers -- I know you've been stressing what to get SP for Christmas. Never fear -- here's a little direction: Mini Madvillain.

New J Dilla album, March 2007. I trust Stones Throw to restrain themselves from 'Pac-like gratuitous posthumous releases. Hopefully I don't lose that trust.

Ho-ho-hoing and things of this nature: watch Adult Swim. Tonight. DVR it for Sordid Puppy.

a.k.a. Iced Out Ornithopters

2006-12-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

Sordid Puppy's late, venerable great-grand-uncle, Michael Collins.

Your favoritest pen pal Sordid Puppy will be reporting to you from Ireland for the next few weeks, my variously-legged friends. The vortex of hype surrounding Nas's Hip-Hop Is Dead and Styles P's Time Is Money dropping in the same 24-hour time frame scared me poopless, and I had to flee the country. The hive over at Nahright seem disappointed by Pinero's latest long-player (remember A Gangster and a Gentlemen?? that was no classic, but it got much play in SP's discatee), which I think tops off the most disappointing, over-hyped series of potentially knock-down-drag-out releases that I can remember.

I haven't heard much of Hip-Hop Is Dead, and I don't like the title cut, but "Hustlers" is fucking badass and I'll probably buy the album because I'm a sucker for Mr. Jones. I stumbled into a discussion of the worst Nas records ever the other day, and several of those involved agreed that Street's Disciple tops the list (or brings up the rear, or however that works (NO GAY SHEEP)), but I'm a huge fan of this song and if the album it's on is worse than HHID, then I figure HHID is worth buying. Plus that The Game verse on "Hustlers" where he raps about stealing Illmatic and The Chronic is fucking sweet. I guess this means that Nas beat everyone else, from Styles to Hov to Snoop to The Clipse to whoever, because he made a decent album and it'll probably go platinum eventually.

I hereby take a well-deserved hiatus from reporting about mainstream U.S. hip-hop. For the next three weeks, Sordid Puppy's sordid posts will consist exclusively of my thoughts on U.K. grime (talking a whole lot about a bunch of songs that are all called "Da Endz"), breakfast sausages whose composition is something other than straightforward (NO GAY GORILLAS), and of course the inimitable Irish woman. Or maybe I'll just write about how GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU. AND DELICIOUS. Slainte.

Slothra owns a crossbow

2006-12-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

Right now, I am sitting here listening to a playlist of the 29 songs that I just ganked from the Pitchfork Top 200 Songs of 2006…and polishing my compound crossbow with wigster fat and Hypnotiq. I ended up with 29 songs because I had some of the songs already and all the major labels obviously didn’t let Fork just lay their IP out on the internet meat market like that. These songs were streaming or had youtube links or whatever. For some reason internet sluts think I will stream music and be satisfied with it. They forget that I am an anarcho-syndicalist gangster who has a woman for each day of the advent calendar.

This playlist is not surprising in any way. There are a lot of remixes and techno, which is for gays being gay or Europeens (not me, I kill people with my crossbow if they look at one of my advent-calendar-women, and then I listen to NY mixtape rappers with Patrick Bateman). The thing you will notice is that these hegemonic snobbaskets do not like Nas or Jay-Z, the two people who invented music and ETHERED EACH OTHER SO HARD AND WITHOUT HOMO THAT THEY BECAME BETTER THAN EVERYTHING AND WE CAN WRITE SO MANY JOKES ABOUT HOW EITHER ONE OF THEM COULD FART AND MAKE BETTER MUSIC THAN LITTLE WAYNE. This might be because Nas’ album hasn’t come out yet, but it’s obvious that that album’s wrapping is better than any songs by that harp chick who sounds like if the Devil were a fetus doing karaoke. These people obviously don’t cop beef patties on Nostrand Ave. in BK. They get their bagels with subservient salmon cream cheese on Bergen St. in Park Slope, where they push around their babies, who are in very wigster strollers that have Clipse mixtapes playing in their BOSE systems. These babies are learning to fetishize hip hop and cocaine, rather than actually being crack babies with no spinal chords, which has a status that is VERY hood. These babies are being taught to become Weezy/Clipse stans who will later be ETHERED SO HARD NO MUMU (wordplay/joke that makes sure everyone knows I have a woman for every day of the advent calender) on their blackberrys as they try to convince everyone on the internets that Jay-Z and Nas have baby-making devices that are shorter than Tom Breihan.

Ghostface, TI, Lil Wayne, and Grizzly Bear are on that list. Ghostface is the worst rapper in the world but hipsters love him because he makes them write term papers about him. TI is obviously homo because he’s a thespian too (urbandictionary.com told me that means he’s not no Mario Cuomo [my Women conceive of various creative not-gay manners of servicing me every single day]). I S my H at the wigsters and then I shoot them 50 times with arrows as I L my A off because Sean Bell has very much to do with people in Park Slope who like the Clipse too much and don’t know what twinky trains are.

Recently my partner Sordid Puppy and I have been destroying the hip-hop blogosphere and commenting so well on other very good blogs, such as Nah Right Dot Com and Dallas Penn Dot Com. Those are two blogs that are written by people from NY who understand what classic hip-hop is and the need for many etherings of Wigsters who try to peek out from their indie-rock gayfests, where people try to recreate mafia greetings and end up kissing their fake fathers on the mouth. SP doesn’t realize like I do that NYC is the only place where people who listen to hip hop can actually read and not slurr words because their mother drank when they were buns in ovens. SP has incited the wrath of Dallas Penn himself and Eskay of Nah right, who have ethered him so resolutely on the FMT comments section, causing him to lapse into wigster catatonia, symptoms of which include trying to eat his 39 copies of Most Known Unknown and the reading of novels. I, Slothra realize that SP has forgotton that NY hip hop invented the study of Physics and gardening. He has somehow gone astray and embraced the poop humor of Little Wayne, the luridly colored hoodies of Clipse and the blogstache of El-P. Hopefully my crossbow threats and gaggle of womenfriends shall convince him that Kingdom Come makes good pancakes and that Hip Hop is Dead is better at golf than Kim Jong IL.

There is a new blog, called Idolator, which is pink and likes other blogs. Idolator has a lotta $$ from a website called Gawker, so Idolator can post all day, make hilarious jokes about other bloggers and then buy that extra end table with a fish tank inside of it. Slothra was up in their clamshell with his typing and was mistaken for one of their employees by speciesist bloggers that made a site with cool artwork called Ohword.com. This website called Slothra a porpoise, which is a fast swimming sea beast that makes Slothra envious, for he doesn’t so much swim as float with the current and wiggle his stumpy fins futilely. Although the people at ohword.com make funny comics about the Wu-Tang Clan, they obviously hate the sea, and are very bad at making blog posts, which makes Slothra hate them.

All this blogginess and strummy pitchfork songs have made me tired, and Slothra just wants to listen to Sonic Youth or Mission of Burma, who made two of the best rap albums of the year.

FMT: Grow Up Before We Blow Up

2006-12-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

FMT in Bertolucci's 1900. Furman played by De Niro, Depardieu as Sordid Puppy

Bernardo Bertolucci just dropped a couple sick throwback joints, The Conformist (Le Conformiste) and 1900 (Novecento). Eskay and his not-so-small army of drones over at Nahright.com say Jay-Z's Fade To Black is the best cinematic achievement ever, and that Hova totally ethered all the Bertolucci stans when he invented that fake champagne.

There's been a whole lot of blubber going around since Complez magazine said Lil Wayne said that he was better than Jay-Z and doesn't particularly like the Clipse and Pharrell and Tom Breihan said that he's right and Eskay said he's fucking mental, not to mention gay, and Combat Jack said who the fuck are you, Tom Breihan, to say that Pitbull is better than Nas? Dear Tom, don't even get CJ started on those fatuous claims regarding Scritti Politti. P.S., try to come to the hood and pop that Scritti Politti drivel, and WE'LL SEE what's really crackin. Love, the ghetto.

Yes, birds and bees, the man whose Status Ain't Hood just got his ghetto pass resoundingly revoked by just about everyone who sat down to a 'pooter over the past week. It sucks for the Clipse, because in the midst of all this they dropped a fucking good album and all the hardcore gangstas who spend 4 hours a day posting on Nahright, XXL, and OhWord message boards don't seem to want to talk about it so I assume they're not buying it either. Breihan wrote a bit about how it's too bad Hell Hath No Fury didn't sell more copies, but his status ain't hood totally ain't hood so what the fuck does he know. Plus he's 6'11", so he, like, looks down on everyone. Fucking asshole.

In between bouts of extreme anxiety over my fundamentally conflicted existence as a white Puppy who listens to rap who's not from NYC and who is sort of tall (FUCK!), I've been doing some thinking. It seems like the problem with Nahright -- and I'll spare him the cliche accusations of being under Def Jam's thumb - is that if it's not from New York or sounds like it's from New York, he's not interested in it, period. I see no other reason why Uncle Murder gets mentioned more often than ANY Southern or West Coast artist that's not The Game or that isn't getting made fun of -- no, better yet, "ethered" (can we put this term to rest? Please?). The same appears to be true of Combat Jack and all the other message board-ers who proffer no better retort to Weezy's claims than "That's fucking ridiculous" or "He's a fucking fag" or, more specifically, "Only pretentious rich white people believe him. People in the hood think Jay-Z is the greatest thing since sliced bread, etc., etc." What you mean to say, CJ, is that people in the hood in BROOKLYN are bigger fans of Jay than Wayne, and that said hood is more discerning or more important or whatever than any other hood in the world.

There's a whole lot of classically educated hip-hop fans, writers, critics, etc. (rappers) who are getting all defensive about the fact that Jay-Z and Nas are past their prime and NYC hip-hop in general is in a sorry state. I'm as big a D-Block fan as the next white boy who doesn't know shit about shit, and I like Cam'ron and Saigon and Wu-Tang and bunch of other cats, but none of these people put out albums with any regularity. I guess Ghostface is the most consistent act coming out of New York right now, but he never makes much of it. Ghostdini never comes up in the incessant message board discussions of who's the best out, maybe because he's from Staten Island and SI doesn't have the name recognition attached to Brooklyn, Harlem, or the Bronx. I just bought More Fish, and sure, I wish Theodore Unit wasn't all over the thing, but it's a good album and the Ghostface verses are better than anything I've heard off Kingdom Come or Hip Hop Is Dead by a long shot.

Shouldn't the discursive community be able to agree that Kingdom Come was a pretty hollow project and that for Nas to flip the same exact sample for "Hip Hop Is Dead" that he did for "Thief's Theme" is borderline insulting to the fans (no, "stans" - no, fuck you)? I'm not mad at Eskay for being NY-centric; I think he's from Younkers, and so whatever, if he thinks New York is where rap begins and ends, fair play to him. Breihan's been doing his thing for awhile now, and I don't agree with everything he says, but he definitely does a good job of tapping into regional acts and giving them some shine. As far as FMT, maybe it's cause we're young that we don't dig Jay-Z's adult contemporary (word to Furman motherfucking P.) or Nas's senility, and it's for the same reason that Weezy's brash defiance appeals to us. In any case, if you think that Papoose is what rap is all about and Lil Wayne sucks, then you and I will never agree, but then that's the beauty of the community.

Half man half -atee

2006-12-13T02:21:00.000-05:00

In tuesday's paper, the NYtimes reviewed this sweet new porn site. They usually don't review porn, but I guess this one is worthy of high brow attention. Here's one of the salacious seacows populating this great site.

yuh EE yuh EE

2006-12-11T03:42:00.000-05:00

the thing that makes rock music

1. Dinosaur Jr. at Rebel, NYC –

The cabbie on the way there was a bald guy from Yugoslavia who was coming from a band practice. Getting into the cab, I remember thinking “this guy looks like he’s in Anthrax.” Indeed, he was playing with a metal band. Guy would not stop talking. Must’ve been dissolving trucker meth in his Red Bull. One of my retarded drunk co-horts asked him if he could name seven songs by some one hit wonder hair metal band (Survivor maybe) and he was on number four or five when we had to stop him out of fright. He claimed to have about 39 guitars in the trunk, which he offered to show us, but since we were about to be eaten by the hurricane of guitar sounds known as J Mascis, we thought it was best to decline.

The actual show. One of the loudest things I’ve ever heard. I only realized how loud it was when I walked outside and my head started oscillating. J Mascis is a narcoleptic savant guitar hero of the frontest rank. Lou Barlow plays bass like a guitar. Murph plays drums like a bald sweaty man named Murph.

Lou – “Man I’m sweaty as hell.” *looks at J*
J – “…” *looks like he wants to take a nap*
Lou – “For some reason J never seems to sweat”
J – “…” *looks like he doesn’t know he’s alive*

I was drenched by the end. “Ah, swamp stomach,” pointed out one of my co-horts. Goddamn right, Okefenokee shit. Good thing it was 25 degrees outside and we had to walk around for an hour looking for some hoes who kept switching bars. Ended up at a sports bar that had “Big Buck Hunter Pro 2” and more TVs than customers.

2006-12-07T16:25:00.000-05:00

Fantasia feat Big Boi - Hood Boy

The best R&B singer/rapper collab I've heard since Yummy Bingham & Jadakiss teamed up for "Come Get It"

2006-12-05T22:24:00.002-05:00

Young Jeezy - Bury Me a G

Omar and Wee-Bey of The Wire on the same team? Inconceivable. Good song though.

S.P. News/Get Some Gear

2006-12-01T15:37:00.000-05:00

This holiday season, don't get got!!!

Check this Indo G video for a dope, albeit very late-90s-looking, Three 6 Mafia cameo. Song's not half bad, either...

The new Ghostface album that Furman and I are anticipating with guarded optimism drops next Tuesday. Check "Ghost Block Rock" off More Fish at Madlib's Myspace page. Ghost and Madlib the Bad Kid...this song fucking rules.

Another video off Chrome Children. This guy doesn't get blessed by the talented puppies over at Adult Swim, but he wins out on dancing skills alone. James Pants - Do a Couple of Things.

Celebrity blogger Eskay of Nahright.com says Weezy must be on drugs to claim superiority over Hova. Sordid Puppy strongly disagrees, though not with the assertion that Weezy may have been on drugs when he said it. A mutually respectful rivalry born?

Pretty tight new Jeezy. The Runners produced this; they're the same crew that produced "Born n Raised," the video I posted earlier this year.

R.I.P. Sean Bell, eff the swine, but will any lasting changes actually come of this fiasco? In the meantime, Papoose's "Change Gon Come (50 Shots)"

As Indo G reminds us, it's Christmas time, Chanukah time, days off from school/work time, whatever, and SP wants FMT fans to spend their (and their friends and relatives') hard-earned dough on the flyest accoutrements this year. Here are some pages from this dog's sartorial handbook for the holidays.

District Footwear, home of much nice merchandise and one of the best places to cop GrnAppleTree, designers and manufacturers of hands-down the nicest hoodies on the market.

Highsnobiety.com; it is to progressive urban fashion what Nahright.com is to hip-hop, except Highsnobiety doesn't harbor irrational resentment for the best player in the game.

Save your money, because they Sold Out already anyway.

As far as I can tell, these guys lead a fairly pleasant lifestyle: The Hundreds. Peep their shop for fresh Cali gear.

Sneakers: Creative Recreation

Finally, Banned, featuring the best selection of Nike SB for online purchase that I've come across.

Feel like giving a little something back to FMT for keeping you in-the-know year-round? Ask (for our addresses) and you shall receive (permission to buy us presents). We love you.

Weed is Vegetables

2006-12-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

No Richard Simmons

Flow touchin the pedal in that F5 yellow
Jussa movin through the city like blood in a vessel
I'm a fuckin professional, so intellectual
It's Mr. Fat Stax, my pockets got high cholesterol
I need vegetables -- is weed vegetables?
I'm past commas -- right now I'm seein decimals.

Uh...the major bison of the boulevard
The barracuda, fightin off the fishin rod
Yea! I get around like a business card
And you can see me everywhere but the prison yard
I'm on that sizzy hard, and that kush tough
Weezy stay high. Just look up.

Lil Wayne beats Ghostface, Eminem to the punch with 4th quarter '06 me-and-my-derivative-crew mixtape, Young Money Vol. 1: Lil Weezyana. It's funny that Jr.'s is free, but I would buy it, and Eminem's tape is getting the legit-album treatment (read: $14 at Best Buy, $350 at Sam Goody, Border's), but I wouldn't even bother wasting the time to download it. Weezy Baby up.

2006-12-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

Richard Simmons' Exploding Steamer

This has nothing to do with Hell Hath No Fury.

Feel like a chuck wagon cuz I'm all 12 horses

2006-11-29T12:58:00.000-05:00

William Congreve, newest member of the Re-Up Gang

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

-William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697)

No Shakespeare didn't write that shit. Yes it's misquoted, just like Bogart never said "play it again, Sam" and no one ever said anything that is actually quoted. Yes, Clipse thought the quote was "hell hath no fury like a couple of brothers from the same mother who have been slighted by music business M&A." So the scorn'd woman doesn't really make it into the album, just like the Doctor didn't make it into the album that claims to advocate him. Yes, both albums should've been called The Chocolate Starfish and The Hot Dog-Flavored Water. Yes, this album is very good, if only because there are no skits that don't involve Ghostface and a foul-mouthed rugrat...and there's a reference to "Blues Clues."

BTW, FMT is in talks with a couple of esteemed but obscured and hermetic rap scholars who have reportedly been working on a complete annotation of HHNF. Both of these cave-dwelling boom-bap thinkers have published myriad treatises in rare but much sought-after trade journals regarding Wu-Tang chess schematics, Kool Keith's displaced schizoid diatribes, and Ja Rule's retardedness. Rumors have attributed their work to JD Salinger by way of Thomas Pynchon and Fluff Guppy by way of Pharaoh Monch. Trust us, however, these two heretofore-anonymous scholars are very real; indeed, they enjoy afternoon bocci matches and weekend outings to thimble museums. FMT is in talks for publishing rights to the HHNF annotation project, and it looks good. Sordid Puppy will most likely be tapped for and introduction.

We'll keep you posted.

Happy Halloween

2006-11-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

Mr Bean was a classic TV show. Too bad the movie was crap.

Happy Thanksgiving from your homeboys at Foodmantooth. It's worth mentioning that the inspiration for the title of this humble weblog came from a fervent desire for vittles. We love sustenance, and you should too. Thanksgiving is fantastic because of its simplicity; no gifts are exchanged besides heaping bowls of mashed potatoes and stuffing, and the holiday escapes the commercializing forces that are rampant among its peers. I'm not sure if holidays can be said to be each other's peers.

Eat, drink, and eat and drink more. That's the Foodmantooth way.

I Can't Feel Your Fist

2006-11-21T16:56:00.000-05:00

El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead...March 20 2007

Thunderball is my favorite Bond flick ever. Connery plays the role he was born for better than ever, and there's a dope underwater harpoon battle at the end. SP just saw Casino Royale the other day after reading Manohla's open groupie application to underwhelming narcissistic douchebag David Craig (and his bitch-ass crew, who if you want to be down with...). It's bad, really bad, worse than any of the Pierce Brosnan tripe and almost as bad as Yo Momma!. CR opens with an awkwardly overdone chase scene, featuring acrobatics worthy of Hot Flying Sheninjas, but I kept an open mind thereafter because I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE this flick. There's a couple of hot chicks in the movie, and several bitchin cars, but everyone knows that these shows are meant to be a showcase for Bond and his tantalizing slimy carry-on. David Craig is about as slick as my epidermis in the dead of nuclear winter and he carries his one-liners off about as well as Dimmer's cohorts ("I didn't know they made leprechauns in black"...nice) do theirs. Craven Dead better go the way of George Lazenby, or the world is going to be submitted to more of this homoeroticism (no Dancehall Reggae...but oiled up naked man has no place in a Bond movie, and you know this). They need to hire someone else -- Furman P, perhaps -- before this franchise is permanently discredited.

The Game's new album came out last week, and the NYTimes, who seem eager to establish themselves as the newest humpers of mainstream hip-hop, drooled. I couldn't be bothered, because I downloaded the "One Blood" remix and it's 27 hours long so I feel like the album's not worth my money. Jay-Z's Kingdom Come dropped today, a fact I was reminded of early this morning when I roused myself and caught Oliver Wang ethering him and his on NPR in eloquent fashion. Looks like I will not be contributing to Memphis Bleek's do-rag fund this time around. A week from today, Hell Hath No Fury, the Clipse's new album, which I won't describe as "long-awaited" or "eagerly anticipated," because that would be trite, will hit shelves. I don't mean to be the one to cleave the rainclouds, but "Mama I'm Sorry," which made its way onto this mixtape, isn't stimulating any glands (For what it's worth, the D-Block tracks on the same tape show real promise for that crew's upcoming releases (not that this wasn't enough)). I'm not making any rash projections here, for fear that Furman might launch me into the next dimension, but if Hell is anything less than stellar we're going to have a problem.

Next Tuesday, a young canine's devotion to an art form is tested for what may be the last time. Don't forget to tune in.

"Across the herbaceous nap below..."

2006-11-16T21:10:00.000-05:00

Reportedly, this is the cover of Hell Hath No Fury

Hey! Everyone cares about this.

Through routes and thoroughfares unbeknownst to yours truly, a copy of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day, landed in my unreadied mitts today. It's due to drop out of the heavens next Tues, but, if like me, you maintain in your ward a posse comitatus of ninja/pirate mule operatives, you can probably procure the 9 years-coming beast (1085 pages, 3 lbs 6 oz) now with relative felicitousness. Funny, my specially-bred retinue of warrior-pariahs didn't even tell me they were gonna hook me up. Anyway, if you don't roll deep with shadowy underlings who can tap the most down-lowest subterranean black markets with with the casual flick of a shuriken or point of a scimitar, you gon hafta wait til tuesday. Oh yeah I heard it's soon gonna be illegal not to read this book, so getcha paper up. This bastard goes for 35 ramshackles.

I've read about 20 pages. It opens with a boisterous quintet of aeronauts, called the "Chums of Chance" aboard the flying-ship Inconvenience. Here are their names:

Randolph St. Cosmos
Darby Suckling
Lindsay Noseworth
Miles Blundell
Chick Counterfly
...and their Henry James-reading dog, Pugnax

Choice quotes:

"...moreover, the complexities that would attend rigging Blundell in the necessary paraphernalia would tax the topological genius of Herr Riemann himself."

"Across the herbaceous nap below, in the declining light, among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast-bags, running heedless, as across some earthly firmament, sped a stout gentleman in a Norfolk jacket and plus-fours..."

I feel like I just got Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2, 3, and 4 all on the same day. You really gotta get yourself some ninja/pirates.

Luca Brazzi...

2006-11-16T03:58:00.000-05:00

Ghost - Mr. esteemed largemouth bass, you look like you need to eat some fake drugs.
Bass - No, what I need is to suppress my incredulity with regards to this album actually coming out.

Ghost - Yo, someone in there who ain't gonna cold dog this fade?

2006-11-09T15:51:00.000-05:00

Cali Agents - The Good Life

It's like 73 degrees out. I feel like I live in CA. That's why I'm going to listen to this classic record all day long.

Fuck an elephant

2006-11-08T15:12:00.000-05:00

Vote or Suck

2006-11-07T15:04:00.000-05:00

If you vote, she'll like you. I swear. Go vote.

*Disclaimer: Foodmantooth still ain't no political blog, yo, but this needs saying. These statements are Sordid Puppy's, not Furman's.

At times, it sort of sucks being part of America's youth. Don't take that statement as an appeal to the sort of whiny, "emo" (already regretting having used that term) sensibilities that bemoan the very opportunities and luxuries afforded us, those we enjoy just for living (as citizens) in the U.S.A. In many ways, young Americans have it better than anyone on the planet: economic and social disadvantages aside, educational opportunity abounds. We have, historically, a relatively open class system, one that avails most of us of a fighting chance to move up in society. We are, on average, wealthier than our peers on other parts of the globe; we own (or are give access to) cars by the time we're twenty and live in apartments with our friends when we go off to college. Jobs, dead-end and otherwise, are plentiful and help us fill our pockets so that we can empty them at the bar, the mall, or the bank. Yeah, it's pretty great being young in America -- things are made gloriously easy for us.

I suppose, then, that I should rephrase: America's youth sucks. For those of you living in a textbook or on a barstool or on top of your significant other, today is November 7th, 2006, and it's Election Day. Across the country today, grown ups add another chore to their daily routines: they vote. By grown ups, I am referring to anyone with the intellectual and moral maturity to recognize that our Escalades on spinners drive around cities, towns, and fields that are part of states that are part of a country called the United States, and that said country is a Democratic society with a representative government. Armed with this awareness, grown ups choose to take an active part in the decisions of said government and the selection of the people that will represent them in government.

In 2004, Snuff Pity launched the "Vote or Die" campaign (or whatever), whose aim, I think, was to get young people to vote. If it was, this wasn't really made clear by anything but the inane slogan itself, and the aberration that was "Vote or Die" makes crystal our problem. "Vote or Die" was far less a declaration of political determination than a fashion statement. It was a passing fad, a way for Diddy to self-promote and make a few dollars off t-shirts. Those same t-shirts, emblazoned with the "movement's" disingenuous motto, ended up in the bargain bin at my local Against All Odds just days after the election. As I recall, they shared shelf space with the stupid, stupid "Why?" tees modeled off the one Jada wore in his ineffectual "conscious" video of the same name (on a side note, it's funny that Kiss now refers to himself as "Al-Qaeda Jada," considering his previously asserted distress over 911). All the while, the geezers, whose comfort was (and still is) ensured by youthful apathy, pointed and laughed at the pathetic appeals for change.

Sordid Puppy wants to let his inner dog out on Diddy, Jada, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and every other person of influence who claim to have a vested interest in seeing young Americans stand up for themselves but fail to follow through and see that it happens. SP also calls out every news network that has a bias, one way or another, that does not exercise the responsibility it has to clearly articulate its (hopefully) informed opinion. Fox News is a behemoth in America's cultural battlefield because it leaves absolutely no question as to the agenda that it pushes, and that is why it is effective. CNN is an absolute sham because it dances around opinion pieces and balks at sounding partisan. I'm not really sure what MSNBC's story is, but I know that this man is the best out on cable news.

Sordid Puppy, speaking of his own mind, and not wishing to misrepresent the illustrious Furman, is kicking off a campaign of his own, whose slogan is not too many letters away from Diddy's but whose effect, in contrast, is real. "Vote or Suck" is the mantra. If you wake up today and do not vote, then you probably don't give a shit. However, if you wake up today and get your daily Foodmantooth fix, hear about "Vote or Suck," and STILL don't vote, then your failure to participate will result in the nagging, unremitting awareness that you are a douchebag. This is not my intention -- it is, rather, that this knowledge spurs you to exercise your rights.

Choose voting, not sucking. I love you.

2006-11-06T10:55:00.000-05:00

Project Pat - Raised In The Projects

Xgau disses Greil Marcus with 128 bars

2006-11-04T17:27:00.000-05:00

Are they drinking pounders?

Just when you thought a band couldn’t possible eclipse the royal ball-washing that was the critical reception to TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain, there came a bunch of dudes from Minneapolis who like beer, AC/DC, and apparently make music as good as Bob Dylan. Yes, folks, The Hold Steady, already big with critics [1] because their music seems to be about words and America rather than notes and outerspace, recently dropped their third album, Boys and Girls in America, and as a result, the Times gave them a exciting interactive feature: a map of the US, dotted with free (!) snippets (better than nothing) of Hold Steady songs about the corresponding place on the map. The profile that spawned said cool interactive feature was written by inveterate anti-rockist Kelefa Sanneh and was considered to be so good that it costs $4.95 to read online (on TimesSelect, which has a orange icon that tells you it’s special).

Luckily, I know people who know people who hacked into LexisNexis, so I got that shit sans ads about “Classic Paul Krugman” columns (that guy does have a solid mustache, though). Anyway, Sanneh loves The Hold Steady, probably because they aren’t from New York (even though they live in Brooklyn now), really skinny, in their mid-twenties, clad in patent-leather white belts, recycling angular post-punk chugging art rock, and featuring gypsy instrumentation, nautical narratives or singers who sound constipated and really sad. This is true for other critics too. The Hold Steady are a refreshing respite from bands whose music and lyrics are just trying so hard either to be important art like Sonic Youth, or to seem like they really aren’t trying, like Pavement.

The Hold Steady are “compiling a guide to the country's wasted wayward youth” Sanneh writes. So in turn, Sanneh compiled a guide to the Hold Steady’s “states of America,” which runs though all the places Finn writes about, such as Minneaolis, MN, Modesto, CA, and Hostile, MA, which doesn’t exist. I suppose the way Finn writes specifically, rather than metaphorically or allegorically, about all the places where kids get drunk, listen to punk rock and kiss each other, is grounding and unpretentious; instead of telling us, for instance, that he’s an “American aquarium drinker” (come on, that would be gross). Sanneh’s article is a bit bizarre, as he doesn’t explicitly evaluate the Hold Steady’s music, let alone call them the best band in the world; although he is basically implying as much by writing a 2000-word profile about them in the Times. I mean, Frank Rich only gets like 1000, and he writes about how art can change the world, or something.

The internet loves the Hold Steady too. Pitchforkmedia.com, the taste-making website that has convinced all the aspiring hipsters in the world that indie rock and coke rap are the only really cool musics, gave it up to Finn and his merry men by slapping a 9.4 on Boys and Girls in America. Like a rogue gymnastics judge, ‘Fork may have irresponsibly commended a stunted, prepubescent Chinese girl. Or sold a shitload of Hold Steady albums to kids wearing Chuck Taylors that were made 39 years after the great salesman/basketball player died [2]. Pitchfork is a site that made its name with overblown, name-dropping, pedantic 1000 word reviews that come conveniently labeled with visible ratings. So if a band gets a 9.3, that means that 93% of their album is NOT derived from Pere Ubu or 93% or their choruses will make semi-attractive girls take off their clothes. More than anything, though, Pitchfork is a buyers guide, or downloaders guide, or shoplifters guide [3] for indie kids. As much as mp3 blogs generate conspiratorial instahype, it takes a good rating from Pitchfork to get your indie album cyberjumpin off the cybershelves of iTunes. In the case of the Hold Steady, the indie kids coppin Boys and Girls aren’t gonna find ominous melodies that sound like they were recorded in caves, or accordions, or “literate lyrics”—the stuff they have been taught is music that will make the girl with bangs like you. They’re gonna find Thin Lizzy and a guy mumbling about something.

So enter Chris Ott, former Pitchfork writer, to diagnose the critical success of The Hold Steady in one installment in a series for the Village Voice called “Blogwash: Deciphering Internet Praise” [4] Ott is positioning himself as a Dale Peck of music criticism, pulling hatchet jobs on heavily lauded bands of late: “the death-dirge apocalypso fusion of Bowie/Byrne protégés TV on the Radio and the Arcade Fire, and the ill- defined nihilism of Deerhoof.” [5]. Or more precisely, it is the critical hordes responsible for the consensus that deserve the blade. For Ott, recent pop music criticism is an “anxious universe of early adoption” which has “celebrated the dourest, most difficult or deranged music [it] can find.” Calling TVOTR and The Arcade Fire the most difficult and deranged music around is certainly a strange position. Both bands write structured songs, use simple rock progressions, sing in a language that is not made up, don’t wear assless pants, etc. I would agree that the dressing is conceptual and pretentious, and in both cases impedes what is basically some kind of relatively exciting rock music. But difficult and deranged these two bands aren’t. Deerhoof is the farthest of the Ott’s triumvirate away from typical rock song structures, and their singer is a little Japanese woman, but its not like they’re playing Ascension-era Coltrane or writing rap songs about Centaurs. Ott makes another inexplicable claim when he writes that all three of said bands “descended” from Pere Ubu (who I’ve already referenced here once so Ott knows I’m down). It would be one thing to say that all three bands were influenced by Pere Ubu, or that Pere Ubu was such a revolutionary post-punk band that almost all of the bands still playing off-kilter smart punk rock are cribbing them, or at least paying homage (although you could site another more successful post-punk band from Ohio as having the same influence). It’s another thing to say that Pere Ubu is the one and only father of all three bands. Ott puts a quarter in his ass with that one.

In the Hold Steady piece, Ott hangs out with the band and shows them the Pitchfork review, which they laugh at. The review compares the band to Pulp, which Ott says is ridiculous because Jarvis Cocker is skinny and does a lot of coke, whereas Finn is fat and drinks beer. Ott also talks to the band about critics’ insistence on comparing Boys and Girls to Springsteen. “Because there’s piano?” the guitarist asks before he says that he’s more likely pay royalties to Jimmy Page. Personally I think he should pay the guy who invented music. Naturally, though, Finn is most indebted to Paul Westerberg. Hailing from the same Midwestern coldplace as the Replacements, The Hold Steady aspire to play the kind of everypunk beer music Westerberg and co. did so thrillingly.

The problem with this comparison though, is that Westerberg was a great songwriter, and one of the best rock singers of all time. Finn on the other hand, is not a singer at all. It’s not that he “has a bad voice,” like Dylan or “has no range” like Strummer or that “he doesn’t bother to sing in tune” like Malkmus. All three of those guys are tremendous singers because they end up conquering and using to their advantage what at first seems to be limitation. As Dave Berman, a great singer who can’t sing, says, “all my favorite singers couldn’t sing;” indeed, besides Paul McCartney, who is probably Kaiser Soze, and Jeff Buckley, who should’ve taken drunken swimming lessens, the history of rock is all frontmen who can’t really sing. The best of them find such a commanding way to try that they fool us into thinking they’re actually musically accomplished in a technical way.

Finn is more aptly compared the incorrigible post-punk bleaters Mark E. Smith and John Lydon (formerly Rotton), both of whom have little interest in or capacity for making sounds with their voices that have much to do with what the people playing instruments behind them are doing. For the fan-critics, Finn’s mumbling is a virtue, because it puts his lyrics upfront, even if they’re unintelligible. His nuanced yet commonplace tales of kids getting messed up are supposed to tell us something “specifically universal” or “universally specific” about America. Or something like that. But, come on, its not like he’s Ice Cube! Some of his lines would have even Papoose on his heals, and some of the stories are worthy of Kerouac’s methed-up, pit-stained beat scroll [6]—all are very difficult to hear.

I should say that Finn does try to sing more on Boys and Girls, and when he parleys with the guitars, the songs take off: “Chips Ahoy!” and “Massive Nights”. The melodies come out and bring the lyrics with them, not vice versa. I never heard the words on the first two Hold Steady albums, because, save the “Hoodrat Friend” song, Finn and the guitars were in different places entirely. They couldv’t slapped some Tupac verse on there and the effect wouldn’t have been much different. The pianos and keyboards, played by a guy named Franz Nicolay who has a Poirot mustache, help reconcile Finn and the power chords/four on the floor AC/DC rock. About half the record is very good in this way. As far as the other half goes, the songs don’t make you want to bust out 140 pound dumbbell sets with each arm, so you don’t end up caring about what Finn is blathering about.

Ott seems to like the album more than me, but this might be because he got to hang out with the band. He’s more concerned with the blogwash, though, which he thinks might be “more damaging than any dances or dates Finn was coldly ejected from.” According to Ott, “boundless praise” has dug a “dank hole” [7] for the Hold Steady to climb out of. I’m not sure what he means by this. Is this metaphorical moist cavern making Finn sad because he won’t have the thrill of eating mustard for lunch, or is it that critics, even though they like him and his band, don’t really understand them.

Call me crazy, but if you’re in a band, and some modicum of people buy your records, rather than say, throw a handful of thimbles at you when you play, aren’t you one of the luckiest people above the poverty line? Aren’t you supposed to be happy people are letting you play guitars and yell into microphones for a living? I hope Finn and co. aren’t in the frame of mind Ott implies, because that would make them raging fuckbaskets. Bands have only one responsibility, and that’s to be a band and make records. Any band that lets themselves be killed by critics is not worthy of their own hair.

More likely, what’s going on here is that Ott wants to play a game of critical one-upsmanship, which has nothing to do with music, or anything besides criticism. He implies that the Hold Steady are in on his game, but I have a feeling they’re not looking checking the equine orthodontia like he implies. Ott drinks beers with the Hold Steady and they totally know what he means and they laughed with him about the Pitchfork guy, so they’re bros. But The Hold Steady do stuff that people can get drunk to. Ott writes words.

Ultimately, all this hubbub about the Hold Steady is about delivering indie-rock from its own annoying rubric. It still loves itself and insists that indie-rock isn’t really a genre, thus unwittingly perpetuating itself. But for writers, indie-rock has been decidedly uncool for about 10 years, when Pavement broke up and Sonic Youth bought a minivan. Yet since the post-2000 renaissance of cool indie-rock brought about by well dressed New York bands who knew exactly who to bite and how, indie-rock became an annoying pop-cultural [8] infrastructure. And the critical opinion about faux-critics, which moves infinitely faster than the culture which aligns the faux-critics, is instantly allergic to consensuses that come about when an cultural infrastructure like indie-rock’s solidifies. So critics like Ott and Sanneh, who position themselves outside of the indie consensus, have been floundering to find an antidote to the problem. They’ve been grasping all over the extrarock horizon, from MIA to the Clipse to Tom Ze and fucking Cam’ron of all people, to gain respite from Conor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens, and other little indie guys who are very annoying. But the problem is that most pop music critics are rock fans who want a fucking rock band to rock out to that also unwittingly making the greatest art ever. (Basically, this non-existant band is Radiohead if they were an unassuming American band that didn’t have anxieties about technological progress.) They are dying for a rock band to somehow reinvent a genre that’s been unreinventable since 1978. Not just a reason to throw modestly priced beer at people, but a reason to throw expensive beer at people and then send a time-capsule into outer space because aliens need to feel this science.

Notes:

[1] Which every critic makes sure he or she mentions, to make sure that he or she is not coming across like “hey I’ve got the scoop on this band”; rather, he or she is letting the reader know that he or she is outside any buzz machine and even though he or she is writing a “review” or a “profile,” he or she wants to comment on the perceived critical acclaim as much as the band or record in question. This way, he or she is above the pedestrian “review” or “profile” form, and on his or her way to becoming the next Hunter S. Thompson. What if the grammatical construction “he or she” was changed to “pat”? Would anyone be opposed to that?

[2] Chuck Taylor died in 1969 of a heart attack, but, according to Wikipedia, not before he making excellent use of the Converse Corporation’s expense account while on the road hocking shoes. I can’t tell you how glad that some Wikipedia scholar made sure to research Chuck Taylor’s spending habits. I mean, I’m about to eat a sandwich.

[3] “Yo, I totally just jacked Destroyer’s Rubies.” “Why?...Because I only have enough bones for Hell Hath No Fury and I wanna make sure the counter girl knows I’m hard and I like wordplay.” “It got pushed back again? Well fuck, Pitchfork reviewed it, I read the review this morning, they said there was a lot of wordplay!” “Pitchfork only reviewed it because a guerrilla/pirate label released it in Djbouti? Oh well shit can I mail order the import?” “What?...There are no planes in Djbouti? Well how’d ‘fork get it?” “It was smuggled in by the guy in the Decemberists who stowed away on a Morrocan merchant clipper?” “Fuck maybe I’ll just pay for this then.” “Wait what did the Decemberists get…an 8.4?” “Nah its gotta be above 9.0 for me to utilize my bones and cop it when it drops.” “Fuck it, I’m buyin Futurefuck/Assclown, girls love that guy and when I buy it, the counter girl, I think her name’s “Summer” or “Autumn,” mos def one of the seasons, I forget which one—anyway, she’s gonna respect me so much for admitting I like JT that she’s gonna ask me if I wanna share a California roll later!”

[4] “Blogwash” is a good blog pun, although “blogorhea” is still my favorite. But man, besides puns, there is so much blogslang (not in the lexical archives of urbandicionary.com) its all so hard to keep track of. Even “blog” is slang for “weblog” which is short for “world wide web log.” I love the luddites who use the term “weblog,” but not as much as I love people who say “the web” instead of “the internet.” Anyway, here’s an entry at urbandicitonary that is by far the best thing I’ve seen on that site. I mean, this was clearly written by a genius:

blogosphereatronisaurausrex

a blogosphereatronisaurausr ex is the latest hot shit, its whats so much cooler then top 8 on myspace. its when you paste a picture of aunt jemima maple syrup on your page, with a picture of your number one friend on the bottle instead of aunt jemima. yeah its pretty awesome

insert picture of a bottle of syrup with your best friends picture on it, and not aunt jemimas, unless aunt jemimas your best friend in which case i love you.
" my friend lil suzy took me off her top 8 an replaced me with some girl named muffinhips, but its ok, cause iam on here blogosphereatronisaurausr ex so i knw iam still her #1 boo. "

tags: batcave blog pogs ice skateing latin porn
by Jeph` roseville Aug 29, 2006

I like that whoever wrote it (not me by the way) made sure to put the appropriate tags on there.

[5] Now even though I’m not as up on my death-dirge apocalypso as I used to be, I would agree that critics [insert fellatio reference] TVOTR and the Arcade Fire like their [insert male genitalia (plural) reference] are made of [insert something that is sweet yet savory, like grilled shrimp]. TVOTR’s latest, mentioned at the head (NPI), is the most egregious example of plainly inaccurate critical consensus since Late Registration, which is for everyone to poop on all the time (besides "Diamonds are Forever"). The Arcade Fire played one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, so I have more love for them, even if everyone does too and their record has the old “doesn’t capture the live show” thing going on. Ott is way off the mark with Deerhoof, however. Not only is the ‘Hoof the unimpeachable kind of shit, they’re too off-kilter and they have a singer who sounds too much like a Pokemon to get the same kind of mainstream critical attention as TVOTR and the Arcade Fire.

[6] Another thing reviewers of Boys and Girls in America make sure you know is that the title is from On the Road, which Finn invokes in the first lyric: “there are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right. / Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.” If I interviewed Finn, I would ask him if his wife engineered a clothesline rotisserie of T-shirts like ‘Ouac’s did as he hammered furiously at the scroll that would make him the voice of people who hated culture and were mad, mad, and delirious to write parodies of him as soon as his style became stale.

[7] Why is this metaphorical hole “dank”? Music critics should not be allowed to use adjectives anymore.

[8] The Indie-rock/hipster culture must be thought of as a decidedly Pop-cultural phenomenon. Whereas OG, actual independent rock (ie The Minutemen, Pavement, SY, Mission of Burma) actually stood against pop culture, the new alliance of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the internet (Pitchfork and the blogosphere) with artistically ambitious rock music has created a startlingly homogenous culture that anyone in the world can not only instantly access but also opt into wholehog without any connection to a social or musical movement against some conception of the mainstream or pop sensibility. So although indie-rock is identified with literature, critics, and art, it is in effect no different from any other permutation of pop cultural music, such as hip-hop, emo or TRL pop.

2006-11-02T19:29:00.000-05:00

Zion I & The Grouch - Hit 'Em ft. Mistah FAB

Merry Christmas

2006-10-31T15:58:00.000-05:00

Featuring "The Most Dangerous Man In the World," Ken Shamrock

Time for FoodManTooth's first annual Halloween feast:

B-Real & Dr. Dre - Puppet Master, originally released on DJ Muggs's Soul Assassins Volume 1. Peep B-Real of Cypress Hill done up all Goldfinger-like (no Anderson Cooper).

In the "Stay Fly" video, Juicy J pioneered a new trend, bitten first by Sordid Puppy and then by everyone else in the universe. This will remain one of my favorite songs ever.

It's too bad Rap is only interested in embracing regional genres like hyphy and crunk and whatever else. Horrorcore has yielded more quality tunes over the years than all of those put together. "Tell me your deepest fear. TELL ME YOUR DEEPEST FEAR!"

Don't get Horrorcore confused with this tripe. This shit is really popular where I grew up, which I'm fairly certain is not a good thing.

This might scare you, if you're afeared of Dipset or the idea of covering a song from Reasonable Doubt and then groping for publicity by dissing Jay-Z makes you queasy. "Imitate Jim Jones/End up like Cory Lidle" - Joe Budden

When I was in, say, 7th grade, I saw this video and thought it the best thing I'd ever seen. It's still a good song. This is the first and last time I post about Tool.

Gravediggaz. I guess this video's a little heavier with the imagery, but "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" is an absolute classic.

This is just terrifying.

Più Pesce

2006-10-28T21:00:00.000-04:00

This album wipes its ass with Paul McCartney

So, if we believe the Wu-Tang website, and some excerpted interview with Jay-Z on the XXL website, which FMT obviously found out about from Nahright, Ghostface has an another album coming out right after Xmas, called More Fish. Since releasing rap albums is, like naming your kid Adolf, somthing you just don't do these days, I'm thinkin' about this like I do about owning an elephant that I can ride around town on. But since Pretty Ton' is basically the only living person as smart as Shakespeare and Einstein COMBINED, I'm excited anyway.

Ghost's been on the scene these days:

Ghost - Yo boom God, Jigga, I got More Fish at the stash house in Hackensack, shizzam bangles, powder blue wallies is wicked.
Jay - ...uh...
Ghost - yo you know I hit mics like Ted Koppel, rifle expert. Yo we gotta go at this one harder than Fishscale, ninja street teams, hoodied up, blood in in their eyes, you know. Instead of Ne-Yo, maybe get Luther Vandross. You know his people?
Jay - He's dead.
Ghost - Yo, aight, Weekend at Bernie's whatever, we gotta get Luther.
Jay - Who are you again?

And then at some the mtvU Woodie Awards (yeah I don't know what that is either) with Lady Sovereign.

Ghost - Yo boom God, they got wallies in size 3 too.
Sov - Geezers need excitement.
Ghost - Queen Elizabeth rub on my leg, had ketchup on her dress from a whopper. Fuckin with Diana. Two rows across, Dirty giving hickeys to Vanna White, fingering Pamela Lee
Sov - Where's Hova, Jim Jones just told me Def Jam's gettin sued by Rick Rubin's beard.
Ghost - Capo? Starks and Cappadon' used a throw skelly wit Jimmy.
Sov - I don't know what that means.

Jim Jones - BALLIN!!....yo Ghost where's Cappadonna, I owe him a tip for the cab ride.

Twist Starts from the Heart

2006-10-24T16:59:00.000-04:00

So both of them are gay?

Top Ten Things I, Slothra Could Post About Right Now (not including top ten lists--fuck a charlie kaufman)

10. My recent discovery of Everything Bagels. I once feared the populist cacophony of bits stuck to the holy staple. Now I welcome it. The onion plays well off cream cheese, yet is tempered by the sesame and poppy seeds. There is a metaphor in here about the 80s celtics.

9. Dane Cook. Not about how he's not funny or that lame people like him (i think lame people hate him now too) but about how people, such as Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone have an insatiable need to tell everyone that he sucks. Ok, he sucks, stand-up sucks in general, yadda yadda yadda. The guy is just a business machine. Is there a need to announce every once and awhile that Piff Duddy can't rap? No, that would be like me announcing to people I pass that my appendix is not the most ambitious organ in my body. Who cares, move on.

8. Beach House. A dude and a chick from Baltimore, the city that must end up in every other FMT post. New band, blog hype, but a good band just the same, listen when there are amateur fireworks around.

7. The Knife. Puppy downloaded some shit a while ago, and I didn't really pay enough attention to it to tell that they're the fucking shit. Swedish siblings, synths, lyrics about how "you make me like charity." This is music to listen to with 6 foot tall models wearing patent leather body suits while eating 151 soaked maraschino cherries.

6. Scorcese. Saw The Departed twice. Upset "Theif's Theme" didn't make it on to the soundtrack, even though it's in the movie for seven seconds, when Leo and the greasy cousin are talking about selling drugs near Worchester. Don't know why I care what's on the soundtrack since there's no way I buy that shit.

5. Galoshes. Chicks love these shits these days.
- "Is it raining?"
- "No, sprinkling a little maybe....uh....you put on your galoshes before I said maybe"
- "What are galoshes?"
- "those rubber lime green shits on your feet"
- "oh I just call em boots or rubber boots"
- "either way, it's not raining"
- "it's spitting, I need my boots"
- "..."

4. Kenny Rodgers Dirtgate. Love when people add -gate to shit. Esp. when it's inappropriate.
- "you wanna go get lunchgate"
- "excuse me?"
- "lunchgate!"
- "take your hand off my face please."

3. Robert Chirstgau writing for RS. Like John Coltrane's cadaver joining a Linkin Park cover band cover band.

2. My desire for the FMT logo to be in old english font against a raised background of a manatee picture; and my inability to make this happen. Puppy?

1. The 3000 words posts that I write for no reason and then don't post because it takes too long to proofread them.

S.P. News

2006-10-23T16:10:00.000-04:00

Get your kicks pimped by Johnny Jaywalker

Nahright's got a great new mixtape from the other S.P. Cop it here (download WinRAR to decompress).

I'm really feeling the few tracks I've heard from Philly native Oddisee, particularly "Once Again" featuring Freddie Foxxx.

Okayplayer's got an artist spotlight for Nicolay, as well; he deserved at least half the credit for one of my favorite albums of 2004, and "I Am the Man," which you can download here, satisfies.

Juicy J and DJ Paul lend Juicy's older brother Project Pat some phlogiston for his new single.

Salad Fingers, Burnt Face Man, etc.

Quite possibly the illest tee I've ever laid eyes upon.

2006-10-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

Rich Boy feat Polow - Throw Some D's

You're a Neat Girl

2006-10-16T18:06:00.000-04:00

"Heineken?!?! Fuck that shit!! Pabst Blue Ribbon!!!"

Here's the link for the second video off Chrome Children.

Jay-Z's video for "Show Me What You Got" debuted today. If you don't feel like watching it on YouTube, just turn on your telly and tune into BET at any time; I think they're playing it continuously all day. The track itself leaked a week or two ago, and it's a good song, but it functions best as the theme music to Danica Patrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving Ferraris around Monaco. F. Gary Gray directed this, Jay's most decadent video to date, and it's fun to watch and everything, particularly because of the, um, cars and boats and girls and stuff. Danica Patrick is hot? Jay-Z disses Cristal and suavely presents some scorcher with a briefcase containing a bottle of champagne (Veuve Clicquot? Who cares?). Now THERE is an important statement made.

There's a few really nice Hi-Tek tracks on this Big Mike mixtape: "Music Is Life," "Go Back," and "Josephine." Apparently, these joints and others (including "Where It Started At") are making it onto Hi-Teknology 2: The Chip, which is dropping...drum roll, please...tomorrow. Wait -- an album gets great publicity off a mixtape and a video and then actually comes out on time, so as to capitalize on the exposure? This can't be happening. Babygrande will pull it -- oh wait, shit, Babygrande?!?!?!?! The independent label that houses (and consistently puts out albums from) artists from the Gza to Immortal Technique to Purple City? No WONDER Hi-Tek had a chance, unlike some of his less fortunate peers.

It seems like huge labels are about the worst places to be right now if you're ever interested in putting material out in a timely fashion (or, in some cases, at all). IF your album IS released, don't expect to get a video or any other kind of promotion that you don't do on your own. Def Jam handed The Roots and Method Man a couple of poop sandwiches and told them to eat. The Clipse seem doomed to catch cases instead of the platinum plaques that they unquestionably deserve. Hell Hath No Fury has a November 28th release date; if it never drops, it's us, the public, that should go all Frank Booth on Jive. Something's gotta give.

My Heritage

2006-10-12T14:14:00.001-04:00

Looks 55% percent like Sordid Puppy; narrowly beat out by Claudia Schiffer

The gentleman pictured above is Aswami bin Ani, known to his countless adoring fans as Mawi. He's the premier male singer of the moment in Malaysia, and he's the former champion of Akademi Fantasia 3, which I think is like Malaysian Idol or something. Described by wikipedia as a "raw talent," an "ambassador of seven commercial products," and likened to "famous Malaysian singer and icon, Siti Nurhaliza," I'm not unhappy to declare that Mawi is the celebrity that looks 5th most like your boy SP, according to http://www.myheritage.com.

Who, you ask, beats out the above international superstar for the coveted positions of fourth, third, second, and first most similar in appearance to your favorite hound? The numbers are in, and TIED for third and fourth place, with a 57% Sordid Puppy similarity rating, are none other than Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzigova. Apt comparisons, to be sure.

Schiffer and Herzigaga weep, for not even their near-immaculate beauty quite matches that of Eliza Dushku, who pulls in a staggering 60% on the SP likeness meter. However, in staggering departure from this enviable lineup, this geezer scores a 66% and takes home first prize. I'm left wondering why I shouldn't have his fortune with the fairer sex.

S.P. News

2006-10-11T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm looking forward to Blue Carpet Treatment

New Lids Fresh Goods Fridays October release...I'm pretty sure this is the cap Cameron sports in the One Eyed Willy video...BALLLIN!!!

VH1 Hip-Hop Honors airs next Tuesday at 9 PM; New York heads rejoice.

This is fucking atrocious.

Rap City continues to be the biggest piece of shit on earth. Last week, when it came on after "The Center," (yes, I flip through "The Center," and you know goddamn well why), I thought maybe it was going back to its two-hour playlength. I was wrong. It got downgraded to the slot BEFORE reruns of "The Wayans Bros." It's now back to the hour before 106 & Park, but it's still AWFUL. J-Nicks, Mad Linx, Q45 and whatever other STUPID NAMED idiot personality that is NOT Big Tigger should get dummysmacked for the rest of his pathetic life. The studio looks like it was designed by Queer Eye, half the time the guests don't spit, and when they do, the hosts LOOK LIKE IDIOTS BECAUSE THEY DON'T FREESTYLE. This is a travesty. Tigger should be knocking people out. Rap City is obviously not a priority for BET anymore, and that sucks. Now I have to watch "Direct Effect" and "Sucker Free", neither of which are cool, and I'm pissed.

Hey Fuckface, This Is My Nude Beach, at London's Frieze Art Fair.

A cool label, still going strong. Can't wait to pick up Kid Koala's novel about a clarinet-playing mosquito.

2006-10-09T18:13:00.000-04:00

Common feat Sadat X - 1999

Hi-Tek's got a new album coming out soon. His debut, "Hi-Teknology" was weak. This is from "Soundbombing II", back in the day (remember Rawkus Records??).

Music for Likkle Tykes

2006-10-09T12:36:00.000-04:00

He's the Juggernaut, bitch!

First off, Raffi, last name Cavoukian, really is the juggernaut, bitch. That gangster of children's entertainment got more spins (does a cassette tape spin? I guess the little wheely things do) in my youth than Planxty, "Illy-itch", and Peedi Peedi put together. "Everything Grows" was an absolute MONSTER and "Baby Beluga" was one of the flyest subliminal dis tracks ever.

Sordid Puppy grows and grows, and so does his appetite for wax-dispatching titans of Raffi's ilk. You, discerning reader, check Foodmantooth because you respect our steez -- we got taste for days, we blaze and amaze, we eat leek soup, et cetera, et cetera.

Lupe got a B from Slothra. Several posts ago, I was clintin' about how Food & Liquor had become this hyped-up enormity that could never live up to the press it was getting. After copping F & L the day it dropped, I was disappointed to find my fears realized. It's a good album, certainly, but it's not the classic that I had hoped it would be. Lupe had ages to put this thing out, especially since the first version was leaked and he was forced to go back to the drawing board. Back at said drawing board, I imagine Lupe, in all his sober intensity and focus, drafting the "perfect album": one that would flow impeccably from track to track, covering all the bases and leaving nothing unsaid, no "concept track" undone. F & L is painstakingly choreographed from start to finish, and let me tell you, it's effing boring. Instead of hitting the studio and knocking out a bunch of bangers, Lupe's tried to make his debut album his magnum opus, and that's something that's never going to work. Don't get me wrong -- plenty of rappers have dropped stellar debuts (most of them, regrettably, never achieve this level of quality ever again), but they're great because they don't feel forced. I predict that Lupe has one or several great records in his future, but in order to make them he's going to have to let himself make art and forget about being better than Nas or whatever.

Chrome Children is out, and people, you need to recognize. Stones Throw Records + Adult Swim = Sordid Puppy's wet dream, and you should feel the same. Here's streaming audio, and here are the music videos (as of this post, only one had been released online, but it's fucking J Dilla and it's got jellyfish-sorta lookin things and a fish with a mustache and a giant ice cream cone that wrecks shit so wake the fuck up).

Killer Mike is supposed to have an album coming out sometime in the future, and I'm excited about it. I guess if it never actually comes out, I can keep listening to "My Chrome," which must have dropped a couple years ago, and "Get Em Shawty," which is even older, as far as I can remember. Yes, he's been putting out mixtapes, and hey -- maybe King Kong will just do that forever and never actually make any money.

I'll close this by running down some of the iller ish that SP's been into lately:

J-Hood & Styles P. - Fuck the Police
Lupe Fiasco - Real; Sunshine; He Say She Say; Pressure
The Game - Let's Ride
Frank n Dank - The Hustle
Brother Ali - Original King
Raekwon - Roof Top
Saigon - Don't Do That
Purple City - Grind Slow
DJ Khaled feat Freeway & The Clipse - Where You At
Obie Trice - Wanna Know
Luda - He Man; Shakedown
Lloyd Banks - Whip Pussy
Nicolay feat Black Spade - I Am the Man
Rhymefest - All Girls Cheat
Hi-Tek feat Ghostface - Josephine

2006-10-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

Slum Village - Ez Up Motor City Remix

Foodmantooth MV re-up

2006-10-05T03:02:00.000-04:00

Frank N Dank - What Up

2006-10-05T02:59:00.001-04:00

Roc C feat Aloe Blacc - My Life

2006-10-05T02:59:00.000-04:00

Mayday feat Cee-Lo & DJ Craze - Groundhog Day

2006-10-05T02:49:00.001-04:00

Sway - This Is My Demo

2006-10-04T02:56:00.000-04:00

Now we sip champagne when we thirs-tay

2006-10-03T21:02:00.000-04:00

Word of advice: never beat this guy in four-square

I'm not sure if people born on days other than October 3rd do this, but today all of us famous people born on this great day got together and partied like trapperkeeper stars. Here's who showed up:

1. Black Thought and Talib Kweli came wearing shirts that said "cognizant rappers are morally bankrupt too." India Arie was with them, but left after Gore Vidal kept asking her if she was Erykah Badu.

2. Dave Winfield and Dennis Eckersley reminisced about the old days when Barry Bonds didn't have custom-made helmets. Then they organized a game of four-square with Fred, the Brazilian footballer, and Fred Couples. The Freds conspired to rule the court, which angered the competitor in Eck, who threw many baseballs at the Freds' faces. He apologized afterwards.

3. Tommy Lee showed up with Gwen Stefani on one arm and Ashlee Simpson on the other. He's 44 today.

4. Al Sharpton and Stifler became good friends, mostly because both of them were hitting on Neve Cambell, and bonded over the futility of their pursuit (she was with me [1]).

5. Steve Reich DJd, although his experimental minimalism didn't give Chubby Checker a chance to do the twist, which made Stifler try to beat up Reich. Luckily, the oldest guy there, 82 year old Russian bodybuilder Arkady Vorobyov, was on Reich's side, and he proceeded to throw Stifler onto a roof, where Wil Cordero was beating up his wife.

[1] Denise Richards was with me too, but it wasn't her birthday.

Stuff>And>OtherStuff

2006-09-30T14:44:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Franzen, gang rapper

The run down:

Willy Clinton viral video: that's what I'm talking bout (and I'm allergic to politics)

Lupe's F & L: solid B grade and a disappointment, although a disappointment I expected (still a disappointment?). Puppy might contest this, let's see.

Salacious Swami Talk of the Town: tremendous

T.O.: might as well stop pretending to play football and start a tabloid about himself

Something Foley, that congressman who resigned after dirty emails sent to 16 year-old page surfaced (don't care enough to link or look up his name): good move bro, the game wasn't for you.

Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone: a memoir written because a famous novelist wanted to rediscover his inner elitist asshole...and write about birds and how he thinks Charlie Brown is a loser. not worth it. Write another novel for god's sake you asshole.

Laguna Beach Beard Kid busted again: I wonder if he was wearing a top hat at the time.

S.P. News

2006-09-24T18:22:00.000-04:00

Respect your son's real father. This movie kicks ass.

Jet Li says Fearless is his last Wushu movie. I guess now he's going to make regular action movies, and I'm not feeling too great about that. Jet Li is awesome.

El-P is dropping a new album soon, apparently. He posted an instrumental track from it on his myspace page, and it's niiiiice. He's also got a blog going, on which he posts about his mustache, smoking cigarettes, etc.

"My new name is Paisley Fontaine." Some douche from UCLA interviews Ghostface. Wu-Tang roll with a real Shaolin monk. That is SWEET. I think this is from the same show when Steve O whipped his phallus out on stage and said he was the new ODB, all while Wu-Tang was doing a tribute to Osirus. I think Raekwon had to be restrained from strangling him.

Forest Whitaker, y'all.

Foodmantooth ain't no political blog, yo, but witness the fitness of ya boy BC. Chris Wallace is a clown.

History>FlavaFlavClock>ClintFace

2006-09-22T11:58:00.000-04:00

A required text in your syllabus

Hip-Hop vs. Post-Punk:

Just finished reading Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, and before that, Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up & Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. Both of these are books written so that they can be taught in future graduate seminars, where Public Enemy and Public Image Ltd. are taught alongside fucking Kant or something. Reynolds does a much better job of presenting an actual history of a genre of music, even though the one he chose is impossible to define. Chang's "history," on the other hand is, like a menstruating nun: bloated as diggedyshit. He wants to give all of hip-hop a sociological/economic context, because, after all, Rakim's virtuosic wordplay and Dre's Funkadelic samples were obviously directly precipitated by Reaganomics. Also, there is very little about actual hip-hop music. We get Kool Herc, but Chang has to write 40 pages about Jamaican history first. We get Afrika Bambaataa, but not before a few chapters on Robert Moses building highways. Ice Cube and Chuck D get the most treatment in terms of rappers that are less than 50 years old, and rightly so, even though Chang is more interested in how they are "black leaders" or something. But instead of Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang, and the shit that anyone less than 30 considers the real heart of hip hop as it is today, there's barely a passing mention. Biggie is literally mentioned once. IN A FUCKING 350 PAGE BOOK ABOUT HIP HOP!! ONCE!!. Chang apparently thinks it's more important to talk about the editorial politics at The Source and Reginald Denny than about the best emcees who ever lived. I mean Chuck D is, well, Chuck D, but in terms of sheer fluid mic prowess if you think he can hold a candle to the next generation of NY rap (Biggie, Nas, Wu) you must be eating paint. The problem with this book is that, ultimately, Chang thinks hip-hop is about politics and race before it's about what it's actually about: music. I would still recommend this book just because there aren't any other histories of hip hop that as well researched as this (actually there aren't really any histories of hip hop at all), but seriously, where's the chapter dedicated to Ghost?

Reynolds, on the other hand, sticks to the meat and fries it (like a corndog). A lot of the postpunk bands ate more speed than an entire graduate math program, so they all had these hilariously high-minded conceits and manifestos. Luckily, he doesn't harp on them, because, you know there's some actual music that he might as well write about. Devo, Talking Heads, The Fall, Brian Eno, Wire--we get the full story on all the heavyweights, but perhaps more interesting were the more stridently avant garde bands that never blew up becuase, like, they insisted on throwing sheep viscera on the audience. Another fun part of this book is keeping track of all the genres Reynolds drops like babies from a stork's beak, if there was free overnight shipping on babies from Amazon.com. A NYTimes critic catalogued the genres: "funk punk," "punk funk," "folk punk," "anarcho-punk," "Hi-NRG," "psychobilly," "angst rock," "trad rock," "death rock," "death disco," "mutant disco," "Teutonica," "Goth," "proto-Goth," "post-Goth," "Oi!" "New Romanticism," "New Rock," "New Americana," "New Pop," "electropop," "synthpop," "synthpop noir," "synthfunk," "avant-funk" and, deep breath, "neopostpunk." Holy fucknugget that's some taxonomical clintitude. But the book's good, esp. if you want to impress the girl with the bangs.

Shaman Work

2006-09-21T15:55:00.000-04:00

Shouting out J Dilla is insultingly cliche, but this is the definitive retrospective mix.

Shaman Work is good shit. They're one of few labels putting out consistently solid non-mainstream rap music (make that rap music, period) right now. Pictured above is Shaman Work resident DJ 2-Tone Jones's R.I.P. Jay Dee mix, which is pretty close to flawless. It's the only thing I've heard (I have yet to pick up The Shining) since Jay's untimely passing that's a real testament to his legacy. I was sick of hearing Ebro (that guy from MTV2's Sucker Free who works at Hot97) and the squad of idiots they have hosting Rap City right now shout out Dilla without having anything to actually say about him, and this mix was a real breath of fresh air. It also knocks, which doesn't hurt.

SW is on some tight shit for a lot of other reasons, too, not least of which is the fact that they signed Edgar Allen Floe, who probably has the greatest name in rap. He's actually pretty good, and it would be sweet if he dropped a concept-mixtape series, Poe v. Floe or something. Ess Dub also has this dude named Wale Oyejide, who I think is from Nigeria and makes tight afro beats and sings well.

CL Smooth just released an album on SW, as well, which is the first rapper-from-the-past comeback record that I've heard work. American Me came out of nowhere for me -- it's funny that CL Smooth, who I never really knew as anything more than Pete Rock's sidekick, is still standing, while Rakim (in fairness, he is touring), Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, etc., aren't producing shit. It's improbable, I guess, but CL sounds way better than anyone else I'm hearing out of NY right now, and good for him -- Papoose and Murda Mook and Jae Millz and whoever else (I stopped paying attention, I'm sorry) need to study this.

Finally, I'm feeling Scienz of Life. Lil Scienz sounds like Breezely Brewin if Breeze sounded like Slick Rick, and I'm digging it. I got my hands on The Blaxploitation Sessions, and it's getting rotation. I guess I'd say I haven't felt this good about a label since Rawkus released Soundbombing II; as long as the people in charge as SW can keep their shit together a bit better than those characters, I see big things in their future. There was a time when independent hip-hop labels were bastions of quality, and I used to build my record collections around them. It's been a while since I've trusted any of them (Hiero, Def Jux, EC, Rhymesayers, etc., etc.), and I'm so jaded by all of it that Shaman Work still has some convincing to do, but they're on the right track. And that makes me happy.

2006-09-21T02:08:00.000-04:00

Jim Noir - A Quiet Man

S. Puppy likes rap. And other stuff.

Killfuck Soulshitter

2006-09-19T21:31:00.000-04:00

KILLFUCK SOULSHITTER is a nickname for any crazily overpowered magical attack in an RPG, either online or off. It dosen't have to be the game's most powerfull spell- just sufficiently powerful enough to ensure its target is totally screwed and without even a remote chance of survival. KILLFUCK SOULSHITTER usually involves fireballs or explosions, or both. I'm fairly sure I heard this used somewhere before, but I don't remember where.

A: Yo man, check out this spell.
B: Yeah, what's it called?
A: KILLFUCK SOULSHITTER

*nearby town incinerates*

That's from UrbanDictionary.com. Blogger won't let me cut and paste the link. I don't know why.

My goddamn iPod just killfuck soulshitted all my music. I can't re-up because my computer is in New York. Now I have to live with the random-ass mp3s I get off of rap blogs. Like Gillie da Kid's (photo above) "Stuntin Like Ya Daddy." Gillie Da Kid says Lil Wayne stole his flow or something. I say Gillie Da Kid sucks at rapping. Steve Jobs is gonna catch a bad one.

S.P. News

2006-09-18T13:34:00.000-04:00

There's one really great track on this album -- "Mama" featuring Trey Songz

Furman gets new lease on life, jumps for joy.

Keith Bloggermann

Chrome Kiddies

CDs>Drop>TheyDon'tComeOutLikeGays

2006-09-15T20:27:00.000-04:00

I didn't buy this because Timbo's juicin. The grammy should have an asterisk

New shit:

in a rash spending frenzy brought on by a recurring childhood trauma involving fish tacos, He-Man, and Daryl Strawberry, I copped both the new TV on the Radio and the new Yo La Tengo. TVOTR's is called Return to Cookie Mountain and its cover art looks like a sinister bird's nest or something. Kool Keith was obviously behind both decisions. It's poised to claim album of the year honors from people who still think indie rock is, like, the serious shit--just about everything I read about it when it came out in the UK a few weeks ago was slobbering helmet buff [1]. So naturally I had to have the actual cd to blast in my Altima (so that when I stop at a red light and some cornshit's blastin Timbuh (lake + land) I can yell at him: "these guys are black!") I've done all that and frankly It doesn't live up to critical hype. It is very good, but like the other TVOTR records, its is a cold, cold thing. I might be more into it if there were a few guitar solos or something, or a guest verse by Young Joc, but as it is, RTCM is a mass of grey fuzz and very high singing by the guy with the huge beard. Worth owning, but it's not like they just dropped Van Halen.

YLT's is called I'm Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass and it looks cool. Its red and shiny and shit. Me like shiny. My dream is that people who listen to rap realize that YLT are great, even though they sometimes sound like happyfuntime music, which makes XXL cover-scowls impossible. This might never happen, unless a Best of NJ album drops, with Redman and Joe Budden trading verses over a languorous YLT baile-funk track. Man would I ever listen to that. Anyway, INAOYAIWBYA starts out with 11 minutes of guitar noise, but there's a beat behind it, so don't get your My Bloody Valentine Thong [2] in a bunch. Plus, there are 15 tracks, you're allowed to masturbate lazily on one of them. There are a couple of bangers (relatively fast songs) in here, notably "I Should Have Known Better." Currently "Stockholm Syndrome" from I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One is the most played song on my iPod, but I can see "I Should Have Known Better" overtaking it. [3]

[1] This is the same thing that happened with last year's undisputed champion, Late Registration, which was so universally and inexplicably adored by critics. I bought it, liked it for a while cuz it after has fucking beats on it, but then I realized what critics willingly ignored: that Kanye is barely a mediocre rapper. And there was all this "oh it's ok that he's so cocky cuz he backs it up!" and "Kanye was so funny on The College Dropout but now he's gonna get serious and give us some heavy messages," such as the fact that the CIA obviously makes crack and floods the ghetto with it. Then he's on the cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus and not joking AT ALL. That would have been okay only if Lil Kim was also on there as the Virgin Mary. Now I can't listen to that album and I can't look at him without being desirous of a mace with which to bludgeon him ("Through the Wire" was a good song). Rockist critics just wanted sooooooo badly to embrace a rap album and call it a break through masterpiece. Funny they chose one that's barely decent.

[2] Two references to thongs in two posts! Someone needs to switch to hot pants.

[3] I follow my most played iPod list like HR stats. "Pavement hit two more this weekend, probably played the Royals;" "That GZA song hit one the other night, man that shit has been around since Julio Franco. Ha, he hit one too. Guy's 48! I repeat, 48!"

S.P. News

2006-09-15T12:36:00.000-04:00

Bizarre, awesome. Apparently it's a trilogy.

Manohla Dargis doesn't like "The Black Dahlia." Scarlett weeps, leaves Hartnett, declares love for canine blogger.

I'm sure my boy Steve wouldn't have wanted to be commemorated like this...

Watch college football this weekend.

Peedi Peedi stands up for Jay-Z. Peedi Peedi is a good rapper.

I used to check this site back in the day for gear...apparently after I stopped paying attention they stepped their game up a bit. Just a bit.

At Times I See the Mirror and Tell Him He Doin Good

2006-09-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

Awesome

Rap on the internet is weird. If you frequent the massive blogspace devoted to hip-hop, you probably encounter the same four or five basic threads over and over again, no matter where you visit. You've inevitably been exposed to the neverending rumor mill surrounding the potential release of a new Jay-Z album. You've heard of Lupe Fiasco, who is good, but I refuse to believe that this amount of hype was ever good for anyone. You've been informed as to who (whom?) Jim Jones is threatening to beat up this week, or who's the latest G-Unit affiliate who'll never release an album. I could go on and on; point is, very, very little room is devoted to actual music, and unless these bloggers cop on to themselves, I see the whole thing imploding in a mind-numbing maelstrom of shit like this. Ish like that (this?) seems harmless at first, but it's starting to piss me off. Shouldn't Raekwon be more worried about making sure that Cuban Linx Part 2 doesn't suck than about beating Mike Jones at golf? I was at the Wu-Tang show in Philly when Ghostface called out D4L for contributing to the demise of real hip-hop or whatever. That clip of Rae on the 'way, when you consider it in the context of Ghost's comments, is sort of troubling -- why did he feel the need to get on some bullshit XXL DVD to putter around a golf course? To be funny? Or is it a move he felt the need to make, in an age when it's nearly impossible for rappers to sell major numbers without marketing the piss out of themselves? I mean, literally -- like, marketing their piss. When the beat to "Laffy Taffy" came on at the Electric Factory in Philly, in a typical maneuver, I leaned into my best Fabo impression and paid little attention to what Pretty Toney was saying. Ghost was in the middle of his Fishscale promotional stuff at the time, and for the couple of weeks after the show, I kept hearing cats asking him about his comments. Unsprisingly, he took the diplomatic stance that he wasn't trying to hate, he just loves hip-hop so much, he thinks southern rap is cool, blahzy blah. I forgot about the whole thing until I saw that stupid golf video.

I'm not so ridiculous as to be in denial of the fact that tracks with simple beats and formulaic videos outsell more involved stuff 99% of the time. I was just unaware that someone like Raekwon would feel the need to jockey for screentime with the guy who made this song and signed D4L (and Tigger? Tigger from Rap City???). I thought the dudes from the Clan didn't need that type of exposure, thanks to nerds like me who check for Wu-Tang records like they check for the latest Woody Allen. What I'm saying is, when the nerds with the blogs are the ones not paying attention, it starts to look a little grim for our boys. It's not just Wu-Tang, either (but can we please get a second single off Fishscale? No? Thanks a lot. "Back Like That" really does the album justice); the new Oh No album, Exodus Into Unheard Rhythms, is really nice, and the new Ras Kass could be phenomenal. If you don't spend a lot of time in record stores, hovering over CD racks, you have no idea. The online press (not sure if bloggers count, but for the sake of this, I'm including them) has a responsibility to report on new music, for the sake of consumers and artists, and I'm not seeing it.

Time's come to stop talking empty shit. Furman P. Slothra and Sordid Puppy are dedicated to keeping it real. Foodmantooth will prevail. After all, I'm trying to get some cheddar so I can grab a pair of these...

2006-09-12T13:17:00.000-04:00

Birdman and Lil Wayne - Stuntin Like My Daddy

It ain't even my birthday, but I got my name on the cake.

Fashion>BrokenRibs>Footloose

2006-09-08T02:33:00.000-04:00

Beard by David Ortiz, soulpatch by Kevin Youkilis, mustache by Don Mattingly

Let's see what Slothra's been up to recently:

Being the resourceful, well-connected Slothra that I am, I parlayed my gaffer's collar-popper position on The Hills into a job in the mailroom at Teen Vogue, where I subsequently and inadvertantly (sorta) threw a Netflick (Cannonball Run II) into the eye of Blaine, the guy on The Hills who looks like that guy in Maroon 5 who hangs out with Kanye and tells him his lyrics are "as good as anything since Mase" [1] Canned unflinchingly by Blaine, I told him on the way out that "you probably made up your own name anyway" and then he hit me in the back of the head with what, when I first turned around, looked like a ball of multi-colored rubbber bands. I looked closer at the post-it note that was stuck to it. The post-it read "ball of LC's thongs." "Heidi was hotter anyway" I snarled after the door to his office was already closed and the fat guy from Fresh Meat who said he was "all taters" put his hand on my shoulder saying "sir you may never set foot in this office again." So fuck Teen Vogue, I thought, I'm gonna go freelance. For my first teen style report, I shall run through some new trends in the teen fashion world.

Spandex leggings:

Yo girls be totally wearin spandex, cuz after all, the 80s are the new 60s and the previously medium cool 70s are totally the new 30s (wide-waled Al Capone pinstripe has been out of fashion twice). Also, textile technology has crept into the sexy cipher. Feel free to compliment some tightly clad stems walking on by by saying: "yo girl, that stretch is fetching." Such linguistic dexterity and trendy cognizance will surely lead to slathering butter on her shoulders and sprinkling cinnamon on her ears. Knock-knees and kankles need not apply.

Primary-colored gardening clogs:

Someone told me these were actually for doctors, but we all remember the wearing-scrubs-but-you-ain't-got-no-MD debacle of '97, so I'm callin em gardening clogs for their own sake. They seem to be made of rubber or foam or one of those materials that kills rain forests and kids with allergies [2]. They are only sold in primary colors, like yellow, green and neon lavender (ha, totally not a primary color!). You can wear them on the way to buy cigarettes, to campus, or to a "Don't worry coffee makes me sweat too" support group. So its like casual footwear that makes people think that you don't care enough about stuff for bumperstickers.

Corsets:

Victorianism is cool again (replacing the Tudor period which is not cool anymore, except with regard to houses, because construction workers don't read Vogue and we can't hold them accountable), including the whole holding-hands-is-like-oral-sex thing. Heretofore a fetish/goth accouterment, the corset has gone mainstream, popping up at Hockey games, LFO (the Light Funky Ones if you forgot) and ELO concerts both (transgenerational trend alert!) and Family Reunions. The whole family can get involved in little Sally's aestheticized figure, as corsets can require as many as 4 people to tie up, sometimes involving complex ratchetng pulley systems. So like ties, its as much about the process as the product. The new ActiveCorset™ available from Nike, allows you ladies to maintain that 12" waist while playing team handball (or regular handball).

Footnotes:

[1] Because Kanye, in the one of the more inexplicable statements of all time, told Rolling Stone a few years ago that Mase was incontrovertibly (he didn't use this word, he's not Moby, who used the word 'insoucient' on VH1 in reference to M and M and VH1 put a definition on the screen) the best rapper of all time, he was thereafter convinced (according to the supplementary matrix axiom) that he was now the greatest rapper of all time, despite Weezy being the best rapper alive, TI being King and Game being rap's MVP. Man, Rap should hang out with Boxing.

[2] I'm told that rubber comes from trees, which I'm not sure I believe. I mean, how can something so bendy come from a plant? If this is true, then part of that ball of LC's thongs came from a plant. I wonder if LC knows she's a raging hippie.

2006-09-07T14:44:00.000-04:00

Skyzoo - Way To Go

Dre Day

2006-09-05T21:13:00.000-04:00

Andre Agassi's career as a professional tennis badass is officially over. He lost three sets to one to some guy named Becker who's not even this Becker (My aunt, a tennis nut, sort of coerced me into reading that book. It's terrible.). No, some upstart named Benjamin thought he'd come and ruin a legend's run at what would have been the greatest career-ending championship by any athlete that I can remember.

S. Canario is no hater, but this cachorro is just sad that his boy had to go out like that, beaten by some nobody in a match whose sets were tight but by the numbers wasn't really close. Andre was the last of a generation of great characters in tennis, one that included Goran Ivanisevic, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker, Michael Stich, and Pete Sampras. Rivalries were strong, and personalities simultaneously bizarre and engaging. Sure, Sampras was sort of a bore and never had anything even passably interesting to say in front of a camera, but he was probably the best to ever play the sport. Becker was basically an asshole, but intensely entertaining to watch, and Ivanisevic a Croatian giant who came runner-up (or worse) like it was his job but remains legendary for his awesome serve. All the while, Agassi was the man, a real (Armenian-) American rock star come to piss off the easily pissed off.

Andre Agassi, you are hereby Foodmantooth Certified. Congratulations. Award ceremony to follow.

Confetti>Makes>EverythingBetter

2006-09-02T18:39:00.000-04:00

Hi, we are rock n roll dieties.

Sonic Youth is probably my favorite rock band of all time. Sometimes Pavement sneaks ahead, but that's only when I'm in a good enough mood to think non-sense is sense, and the Youth usually pulls back out ahead when I compare Malkmus' solo work with the last three SN albums. They've been around for about 25 years, they're all pushing 50, and somehow they're pretty much the most unimpeachably cool band around. Their last 3 albums are all among their best, which is saying something for a band that released their seminal shit in the early 80's. Plus, Chuck D raps in one of their songs. Remember, even though she hung out with Fab 5 Freddy, Debbie Harry had to do it herself. To add to the Youth's stellar post-millennial output, there came the (relatively) new full-length Rather Ripped, which is a conspicuously tight affair, with more hooks and little loops than Velcro.

The last and only time I saw the Youth live was a long time ago when they opened for Pearl Jam. My friends didn't even know who Sonic Youth was, and despite my insistence that they were much better than Pearl Jam, everyone was more concerned with getting wasted in the parking lot than catching the coolest band ever. So tragically, by the time I convinced my crew to get going, the Youth were finishing their set. So needless to say, when I saw they were playing the NY state fair, I was determined anew to actually see the beginning of a SN set (plus I was given an excuse to see "Big Norm" the prized 1600 pound hog). Well, I improved, and this time I caught part of the middle, and all of the end. And I wasn't alone. Everyone I knew at the show was there to see the Youth as much as the opener, The Flaming Lips. The show was set to start at 5:00, and the bill was The Magic Numbers (who gives a fuck), Ween (I don't like Zappa enough to be excited about them), the Youth, and the Lips. We got to the venue at about 6:30, which I figured was in plenty of time. But NooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo. WEEN IS HIGHER ON THE FUCKING BILL! WHAT THE FUCK? Ween higher then Sonic Youth. That's like batting a largemouth bass in front of Ricky Henderson (the bass has a bigger strikezone). So the Youth is playing when I get to the venue. I see then play three songs, the last, "Pink Steam" from Ripped Thurston introduces like this: "this song is about getting food poisoning yesterday in Allentown, PA." Half the crowd hadn't even shown up yet, it was still daylight, and besides a guy with a cowboy hat who was dancing around in paroxysms (who was later arrested), the crowd didn't have enough $4.50 beers in them to go nuts like they should have been. Three fucking songs. Fuck.

Ween is a bizarre band. The singer sings like an Axl Rose cartoon (which is saying something because Axl Rose is already a cartoon), and they try to play every genre of music at the same time, which I guess is a joke. Approximately 20 people in the crowd were singing along to ever song, which astounded my, since I didn't think there were 20 people in the world who knew all the words to a Ween song.

I have to give it to the Lips. They make better use of balloons, confetti and dancing female Santa Clauses than...a bachelor party at the North Pole. The set was OK, but the theatrics almost made up for it. Confetti shot out of these huge cannons at climactic moments, the biggest balloons I've ever bounced around in the crowd during the whole set, and the roadies were dressed like superheroes, Space Ghost included. Also, Wayne Coyne came out wearing these prodigious foam hands. The video backdrop showed the Teletubbies, some Asian game show involving what looked like a Gila Monster, and a naked chick dancing around. Awesome. Too bad Sonic Youth wasn't playing when all this was going on, instead of a band that asked me if I realize that everyone around me will die at some point. Duh!

S.P. News

2006-09-01T16:25:00.000-04:00

*Excuse the above endorsement. The season begins this weekend. One time only: Go Big Red.

Oh hell yes. I hope you're all supporting this man.

A violent end for our commander in chief. On television.

A man after my own heart.

Bad F*&%in Move, I Reckon

2006-09-01T12:47:00.000-04:00

I switched on the VMAs last night and found it a generally boring and characterless affair; Ludacris and Pharrell (who I'm sure was lip-syncing) performed a lifeless rendition of "Money Maker," which is a really shit song to begin with. I subsequently tuned out.

Deadwood may be the best television program I've ever seen. Earlier this week or last, I'm sure I called Homicide the greatest TV show of all time, and I stand by that. However, having seen -- no, felt -- the Deadwood Season Three finale the other night, it's definitely unparalleled. Except maybe by Homicide, that is...I guess I'd say that Homicide and Deadwood are the best TV show (singular) of all time.

It's with great sadness, then, that I report that Deadwood probably won't be back for a fourth go-round. David Milch, the genius behind the show, originally drew up the story in four parts, one for each of four seasons, but it now appears that his vision won't be coming to fruition -- at least, that is, not as he intended. Apparently he and HBO have come to an agreement to put out two two-hour movies on the network to wrap up the story; that would amount to one-third of the run-time that a 12-episode season affords. Some people have set up a website to petition HBO, but the odds of that working out seem slim. Ever since I fell in love with Deadwood, I've always wondered how many people it's been able to attract; my buddies who watch Entourage say it's boring and confusing. I say it's masterfully written and beautifully shot, its narrative finely crafted and its scenes packed with tension and energy.

An article I read describing this debacle descibes HBO as "behaving more like a normal network these days." That seems a bit off to me; shouldn't the normal networks be acting more like HBO, and not the other way around? In the past several years, shows like The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Entourage have made a TV with HBO a necessary accessory for college dorm rooms and frat houses. That's significant, because it's the original series, then, that have done most to give HBO the spectacular success that it now enjoys. Rome, Deadwood, and The Wire, HBO's recent dramatic lineup, are all ambitious and utimately risky projects that have helped round out the network's televisual fare, and they're all great in their own right.

When the HBO Original Series brand name became a force to be reckoned with, creatively and commercially, several years ago, I felt part of a new era in television, one where the consumer was empowered to pay a premium to view uncensored and commercial-free programming of a higher quality than practically anything else on network or cable TV. Slowly but surely, thought I, new networks and shows would crop up to compete with HBO, and the fracas would produce a steady stream of wholly original material that would make me pleased with my tube. Instead, Deadwood, the most creative of all, has been assassinated, and I wait to see what will take its place. As The Sopranos crawls agonizingly slowly towards its own resolution, it may be up to The Wire (are they making new seasons of Rome?) to carry HBO drama on its back. Maybe I'll just move on to watching Showtime's The Brotherhood; I've heard good things. Deadwood is gone, and I can't get over it; I haven't been this broken up since Ellsworth got capped.

Drugs>Pigs>TheBelz

2006-08-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

I can't believe the guy who plays Stringer is British. That's like finding out that Dan Marino is actually a snapping turtle.

The prodigal slothra returns! My lack of internet juice has kept me out of the blogging game, and my ethernet wire's still dead, but I should be back up like Bacon in Flatliners before you can say "Shizzam Bangles."

Hey speaking of wires, I ploughed through the third season of The Wire in two days this week. By the end, when Stringer gets capped by Omar and Brother Mouzon, I was might as well have been a junkie in Baltimore Robbing Tom Breihan's parents and tagging after Bubbles like the kid from Kids. I was immersed like I was Echo the Dolphin. (Speaking of everyone's favorite Voice rap blogger, I recently found out that he's 6' 11". Not so recently, I found out that he needs to stop using adjectives like "gorgeous" and "syrupy" when describing music. Indeed, Hemingway's ghost and the adjective police need to SWAT that boy). Even though the Wire isn't even the best police procedure drama set in Baltimore, it's probably the second best show on TV now (gotta give the edge to Deadwood). While it never quite acheives the level of cinematic perfection that it's HBO siblings sometimes do, it's more fun to watch in a lot of ways, and in its treatment of the Drug trade, portraying it as the complex business operation it is, is thrillingly new ground (no matter what the Puppy says, Belly doens't quite do it, although I havn't seen Killa Season, so maybe I shouldn't be making jumping to conclusions). After watching all three seasons of The Wire this summer, I realized that the chances of me ever watching an episode of Law and Order again are about the same as the chances of my ascendancy to the throne of England.

2006-08-27T13:19:00.000-04:00

Termanology - Watch How It Go Down

2006-08-26T18:59:00.000-04:00

Gnarls Barkley - Smiley Faces

2006-08-25T12:59:00.000-04:00

Seth Green shouts out Jackson Pollock, gets punched

Congrats, but Please No More Bobby Brown-Ja Rule Collabos...

2006-08-22T21:16:00.000-04:00

This sort of flew under the radar, considering how big a deal it was...

Go Go Gadget Genremaker

2006-08-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

Procrustean F. Manhandles, blogger new jack and general pookie-about-town, reps D.C., sordid puppies, and Go Go music. I don't know what Go Go is, but its regional popularity reminds me of hyphy and B More, who are similar only in that neither style will ever blow up on a national scale. E-40 is hyphy, I guess, although it seems like he just decided that recently; I doubt seriously that anyone hearing Hall of Game would have predicted that this guy would one day be called an architect of a scene that produces acts like Rick Rock's apostles, Federation. Plus, "U and Dat," unquestionably E-40's biggest hit of all time, bears no resemblance whatsoever to hyphy, save perhaps for those kids with dreadlocks that shook their heads around one too many times and now find it impossible to stop doing so. So I guess the Ballatician wanted to help these upstarts get noticed -- he namedrops hyphy all the time now (as well as the fact that he invented such phrases as "Good Morning," "How's it going?" etc.) -- or maybe he was just hoping to jump on the bandwagon (or Vespa, or whatever) and finally get the sales he's always deserved. Don't get me wrong -- I like Rick Rock and I really like E-40 and Too Short is the MAN but besides these two aging pimps and a beatmaker who's making plenty of scratch making beats for Busta Rhymes, is there anything more to the Bay Area's rap scene right now than putting your car in gear and getting out of it so it drives itself down the road? I mean, it's hard not to draw up a trend's obit when its new product is an outfit of teenagers that you'll probably see on Nickelodeon in the not too distant future. If you like this song, it's only because you made the mistake of never buying real sneakers as a kid, are now stuck with a load of these, and the track makes you feel all right about it.

Speaking of the Bay Area, the NYTimes seems to think Oakland's not such a great spot at the moment...

I'm not quite sure what to say about B More Club Music, because like Go Go and Hyphy, I don't really know what it is (I know even less about whether to capitalize the names of recklessly invented musical subgenres). I thought Spank Rock was going to be the first big name to come out of the scene, but then I heard that they're not even from Baltimore (or if they are, they don't live there any more), which I think disqualifies them, and their first album never got big, so that's that. So who else is there? I've heard of a guy named Bossman, but his website says his new joint is dropping soon...in December 2004. Doesn't seem to be much doing there. There's a wikipedia entry re: this stuff that would lead one to believe that this style is dead and gone, though it sounds like when I was still bumpin Raffi this was a great scene. I'm sure Tom Breihan over at the Village Voice would have a great deal to say about all this, being from the gritty streets of Charm City and all, but ever since his careless post "previewing" the new Outkast album, through which he made it perfectly clear that he hadn't opened his ears to the tunes in the first place, I haven't frequented his site. I guess we'll just have to move on...

I'm left, then, with Go Go, of the three certainly the most difficult to really follow (sort of like this post). Go Go Radio's internet stream provides 24/7 access to D.C.-area advertisements and the truly bizarre mash-up (?) music that is Go Go. Mash-up probably isn't the right word -- it's more like if you (can possibly) imagine 80s and early 90s era house beats being pillaged by some guy who's had too many Zimas and is yelling out the hooks and call-and-response bits of every southern rap song or east or west coast rap song that sounds like a southern rap song. These, at least, are the jams that are easy to decipher. Juelz Santana's "Whistle Song" slams into Da Musicianz's "Camera Phone", which bellyflops onto a stirring rendition of the Purple Ribbon All-Stars's "Kryptonite (I'm On It)" that you could have heard at your local karaoke bar on Sunday night. In general, it's just the bits that everyone at the bar would know -- the choruses, as I mentioned before. That's sort of genius, really -- you can be sure that everyone knows the words to every song, so no one has a bad time. Go Go is like karaoke if karoaoke was acknowledged as a musical style unto itself and got you chicks and "respect". Go Go is pretty sweet.

2006-08-22T01:30:00.000-04:00

New Flesh - Wherever We Go

MalteseFalcon>BirthCertificates>SitcomAliens

2006-08-18T02:26:00.000-04:00

Sydney Greenstreet, right after he ate Humphrey Bogart

First: So it took Lil Wayne to get arrested for having too man Flinstones vitamins to find out that he's 26, not 20 or whatever the myth was. This makes sense, because he has kids and I'm just not sure its humanly possible to have procreated and taken the throne at the South's biggest rap label before acquiring the right to legally order 17 bottles of Cris for for his ho-biting pekonese. Anyway, now I can say I've been listening to him since he was 20, while in reality it was six months ago, when Dwayne did collabo with a Seaver.

Second: DVD Game on:

Brick (2006), Rian Johnson) One of Slothra's favoritos of 2006, even though it should not be good at all--which, of course, makes it better. It stars Joseph Hyphenated-Lastname, the kid from "Third Rock from the Sun" and the Taming of the Shrew remake, Ten Things I Hate About You, which, if you remember, also starred Julia Styles' globe-shaped face and Heathcliff Gaychaps, who little Joey actually resembles in this one. Brick is a homage to Dashell Hammett-style hardboiled cigar chomping, always raining, "see here buster," tricky dame Bogart noir--and a very sincere homage at that. Even setting the movie in present day, where there's nary a Fedora, Bowler, or Stetson to be found outside a Brian Setzer Sporkestra show, is balls from the window to the wall. This guy takes it to the next level, though, and and sets it in goddamn High School. Genre mashing of this sort so easily end up in gimmick land, but ultimately, the movie doesn't give a fuck that the characters are in high school. Johnson uses the skater terrain of California High Schools well, but we never see the kids in school, ands besides one fairly hilarious scene, where one gangster kid's mom offers our hero apple juice while her son, "the pin," (played by dumbo-eared lukas haas) nibbles at a cookie laid out on a napkin, 'rents are nowhere to be found.

Ultimately Brick's driven by the dialogue, which sounds like its written by a cross between Ghostface and Elmore Leonard, and a well constructed plot with more chicanery and backdoor exits than the Nixon Administration. The talk is some of the densest patois this side of Miller's Crossing. Indeed, the director admitted the Coens' own twisty-plot faux-noir as an influence. But while the Coens mostly just wanted to dress up Gabriel Byrne in finely tailored suits and have him say stuff like "take your flunky and dangle"--all with half a tongue in their cheek, Brick ain't joking around much. Like Miller's, the movie makes up its own slang, and the characters spit that shit with abandon. "Nah that's upper crust, Dode's pie pan grease" says the Brain, the coke-bottle-spectacled, rubix cube-fiddling consigliere to Brandon (the protagonist). I had to watch it three times to understand half of what's said. For instance: "No, bulls would gum it. They'd flash their dusty standards at the wide-eyes and probably find some yegg to pin, probably even the right one." Apparently a 'yegg' is someone who burgles burglars, in case you were wondering. Rating: James Monroe

2006-08-16T19:21:00.000-04:00

Oh No feat. Dudley Perkins & Georgia Anne Muldrow - T. Biggums

Acetate>ChiaPet>RalphMacchio

2006-08-15T03:06:00.000-04:00

Fuck this, Shrek ain't even supposed to have hair.

I was talked to a flaming Chia Pet in a Bulgarian monastery who told me the number seven was holy:

1. I'm writing a long-ass article about Laguna Beach/The Hills/Adam Morrison's mustache. Hopefully it'll end up in the New Yorker Talk of the Town Section. Otherwise it'll be here pretty soon.

2. The Minutemen drop a funk bomb on ya. And I'm not talking bout the legendary Fife and Drum corps with Bootsy Collins' greatgreatgreat grandpappy on bass.

3. S dot mini dog always pushin Killer Mike. Took me until now to tease him out of masses in the A. Which means differentiate him from Big Boi. "That's Life" gets a John Quincy Adams even though I can't figure out his stance on Cornell West.

4. Blogger is annoying as fuck if you have a mac. You hafta be Steve Woznifuck to link to Tera Patrick's elbow or a recipe for fertilizer gumbo. How much do I wish I owned a HTML wiz who is a midget who always wears a nacho hat? This much (Kevin McHale wingspan x 97098032982398)

5. The Wikipedia Chia Pet entry is a tour de force. That there's a Chia Shrek and no Chia Early Ludacris makes me cry much. One of them has an afro one of them doesn't you fukers

6. I wasn't gonna blog bout no Red Sox jingoism, cuz I feared the Puppy might maul me with anti northeast/pro midwestern manicured doggy claws---- but Papi did the crane kick, Karate Kid style on second base, for no reason. I nearly combusted with love for the man.

7. I found an italian-import red vinyl reissue of Pere Ubu's seminal LP "Dub Housing" for $15. On my way out, I gave Madlib and Shadow the League of Extraordinary Cratedigging Gentlepeople handshake. Although not sure is Otis or Josh is into Postpunk. Wait...those two are into (insert humorously obscure genre).