SOUNDTRACK: RODDY RICCH-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #47 (July 8, 2020).
Here’s another rapper I hadn’t heard of, but who is apparently huge. (Huge enough to have Ty Dolla $ign join him). The blurb assures us
This was slated to be Roddy Ricch’s summer. He was having the breakout moment that I’ve seen from so many other Compton emcees before him… including the biggest song in the world in “The Box,” which spent 11 weeks at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 and will probably go down as the last pre-COVID club anthem.
Richh raps in front of a fantastic band. They have a fantastic groove and really jam fantastically.
Backed by the juggernaut musical collective 1500 or Nothin’, this set exhibits the many dimensions of his [suddenly prophetic] debut album title — Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial.
Christopher “Brody” Brown brings a fantastic bass sound throughout the set. You can hear it right from the first song “Perfect Time” which showcases the band and Richh’s rapping skills. Richh even plays keys at the end of the song.
It segues perfectly into “Bacc Seat.” The band tightly and seamlessly shifts gears from that rocker to this slower song. The song features a cool guitar riff from Charles “Uncle Chucc” Hamilton and a guest appearance from Ty Dolla $ign who sings and plays guitar!
The backing vocalists are great; however, they are not social distancing at all. Shaunise R. Harris, Garren Edwards, and Tayler L. Green are all shoulder to shoulder back there, which makes Richh’s shirt “that’s an awful lot of cough syrup” seem more ominous than funny. T
But the band is on fire and there’s some serious drums from Nick Smith at the end of the song.
Gentle keys from Lamar Edwards open “High Fashion.” Edwards has a few banks of keys getting all kinds of interesting sounds. Richh says this song is about the type of relationship he like to be in–high fashion: “I like to be fly, like shorties be fly.”
Once again, this song ends with some great drums from Smith and percussionist Larrance Dopson.
Richh is pretty young so it’s surprising to hear him say that he doesn’t spend a lot of time on the internet: I don’t like to be bothered” (which jibes with the Anitisocial title).
The final song “War Baby” opens with a quiet, lovely piano. But the song builds to a big jam by the end with some great guitar soloing from Uncle Chucc interspersed with some fantastic drum soloing from both Smith and Dopson.
I’m not all that impressed with what Richh is rapping about–lots of vulgarities so i started tuning out–but the band is fantastic.
[READ: July 8, 2020] “The Canal”
With a title like this I didn’t expect this story to be about World War II. Although it is set at a party several years later.
Two couple are drinking and talking. Lew and Betty Miller are bored out of their minds listening to Tom Brace tell yet another war story from his days in Germany. Tom’s wife Nancy couldn’t have been prouder, listening to him go on and on.
At some point, something that Tom says reminds Betty of something that Lew told her about the way. She asks if Lew was in the same place as Tom. Lew says no, although he grudgingly admits that he was in the same area at the same time. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 