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Archive for the ‘Quarantine’ Category

Keiichi Arawi [あらゐけいいち]–Nichijou [日常] : My Ordinary Life (1) 2007 (translation 2016)

Posted in Africa, あらゐけいいち, Coronavirus, Graphic Novel, Huh?, Jenny McKeon, Keiichi Arawi, Malawi Mouse Boys, Manga, Quarantine, Robots, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation on July 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »

25938055SOUNDTRACK: MALAWI MOUSE BOYS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #42 (July 1, 2020).

mouseThis Tiny Desk (Home) Concert is from Malawi in Southeastern Africa.  The performer is Nelson Mulligo of the Malawi Mouse Boys.

He only plays one song, but it’s really cool.  Bob Boilen tells us some very important details about the song, the singer and the band.

We see his two-room home in the opening shot where he and his family live without plumbing or electricity. Then we see Nelson, standing below the power lines, holding his homemade guitar singing, “I’m So Tired of You.” It’s a song that sings out the evils of poverty, a life of hard physical work, of making money scavenging for mice amongst boars and snakes so they can sell them as roasted mice shish kabobs along the roadside. We only get one song, and even that cuts off abruptly, but I was deeply moved when producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, The Good Ones) sent it my way. He and his wife Marilena Umuhoza Delli met and recorded the Malawi Mouse Boys in 2011. You can hear Ian Brennan tell his story on NPR’s Weekend Edition. If you fall in love with what you hear, give a listen to the entire band harmonize. You can find their music on Bandcamp here. Even though the group played Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festival in 2015, they still live in poverty. Support what you love.

The song is simple and very catchy with Mulligo’s voice sounding strong and really lovely and his homemade guitar sounding great.

[READ: July 2, 2020] Nichijou 1

This book was recommended to me based on some other manga that I had read.  I didn’t know Keiichi Arawi [あらゐけいいち] or anything about Nichijou, but the cover picture of a classroom full of kids with a deer on one of the desks looked promisingly funny.  As did the comments about the series being delightfully surreal.

It is very surreal.  So much so that I finished the book with a massive question mark hanging over my head.  I literally had no idea what was going on.

When I looked up some information about the series (there are dozens of books and a TV show), I learned some details about what I was reading.  When I re-read it, it made a lot more sense, but was still really bizarre and not easy to follow. (more…)

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Lily E. Hirsh–Weird Al: Seriously (2020)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Allan Sherman, Billy Joel, Christmas, Coolio, Coreyah, Coronavirus, Crossword Puzzles, Cyndi Lauper, Dr. Demento, Feminism, John Oliver, Korea, Lily E. Hirsh, Mad Magazine, Nathan Rabin, Quarantine, Racism, Rick Derringer, Roland Barthes, Scholarship, South Korea, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, The Arrows, The New York Times, The Three Chuckles, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Lehrer on July 3, 2020| Leave a Comment »

50093048._SX318_SY475_SOUNDTRACK: COREYAH-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #41 (June 30, 2020).

Watching Korean bands mix traditional and modern instruments is really cool.  Korean traditional instruments (like the geomungo) are really quite unlike anything the West has produced so I love seeing them in action.  But merging them with electric guitar (and plastic hand clappers) makes for such an interesting juxtaposition.

This week we’ll publish four Tiny Desk (home) concerts from around the world. We begin in South Korea.  Today [is] the music of Coreyah. According to the band, the name represents “inheritance,” and that’s evident in the way this six-piece presents old or traditional Korean music with a modern twist.

If you’re going to mix up such disparate elements you can pretty much do anything.

It’s an uninhibited vision of Korean traditional music with some psychedelic rock, Balkan gypsy, even sounds from South America and Africa. You’ll see and hear instruments including the daegeum, a large bamboo flute and geomungo, a large Korean zither that lays on the floor.

When translated into Hangul, the Korean alphabet, Coreyah means “whale,” which is the group’s good luck charm. The music was recorded in the band’s music studio in Seoul, with COVID-19 shutting down most of the country. Strict social distancing is still ongoing in South Korea, though they are streaming their concerts to fans.

And just a note from the band: The geomungo player in this video is Park Dawool, as Coreyah member Na Sunjin was forced to miss this recording due to a personal emergency.

“Till the Dawn” features some great flute playing from Kim Dong Kun on the tungso.  There’s a heavy riff on the geomungo from Park Dawool while Kim Cho Rong plays the double headed drums.   Kyungyi  play a more stanadrd-looking drumkitm but it is hardly typical.  I really like the instrumental break that is just flute and geomungo.

For “Yellow Flower” Ko Jaehyeon plays jagged guitar chords accented with flute.  This song is quieter and singer Ham Boyoung has some kind of device that she is holding, but I can’t tell its purpose.

For the final song, “Good Dreams” percussionist Kim Cho Rong moves to the front to play the chulhyungeum which turns out to be like a slide guitar geomungo.

I could watch them play all day.

[READ: July 2, 2020] Weird Al: Seriously

I had been seeing ads for this book in my Instagram feed for months.  So I decided to finally check it out.

Back in the day, I used to really enjoy reading academic books about non-academic subjects.  There was a whole series of “The Philosophy of” various pop culture things that was fun.  It often seems like these books overthink their subjects. Not that the subjects aren’t doing the things that the authors suggest, but I do have to wonder if the authors see a lot more than the subjects do.

That certainly feels true here.  I’m not saying that Al doesn’t think about race or gender when he writes songs, just that he probably thinks “this will be funny” a lot more. (more…)

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Stan Tekiela–Bird Trivia: Funny, Strange and Incredible Facts About North American Birds (2018)

Posted in BEAM, Coronavirus, Elf Owl, Hummingbirds, Killdeer, Neil Peart, Quarantine, Ruffed Grouse, Stan Tekiela, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Woodpeckers on July 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

36963399SOUNDTRACK: BEAM-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #40 (June 26, 2020).

beamBEAM is a Jamaica-born, Miami-raised reggae artist, whose

father, Papa San, was a dancehall superstar during the late 1980s and early ’90s before becoming a preacher.

BEAM performs four songs, and

the 23-year-old singer and his co-producer and keyboardist, Al Cres, brought a new flair to the Tiny Desk (home) concert series with some unorthodox visual effects.

A guy rapping quickly with a pretty heavy Jamaican accent is pretty hard for me to understand, so I tend to hear phrases like “makes sure you know how to [garbled]” and I think he’s saying NPR a lot.

“SOLDIER” starts the set.

“MAD GAAL,” featured on his 2019 major-label debut, 95, is sure to keep living room dancefloors bumping during the pandemic.

“STRANDED” is a slower, ballad-style song with gentle keys from Al Cres.

He concluded the set with an exclusive: “KUMBAYA”, a fitting song for this moment in history.

It is nice that he included a green screen for visuals.

[READ: July 1, 2020] Bird Trivia

I was looking up books about birds and this book popped up. It seemed like a fun book to check out.  The original subtitle (the one still visible on Goodreads) is “Amazing Facts to Wow Any Bird-Lover.”  This original subtitle REALLY overstates the quality of this book.  The final subtitle is a bit more realistic.

Because this book is okay.  It’s quite short and feels a lot like the forty some pages of  information that Tekiela finds interesting.  It feels like a very personal book (which is good and bad).

I don’t really know what one might expect from a book of bird trivia.  Most bird lovers know a lot of trivia already about their birds (really, isn’t any information about birds trivia?). (more…)

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Alanis Morissette / Garbage / Liz Phair (PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ, July 1, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Alanis Morissette, Coronavirus, Garbage, Holmdel, NJ, Liz Phair, PNC Bank Center, Postponed, Quarantine, Tori Amos on July 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: July 1, 2020] Alanis Morissette / Garbage / Liz Phair [moved to September 1, 2021]

indexThis was a show I wasn’t sure about.

I have seen Alanis Morissette a few times live way back in the 90s when she toured with Tori Amos.  I was there for Tori and I don’t really remember much about Alanis (which is sad, I know).

On this tour, I was more interested in seeing Garbage again (they put on a heck of a show) and for checking out Liz Phair who I once liked and now kinda don’t but who I’m curious about what she’s like live.

This was definitely a show I was going to get lawn seats and try to upgrade.

Concerts are now being postponed earlier.

On May 9, Alanis sent out this message

“Hi everyone.  My North American tour scheduled to begin in a few weeks is being rescheduled to Summer 2021 out of an abundance of caution. Please hold on to your tickets as they will be honored for the new dates which we hope to announce very soon.

So much going on inside and outside take care of yourselves and each other.  Thank you for understanding.  Can’t wait to see you when it is safe for us all to gather.  Hand on all hearts til then.”

Garbage wrote this message:

So the @Alanis tour that @garbage and @lizphairofficial were supposed to be tagging along on this summer got postponed yesterday. We are totally gutted and apologise for any heartache caused. We assure you that we have every intention of fulfilling our obligations to Alanis and to any garbage fans who bought tickets in support of us. We appreciate you so. Please head on over to the @Alanis socials in the days ahead for further info. Please note this is not our tour so we have no answers whatsoever about what happens next.
Looking forward to the days when we all get to hangout and play for you.

No official word from Liz Phair that I have seen.

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Scholastique Mukasonga–“Grief” (New Yorker, June 22, 2020)

Posted in Africa, Coronavirus, Death, Genocide, M. Ward, Murder, New Yorker, Priests, Quarantine, Racism, Religion, Sandro Perri, Scholastique Mukasonga, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on July 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: M. WARD-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #39 (June 25, 2020).

I don’t really know all that much about M. Ward. I was supposed to see him live on many occasions that never panned out (I think at least three shows were either cancelled or I couldn’t go).  But then I did get to see him live at the She & Him Christmas show.  I was really impressed with his guitar playing in that set.  And I’m even more impressed in this set.

He opens here with two beautiful finger-picked songs.  The first is “just” an “Instrumental Intro.”  I don’t know if it’s an actual song or just an improv, but it’s terrific (with nice harmonics).  It segues seamlessly into “Duet for Guitars #3.”  I’m not sure how you play a duet with just one guitar but it, too, sounds wonderful.

His tuning is nonstandard for all of these songs, which somehow makes them more chill and pretty.  His playing is effortless and really fun to watch.

For me, M. Ward would be the perfect artist to sit next to while he played his songs, perhaps on a couch in a small room. And that’s pretty much what you get with this Tiny Desk (home) concert. We see M. Ward in the lounge of BOCCE, a recording studio in Vancouver, Wash.

I didn’t really know his singing voice, but the blurb sums it up nicely:

That tender wispy-rasp in his voice and flowing acoustic guitar make M. Ward a musician I’d want to hear up close.

He explains that he took requests from various social media for this set.  He plays four requests and one new song.

Ward’s delivery reminds me of Sandro Perri, although a little more conventional.  “Chinese Translation” and “Requiem” are softly strummed songs and his vocals are mostly deeper with an occasional high note added in.

In between the requests he plays a new song.

Those songs fit so well with music on his new record, Migration Stories, from which he plays “Coyote Mary’s Traveling Show.”

This song sounds a little different in style–a more traditional bluesy style, I guess.  Then it’s on to

 comforting and memorable older tunes like “Poison Cup” (2006)

for which he switches to a different guitar–this one smaller (and presumably tuned differently).

Then it’s back to the first guitar for “Voice at the End of the Line” (2003). There’s some really lovely guitar work in this song.  I’m not sure I’d go out of my way to see him live but maybe one of these opening gigs will actually happen someday.

[READ: June 22, 2020] “Grief”

This story is about genocide and how to cope with it–especially if you are far away from when it happened to your family.

The narrator found it worse that no one would say the word genocide, just wry observations like “weird stuff goes on in your country.”  She had not given up hope that he mother, father, brother, sisters, her whole family back in Rwanda might still be alive.

In her homeland, the word was

gutsembatsemba, a verb, used when talking about parasites or mad dogs, things that had to be eradicated, and about Tutsis, also known as inyenzi—cockroaches—something else to be wiped out.

A Hutu classmate once told her he  had asked his mother who those Tutsi people were that he’d heard about and his mother said, they were nothing–just stories.

The narrator tried to get in touch with her family but heard nothing.

Finally, she called her older brother in Canada.  He told her that he was now the head of the family.  She received a formal letter in June confirming the deaths.  Why didn’t she have a photo of any of them? (more…)

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Franz Kafka–“The Rescue Will Begin In Its Own Time” (New Yorker, June 29, 2020)

Posted in Coronavirus, Domestic Violence, Drinking, Franz Kafka, Huh?, Michael Hofmann, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Philosophy, Prometheus, Quarantine, Short Story, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Translation, Violence on June 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MADAME GANDHI-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #38 (June 24, 2020).

I have never heard of Madame Gandhi.  That’s a constant theme with these Home Tiny Desks–they seem even more geared toward introducing lesser known artists to the world.

Madame Gandhi’s is surrounded by her yellow bongos and congas, a yellow desk from her youth and a yellow nightstand, her Tiny Desk (home) concert lighting nods to the lavender-lemon artwork of her 2019 Visions EP.

Her music is mostly prerecorded.  The live elements are her vocals (soft and gentle with a lot of nonsense syllables amid the good vibe lyrics) and her wonderful hand drums.

Her music is inspired by her South Indian heritage and she lights a stick of palo santo.

For the first two songs she plays the damaru (I think).  “Waiting For Me” is about returning to the earth–returning to nature.  I enjoyed the way it began:

Wake up in the morning / hit space bar and start recording

She plays cool-sounding drums–she has wonderfully diverse sounds from that tiny hand drum.  And they seem to be modified in some way, too.

Before “Moon in the Sky,” she says “I don’t want our identities defined according to how oppressed we are.”

She’s intentional with everything she does, including activism that focuses primarily on gender liberation. She uses music to help elevate and celebrate female voices, from working with primarily queer women BIPOC on tour and video sets, to writing socially-conscious lyrics that challenge the white male-dominated music industry.

She continues, “if we are not brave enough to tell our stories end to end, somebody else will.  And they will get it wrong.

on tour and video sets, to writing socially-conscious lyrics that challenge the white male-dominated music industry.. Madame Gandhi’s clear, soft voice and swells of percussion give you the necessary space to meditate on her message of inclusion and equality.

She says her music is Indian trap.  The music has fun beats and a downplayed vocal delivery. I rather like it.

For the final song, “Bad Habits,” she stands up and plays the bongos: “put your phone down and stand with me.”  The catchy chorus of the song is “all my bad habits have got to got to go.”

Her parting words are that each person’s contribution is unique and valuable and can be of service to my community and my family.

This has been a great introduction to a new form of music for me.

[READ: June 28, 2020] “The Rescue Will Begin In Its Own Time”

I really don’t understand what was going on with these previously unpublished stories by Kafka (translated by Michael Hofmann). There are four flash fiction pieces and they seem much more like story ideas than stories.

In the first section he talks about the four ways the Prometheus legend can be viewed.  After the fourth, it ends, “The real riddle was the mountains.”

In the second part, there is a large load of bread which the Father of the family cannot cut.  The Father is not surprised, “Isn’t it more surprising if something succeeds than if it fails?”  When the children woke the next morning he had been up all night but had not managed to cut it. (more…)

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KT Tunstall / Dina Hall (Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA, June 28, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, Dina Hall, KT Tunstall, Postponed, Quarantine, Sellersville Theater, Sellersville, PA on June 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: June 28, 2020] KT Tunstall / Dina Hall [rescheduled from May 5, moved to December 22]

index

This show was postponed from May 5, all the way to June.  That seems like wishful thinking.

At any rate, it was, of course, postponed again.  This time until December.

I had forgotten about KT Tunstall.  I had her first record and then didn’t realize that she had had a couple of other (big) hits since “Suddenly I See.”

I wasn’t planning on going to this show and then I saw that KT Tunstall headlined a show at World Cafe Live last year.  I listened to it recently and found her enjoyable.

Since all shows have been postponed in some way, I’m not sure why this show was postponed from May to June (was that seriously wishful thinking?).

I wasn’t going to go to this, but her name has been popping up all over the place.  She’s touring with Hall and Oates this summer and she seems to be doing a lot of local shows as a headliner.  All of this repetition has me thinking I might go see her.  But mostly I’m intrigued by how much her name is going to show up in these posts soon.

Dina Hall is a folksinger from Bethlehem–originally from Sayreville NJ. When she’s with her full band she rocks out a bit more. I’m not sure if this was a solo or a band show.

seller

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Fuzz (Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, June 27, 2020) [POSTPONED]

Posted in Coronavirus, Fuzz, Philadelphia, PA, Postponed, Quarantine, Ty Segall, Underground Arts on June 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

[POSTPONED: June 27, 2020] Fuzz [moved to February 13, 2021]

indexTy Segall is one of the more prolific musicians out there.  He has released 12 official albums in ten years and that doesn’t include the countless self-released material he has put out.  He is also in a bunch of other bands.  Fuzz is one of them.

I can’t believe that there wasn’t a band named Fuzz before Ty Segall and Charles Moothart came up with the band.

Segall makes all kinds of music, but the music of Fuzz is pretty easy to categorize–fuzzy, heavy, fast rock with a debt to early Black Sabbath.  Segall is on drums for this project.

They have only released two albums since 2013, with Fuzz II coming out five years ago.  But it was a big album with a 13 minute jam at the end.

I’ve often thought about seeing Ty Segall–he seems like a bonkers performer–but it never worked out.  He can’t be quite as crazy behind the drums, but this sounds like a great show.

 

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Kevin Chong–“Lottery Poetry” (The Walrus, July/August 2020)

Posted in Canadian Content, Coronavirus, Death, Fortune Telling, Hamilton Leithauser, Kevin Chong, Lottery, Parenting, Poetry, Quarantine, Racism, Short Story, The Walrus, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on June 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

julyaugust200SOUNDTRACK: HAMILTON LEITHAUSER-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #37 (June 21, 2020).

hammyHamilton Leithauser seems to always be on the periphery of my listening experience. I hear his name a lot and hear his songs a bunch, but I’ve never actually looked for him.

And yet, I like him and his music.  And, indeed, as this blurb says,

This is the most adorable thing you may see all day.

Known best as the The Walkmen singer, Hamilton Leithauser is the singer of The Walkmen, although I know him better for his solo work.

Here he plays songs from his 2020 solo album, The Loves of Your Life.

Leithauser’s voice is a solid folk-singer voice and he hits a lot of high notes (with a deliberate straining style).  “In a Black Out” features his father Mark Leithauser on harmonica.  It’s a very touching Father’s Day moment.

But it’s made even more magical when for “The Garbage Men” he calls out his band: his daughters Georgiana and Frederika Leithauser and his nieces May and Lucy McIntosh.  The kids sing backing ahhs (quite well) and they all enjoy singing “till the garbage men go by!”  They also do the quiet “oohs” very nicely as well.  And they dance on haystacks.

“Here They Come” is about a friend who would go to the movies and sneak into film after film to avoid going home.  The kids sing the lyrics (pretty well) and dance even more adorably for this rocking song.  It’s important not to forget his wife, Anna Stumpf on congas and percussion way in the back for the middle three songs.

His daughter makes fun of him introducing the tiny desk “Dad you sound so stupid” and Hamilton laughs at the mocking.  They also show that they have a tinier tiny desk from the Calico Critters.

Then he introduces “The Stars of Tomorrow” by saying he and his girls met a Polish woman on the beach.  The woman told them her life story (they’d hadn’t asked).  It had a lot of drama and a lot of contradictions.  Everything in the story is true from what he can remember she told him, “but I can’t vouch for her story.”

The final song “Isabella” is, to me, the most Leithauser of the five songs.  A real folks song slow and passionate.  The girls do a fantastic job singing the “they all go riding home” responses in the chorus.  I’m very impressed with how well they sing.

There have been a lot of cute and sweet Tiny Desk’s but none have been as adorable.

[READ: June 23, 2020] “Lottery Poetry”

This month’s issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue and features two pieces of fiction, one memoir and three poems.

The fifth piece is fiction and it is very timely.

Maisy Wu learned fortune-telling from her mah-mah who’d read faces and palms in a stall in Hong Kong.  Maisy had been doing fortunes at college parties and eventually decided to quit her job at the Vancouver Public Library and go public with her talents.

She read palms and offered her own variation on Kau chim or lottery poetry.

Then the pandemic hit. At first people still came–they wanted her reassurances.  But when she was declared nonessential, she was financially hit hard.

She decided to go mobile with her skills, inspired by take out drivers.  She called it Curbside Divinations.  She received some likes on social media but no calls.  She imagined them saying, “If you’re so good at predicting the future, why did you book a  trip to Mexico in March?”

Then she had a request from a man named Pete.   He was a white man in sweats somewhere between forty-five and sixty-five.

She almost lefty when he asked “If you Chinese were so good at predicting the future, how’d you all get us into this in the first place?”

But as she turned to leave, he said he’d already paid.  And she needed the money.  (more…)

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Eric Ormsby–“Lord Mayor Magpie” (The Walrus, July/August 2020)

Posted in Anna Wintour, Benny the Butcher, Birds, Black Soprano family, Canadian Content, Coronavirus, Eric Ormsby, Griselda, Heemer da Steemer, Karl Lagerfeld, Magpies, Memoirs, Nicki Minaj, Poetry, Poets, Quarantine, Ricky Hyde, The Walrus, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert on June 26, 2020| Leave a Comment »

julyaugust200SOUNDTRACK: BENNY THE BUTCHER-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #36 (June 19, 2020).

bennyI’d never heard of Benny the Butcher and when I was listening to his boasts, I assumed that maybe he was really old school.  He makes a crack about Nicki Minaj that made me think he was like 50, but in fact she is older than he is (which is pretty funny).

Benny the Butcher is part of “the triple threat emcee collective from Buffalo, N.Y., consisting of Westside Gunn, Conway, and Benny the Butcher” known as Griselda.  They were supposed to do a Tiny Desk until the coronavirus hit.

Benny the Butcher blessed us with a five-song set from the living room of his current home in Atlanta. (Due to some recording snafus, some of the audio and video in this video doesn’t always sync up.)

I really like when they do five or so songs in under fifteen minutes–it’s like a highlight reel.

There’s something really amusing about these guys rapping some hardcore stuff (the n-word is mentioned about fifty times in 13 minutes) while  they are sitting in a suburban-looking house on a gray couch with plants and baby pictures on the table.  But somehow, without all of the posturing and video effects, i gets you to listen to the words more closely.    And I really liked his lyrics.

“Crown for Kings” is like an old school song full of braggadocio and lots of similes (I assumed it was a twenty year old track) at first, until he rapped

I sat back, a vet, and watched beginners winnin’ my belts
Burned my bridges, came back a good swimmer like Phelps

and then this really funny bit about going to Philly, which includes the Nicki Minaj line

What’s the dealy? I’m only ’bout six hours from Philly
That’s an hour on the plane, I’ll make it three in the Bentley
My bitch keep sayin’ I’m famous, but it ain’t hit me
I’m too ghetto, mellowed out, this Hollywood shit tricky
See, before I knew an A&R, I was weighin’ hard
Back when Nicki Minaj was in a trainin’ bra

and

“Rubber Bands & Weight” was a cool song.  Slow and intense with creepy music.  I really appreciated the slow delivery in this song.  Even though I think the challenge is to see how much you can fit into a verse, sometimes slow gets the point across better.  I also liked that this song had a recognizable chorus and the video included jump cuts of him shouting it out.

For the third track, Benny is joined by Rick Hyde and Heem, two artists on his new BSF label imprint, for a live performance of “Da Mob,” the first single off an upcoming label compilation titled Benny The Butcher & DJ Drama Presents: Gangsta Grillz X BSF Da Respected Sopranos.  This track is dark and distorted sounding.  Hyde’s style is gruff (he jump cuts to Benny’s couch). Then Heem comes in for his verse–they don;t cross paths so I assume it’s all socially safe.  Benny returns for the final verse and his is definitely the best voice of the three.

“Cruiser Weight Coke” is a title I don’t get, but I like the sinister sounds on this song–very cool low notes an what sounds like processed vocals. vocals.  This line stuck out to me:

If we link up and make plans (shake hands), it’s a done deal if we shake hands
You won’t understand me ‘less you move your family to a place they feel safe in (alright)

This track is really short (less than 2 minutes) and skips the last verse.

It seems to be saving room for “5 to 50.” “5 to 50” and “Crown” come “from his critically acclaimed 2019 album, The Plugs I Met.”  It continues in this aggressive style.  He seems to pause to really let the final section sink in.  And as the song reaches its end, the music cuts out–intentional or not, I can’t tell.  I’ve never heard a rap end a capella before, but it really makes the words hit haard and show how good his flow is even with out a beat

I can turn your front door to a drug store
Make any kitchen to a lab
Man, I hear these drug stories and I laugh
Talkin’ ’bout the Coke sales they never had
Pull up on a nigga, you gon’ know the pad
Only house with a Bentley on the grass

As the video ends, he is very pleased. He says

“5 to 50,” “Crown for Kings” “Rubber Bands & Weight,” Oh my goodness!  That’s why I’m a legend.

[READ: June 23, 2020] “Lord Mayor Magpie”

This month’s issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue and features two pieces of fiction, one memoir and three poems.

The fourth piece is a poem.  It is a simple, but lovely descriptive poem about a magpie.

This poem is five long stanzas.

Magpie idles in a limousine
of black feather with a slash of white
piping that outshines all chrome

…

he has the brazen glamour of a motorcade.

(more…)

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