What is this, TNL?
The late 70's produced some great music but I certainly wouldn't put the early or mid 70's on the map. The 80's definitely got some good stuff out there, really good stuff from the post-punk world and the solidification of hip-hop... but for me the 90's produced the best music.
Fuck the rest of that noise.
Yo, I have decided the 70s are the best decade for music ever. Stevie says "...discuss". Post more.
Bitches.
St00n.
I would like to slap T-Pain in the face for that shit.
T-Pain/Wayne meets Smashing Pumpkins Tonight, Tonight meets Zapp and Roger meets Waterfalls. Yes, oh yes.
St00nj
Don't Go Breaking My Heart
I know you'll love it.
There's this thing that happens on the first Friday of each month in Philly called White Ts, White Belts. It's this party thrown by a couple of DJs, usually between $5-$15 to get in, but that gets you as much beer/vodka as you can drink, and you're welcome to bring in alcohol if you want. The space they're renting out gets packed, and it's usually fun as hell. I met my girlfriend there last February. Well, we went there a couple of weeks ago. I was particularly excited about going to White Ts this time, because Freeway (rapper from Philadelphia) was going to perform.
So, I showed up there with Liza and a few of her friends around 12:15 (technically the party is on Saturday, since it doesn't start until midnight). It was already packed when I got there. I had a 16 oz Poland Springs bottle with me that I'd filled to the halfway mark with fine Blanton's Kentucky Bourbon, didn't take more because I didn't want to get too fucked up -something that's easy to do when things get started that late in the night, and you can drink as much as you want. The place was about 1/2 full by the time we got there, but it got packed pretty quickly. The crowd was a mix of the same people who go to it every month, and an infusion of white fratboys from Drexel/Penn.
The space was the second floor of this odd large building in the middle of the ghetto (seriously, the neighborhood is fucked). The space was large enough to hold maybe 400 people (if they were packed as closely together as they could get). The 'stage' was basically about a 15x15ft riser a foot off the ground, divided in half by a steel barrier about a yard tall. One side was for the performers, the other side you could stand on.
We started hanging out near the stage, talking to people, drinking, watching the space fill up, wondering when the show was going to start. Rap shows ALWAYS START LATE. I wouldn't have been surprised if Freeway hadn't shown up at all. By around 1:30, the place got so packed that we took a step up and stood on the riser, holding onto the steel barrier, waiting for the show to start. Around then, weed smoke had started to waft out of the curtained-off area Freeway's crew was hiding in. There were a couple of false starts, 400 lb dudes waving at the DJ, stuff like that, nothing happening.
2pm, the beat to Freeway's first single off the new song starts, Freeway comes out (round, philly beard, dressed in black, maybe five-six) and just bodies the show, rolling through four, five songs, a couple of singles, rapping with no beat, playing off the crowd. It's hard to explain - it's just, I don't think Freeway could order an Americano at Starbucks without being superfucking intense ("IF THE COFFEE stops BREWING or my CUP starts LEAKING imma ROB me a PERSON, MY GOOOooDDDD"), it was awesome. About 20 minutes later, the beat for Flipside starts, and Peedi Crakk comes out. Peedi's another awesome Philly rapper that's got this weird sort of Puerto Rican John Leguizamo way of sing-song rapping, and they perform a few more songs.
Oh - this entire time, I'm, literally, maybe 3-4 feet away from Free and Peedi, just standing on the stage with them, separated from them by a steel barrier. The crowd was drunk as hell and had lost their shit halfway through the first song.
Still awesome, few songs later, and Beanie Sigel lumbers out of the curtained off area in a cloud of weed smoke, stumbling (I thought he was near-blackout drunk, he wasn't). Compared to Freeway, Beanie looks fucking gigantic - maybe 6'4, 300 pounds - the crowd sees him and freaks out again. The three of them together then start going through a mix of Beanie songs, State Property songs, Freeway songs, Peedi songs, for another hour or so...and they were all within 4 feet of us. They start pulling girls up out of the crowd so they can dance next to them. Just, an unbelievably awesome show.
St00n
R. Kelly is officially the shit since he's lost his mind.
So, Calliander just sent me a video from R Kelly... and it's official. Like so many other great R&B artists, R KELLY HAS LOST HIS DAMN MIND. Now when did this happen? I remember the days of such sound track pleasers as Gotham City and I Believe I Can Fly... and he seemed normal. I mean he married Aliyah who was like 15, but I wouldn't call that nuts so much as I would AWESOME. But still a little creepy, then he got caught peeing on a 14 year old. Now that's kinda fucked up that it was with a 14 yr old (was stretching it by saying married sex with a 15 year old was awesome), but as for the peeing, hey we all have our fucked up fetishes.... I wanna bang a pregnant chick. Ya know, hey he got acquitted and had some jokes cracked on him by Dave Chapelle... but he coulda sprung back from that. But no... something snapped in him after that media frenzy. Now all he's doing are these crazy ass hiphoprahs, with such crazy fucking lines, and I quote: "What they eat don't make us shit!"... yeah... indeed. In fact I can't remember the last time what someone else ate made me shit. So without further ado, here are my top five R&B Meltdowns of history.
Jerry Lee Lewis - The Killer here married his 13 year old cousin, out of all the original Sun Recording artists (Elvis, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison... etc), He is the only one still living, thus proving my theory that sex with young women makes you live longer than the average man.
R. Kelly - Peed on a 14 year old girl and then spent years writing weird melodramas about gays in closets with guns... yup...
Chuck Berry - After a life time of being a groundbreaking musician and breaking down racial barriers, ol' Chuck did the only thing left to do... He retired to a life of selling coke and video taping women shitting in his restaurant's bathrooms.
Whitney Houston - She went from being America's sweet heart, to the diva of R&B, to the crack smoking hump toy of the creepiest member of New Edition.
James Brown - The Godfather of Soul, and the Godfather of R&B Meltdowns... This man loved PCP, guns, beating women, PCP, and Jerry Curls.
It seems like our buddy, Caniprokis, is a bit down and I'm worried. In an attempt to cheer him up, I used some of the new features in GarageBand to remaster the two "Pushback" songs I was able to hold onto. It was difficult to do from just a single stereo track, but I think the difference is noticeable. For those of you who don't remember, Caniprokis had a cool band that played some modern rock/punky type of stuff and they were actually pretty good without the singer. He mucked things up. But Caniprokis is a really great drummer and so I tried to bring his playing a little more forward in the remasters. Again, it was difficult. The first one doesn't sound too different, I removed the hissing, amped the guitars more, and was able to raise the drums just a bit. I think the second one turned out much better-sounding, though. So let me know what you think, Caniprokis. I didn't like the name "Lucy," so I will refer to it as "Pushback," dammit.
Calliander, keepin' it fresh since '21, you suckas.
On Saturday, November 13th, Russell Jones aka "Ol' Dirty Bastard" died in the studio. His music touched me, and many of you in ways that one could only describe as "in the bathing suit area". I was shocked and hurt when I heard this news. I wandered the streets for hours... eventually collapsing in a freezing gutter, crying to the heavens: "WHY GOD, WHY!!! WHY MUST YOU TAKE THE GOOD ONES FROM US!!!"
I remember the first time I ever saw ol' dirty, it was on MTV news. He was taking his children and one of his babies mamas to the wellfare office in a limo to pick up a check. I saw this and thought to myself, "How can I be more like this man?" I was instantly mezmerized. Then i heard his tight rhymes, and was hooked from the line "Bitch burned me with the ghanorrhea, well I got the ghanorrhea twice, so the bitch burned me two times actoooally". It was brilliant... like someone took a crack head off the streets and said "Wanna recording contract?" and that crack head said "Yes, I would like that very much."
Goodnight sweet prince, may flights of angels take you to your slumber.