Danny Brown – Old
Danny Brown’s stream of consciousness style and obscene wordplay have won him a legion of admirers since he burst onto Detroit’s emaciated rap scene a few years ago. Old, his first proper studio LP and the successor to his wildly popular free release XXX, paints a more complete portrait of Brown than we’ve seen so far. For every lewd sex joke and over-the-top boast, the rapper’s newest features an admission of loneliness or a plea for nonviolence.
By striking a precarious balance between youthful abandon and cinematic gravitas, Old obnoxiously announces itself as a frontrunner for hip-hop album of the year. After months of arguments with label heads and studio tinkering, the build-up proved to be worth it — the production is immaculate, from the industrial grind of “Way Up Here” to the ambulance synths of “Break It (Go)” to the muted R&B of “The Return,” Old is an inventive sound collage that never gets, well, you know.
Brown’s lyrics are similarly all over the place: “Handstand” may be the most depraved fornication fantasy the rapper has cooked up to date, while “Wonderbread” is, as far as I can tell, a song about purchasing sliced bread (with pan flute accompaniment). “Torture” features Brown’s most vulnerable verses committed to tape, while “Red 2 Go” is an aggressive call to arms for listeners and rivals alike.
Old’s saving grace is Brown’s versatility: his raps range from smooth and melodic to harebrained and manic, sometimes within the same stanza. Some will argue that Old tries to do too much, and there’s something to be said about the album’s overzealous attention span. But it’s hard to deny that Brown is one of hip-hop’s strangest, funniest and most creative figures, and Old proves that he’s even more versatile than we thought.
Chvrches – The Bones of What You Believe
The Bones of What You Believe is a lot of fun. It’s catchy, danceable and ticks the appropriate boxes on the List of Musical Influences. If you’re searching for a new album to listen to while you passively browse Facebook or lift weights at the gym, look no further: this Scottish trio is the group you’ve been looking for. They even have an appropriately non-threatening lead vocalist who looks a little bit like that girl you had a crush on in seventh grade.
The problem is that, as the Barenaked Ladies once said, it’s all been done. Chvrches are adequately talented, and they clearly have an ear for hooks. Opener “The Mother We Share” and single “Recover” are sure to be mainstays on your local indie station, and rightfully so. But are they saying anything new? I think you already know the answer.
There’s something to be said for the album’s immaculate production: these mixes are so squeaky clean, listening to The Bones of What You Believe feels like going through a car wash. Not a single guitar is plucked throughout the LP’s 16 tracks, but the group’s repertoire of bleeps and bloops are more than enough to make up for the absence.
Even lead vocalist Lauren Mayberry’s voice feels obsessively micromanaged, equal parts socially acceptable quirkiness and milquetoast lyrical clichés. (Though, to her credit, Mayberry recently penned a damning op ed in The Guardian about online sexism towards female musicians. So there’s that.)
On its surface, The Bones of What You Believe is a perfectly enjoyable and effortlessly marketable slice of pop music pie — maybe a little on the long side, but far from bloated. Still, it’s hard to get excited about amiable, derivative synth pop anymore. Like so many albums before it and many more to come, Chvrches’ debut full length is just another step into the brave new world of indie pop homogenization.
Throwback: A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory
“Back in the days when I was a teenager, before I had status and before I had a pager . . .”
From Q-Tip’s first couplet in album opener “Excursions,” I was hooked. Like many other hesitant hip-hop listeners, The Low End Theory — A Tribe Called Quest’s sophomore opus and the Rosetta Stone of jazz hop — was my rap gateway drug. Effortlessly listenable and calmly anecdotal, the trio’s second LP was the antithesis of Public Enemy’s political manifestos: Q-Tip and his partner Phife Dawg kept their ideologies subtextual, preferring to focus on the wiles of rap promoters and the opposite sex.
Though many had noted the parallels between jazz and hip-hop before, The Low End Theory was the first record to truly fuse them into one pulsing, cohesive whole. From its stand-up bass grooves to DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s pitch perfect bebop samples, the LP’s atmosphere is warm and inviting. The group’s twin MCs maintain a lively equilibrium: Q-Tip’s lyrical talent shines through his gentle cadence, while Phife Dawg’s youthful bombast is grounded by his seamless syllabary.
Despite its apolitical nature, The Low End Theory is anything but delicate. Few hip-hop albums are as quotable: each stanza stacks reference upon reference in an endless circle of one-upmanship between the group’s leads. The result is some of rap’s finest wordplay, all against a backdrop of smoky jazz instrumentation and deceptively simple drum beats.
Despite their casual rivalry, Tip and Phife were never more in sync than on this LP. “Check the Rhime,” the album’s centerpiece and the group’s strongest track, sees the two trading verses without missing a beat. Though their differences would eventually lead the group to split in 1998, The Low End Theory is the high point of the duo’s professional partnership.
This is the album to try if you’re new to the genre: if you’re not a convert by the last chorus of “Scenario,” you might as well stick with Coldplay.
