Da Drought is Over (Hopefully)

No, the title of my post is not referring to Weezy being released from jail. It's about the hip-hop drought being over: the difficulty that rap has had in releasing multiple good or better hip-hop releases in a single year.

Hip-hop has really suffered the last few years. Sure there were still some bangin singles, like "Throw some D's", but it's been really difficult to get a lot of good full album releases in a year. In fact, any good hip-hop CDs I don't think would have been good enough to place too high on any year end lists, with the only exception really being Raekwon's last album. All the really great hip-hop stars haven't really been producing very high quality products. I remember when I'd just desperately crave for the next Madvillain album, although it's still clearly so far away, just because nothing would be coming out.

We haven't really had amazing years since the first half of the decade. Does anyone remember how absolutely amazing 2004 was?

• Madvillain - Madvillainy
• Kanye - College Dropout
• M.I.A. - Arular
• Dizzee Rascal - Showtime

Like, gawd damn those are some good debut releases from the first 3 artists! Ridiculous!

I'm hopeful that the times are changing now. This year has been a fairly good year so far with new albums from Big Boi (awesome album actually), Das Racist, and the resurgence of Kanye West. There's so much potential with the new Kanye album and the Kanye / Jay-Z one as well. It's not like there hasn't been a high amount of meh (Eminem, Lil Wayne), but I'm fairly hopeful that these new album will really overshadow the rest of them. That new Big Boi is so ridiculously hot and I'd dare say it's the best hip-hop album to come out in recent years.

Anyways, I'm hopeful that Kanye and his crew will help be at the forefront of this new reinvigoration of hip-hop. If that new album sucks, I'll be crushed.

Burrrr!

When I have a moment later today, I'm going to add to Kevmoh's recent winter album post and post some of my most enjoyed "winter-esque" albums from the past. He's most definitely spot on with The Moon and Antactica; full agreeance there.

One tune that always came to mind for me (among a many) is the closer from Motion City Soundtrack's Commit This To Memory titled "Hold Me Down". I'm sure that notion I get is largely in part to it's video, but the whole album had a winter-ish theme to it. Motion City's sophomore effort Commit This To Memory coincidentally was released in the early summer of 2005, but was obviously either written or recorded during winter sessions. Jesus... hard to believe that was over 5 years ago already.... Anyway, more on that later! For now, how's about a video?!

Hold Me Down:

Nostalgia Revisted

Everything from the past always seems to be better than anything in the present. Oh how we all long for the days of the past, the days that we have crystalized in our memories as being pure, solid, and good. Nostalgia is something that we can really never attain again, which may be a good thing. We're all nostalgic about our childhoods but that doesn't mean that it's something that we necessarily want to return to or something that should be returned to.

Anyways, this is a poem by Billy Collins, a man who used to be the U.S.' poet laureate from 2001-2003. It's a pretty funny poem and satirizes how we look at the past.

Billy Collins - Nostalgia:

Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790's will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Kevin's Winter Albums

The temperature is slowly dropping these days. A lot of the trees have lost almost all their leaves. There's often the potential for rain to be mixing with snow. Yes, yes it's that time: Winter is coming.

With that change in temperature comes different moods, emotions and tones to match our destitute landscape. Long gone is the Summer pop music or the joyful Spring albums: they have been replaced with melancholy and weary songs. I'm now going to start a list, and Ryan or anyone else can add on if they want, for some good Winter albums / songs that I've found in the last few years.

Albums:
Christian Fennesz - Black Sea
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
Stars - Set Yourself on Fire
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette
The Field - From Here we go Sublime
Husky Rescue - Ghost is not Real
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts
Why? - Alopecia

Most of these albums are not the most... uplifting. They're generally very sombre in tone and reflect the feeling of Winter in various ways. For example, Alopecia, Set Yourself on Fire, and Etiquette all have lyrics that generally deal with pain and suffering in relationships that individuals have with others. Throughout most of the songs, the lyrics deal with individuals desiring a sort of emotional or spiritual renewal that they are just not obtaining it in their lives. The rest of the albums generally have a sort of melancholy feel to them that comes through their instruments. There are harsh realities and existentialist crises scattered about (Modest Mouse's "The Stars are Projectors" or "Lives") that make aware the reality of life and death that the season of Winter brings.
Overall they're all great albums, with Moon and Antarctica actually being my favourite album ever, so I suggest you check them out.

But I need to give special recognition to another Winter album....










SO GOOOD