January 2010
62 posts
Wall Street 2 Teaser! →
“In an effort to project speed and determination with my music choice, I type K-A...”
Edge of Darkness →
Ok. I think we were all ready to dismiss this immediately. The first trailer looked exactly like that movie last year that everyone saw but you called Taken. This trailer doesn’t look that. Mel Gibson might be a racist pig but I like watching him kill people. Remember the first Lethal Weapon? Mmmm…
Needle and Haystack Life - Switchfoot
Many times...
P.O.S. - Duct Tape
@Dan
I apologize for falling...
The Age of Flash is Beautiful →
Atmosphere - National Disgrace
Dear Dan,
...
12. Why? - Alopecia (2008)
Thanks for this. Just listened through. Very nice. Can I expect a list like this every year?
danschoenbrun:
Count on Anticon’s Yoni Wolf to blur the line between hip hop, beat poetry, and pop-rock. This one fires quickly, you’ll need to give it a good many listens to catch all the clever references to masturbation, heroin, self-mutilation, and Joanna Newsom’s left hand.
This is Regrettable
I’m actually quite ashamed.
Somewhere along the line I started working from an older draft of my list of hip hop songs for Dan. You’ve been cheated.
The final half of the list will now be formatted in what I will call the “Mad Dash to the End” format. We’re throwing categorizations out the window.
“Politics aside, it’s truly unbelievable how much Martha Coakley fucked up...”
The Roots - Long Time
The Roots are a gateway...
Power Lyricism/Poetry
This is going to be a massive category. I’m grouping the two together because upon reflection they’re too similar to keep apart.
“Sam Peckinpah was a drunkard and loon. I respect him a lot.”
– Kevin, my once-boss
4 tags
4 tags
3 tags
2 tags
Hot Beats (DHH3)
Quality beats are so necessary. There are good and bad producers out there. The trick is to know the best ones, and make sure to sit up and listen when they team up with someone great. Like anything else, however, there are some exceptions.
Soul Position, which is RJD2 and Blueprint, is a good example to me of a producer who outstrips the rapper. That’s not bad on Blueprint, RJD2 is just...
2 tags
GZA - The Legend of the Liquid Sword
Blackalicious - Cliff Hanger
Double points for...
DHH2: Storytelling
Hip-hop is about a lot of things to me, which is why I’m breaking this whole thing down into a few parts. Yesterday was less of a personal thing and more of a prologue. Every post from here on out will include some of my all time favorite tracks relating to the subject at hand.
Today’s subject is storytelling. The following are some of my favorite hip-hop stories. Some are sad, some...
DHHS - 1; or, Installment One
Installment one is history-ish. Respect the roots. Not “The Roots” (not yet) but the modern roots of hip hop. The mighty Sugar Hill Gang. Skip ahead a few years (and across the country.) N.W.A. Respect.
Moving into the 90s, we had A Tribe Called Quest and the seemingly ubiquitous Wu-Tang Clan. Honestly, I believe you could fill a 500 level semester class with Wu-Tang analysis and...
Dan's Hip-Hop Salvation
Great. Now I gotta make sure it’s really good instead of the crap I was going to roll out for Dan.
***
First installment coming after I watch Hurt Locker.
getlegs:
I feel that. I wanna see what you put together. I’m all about Stones Throw’s artists myself.
matthewwatkins:
I can give credit where credit is due for that, but most of the hip-hop is listen to isn’t considered...
Dan's Hip-Hop Salvation
I can give credit where credit is due for that, but most of the hip-hop is listen to isn’t considered mainstream. Admittedly my goal isn’t all that clearly defined, but if it was it would include something about opening doors to other avenues of hip-hop. I don’t think enough people know about Rhymsayers and Doomtree. I think too many people know of Kanye.
Altering the look of...
Dan's Hip-Hop Salvation
The student is ready. The master senses it. They say that when the student is ready, the master will appear. Try and do the math on that.
Dan is a friend of mine who has exceptional music taste. He’s been doing a countdown of his personal top 100 albums of 2009 here. Unfortunately I think Dan’s experience with hip-hop is limited. I’m setting out to remedy the situation with...
3 tags
“I like writing for a number of reasons, but foremost among them is that when you...”
– M. Watkins