Not even 10 minutes after Vancouver native Claire Boucher aka Grimes put up her
latest song "Go" on Soundcloud, there were loading problems for the
track. I can't imagine I was the only one nervously clicking,
"praying" I'd get through in time to replay "Go" to my
heart's content. Though I'd just heard it on Zane Lowe's BBC 1 Radio show
at 1:30, I wanted to hear it again. If I spent the rest of day letting it boom
out of my speakers and failed to get anything else done, including this review,
it'd still be a successful day.
Now some of that is obvious
hyperbole, but not much. "Go" is that kind of entrancing effort. The
same week Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal told us about the joys of well-timed
bass drops in a music culture desensitized to them, Grimes upped the ante
further. Rustie's "Raptor" features an unquestionably terrific drop,
one best compared to a waterfall of noise if you're intent on using any kind of
"dropping" or "falling" verbiage. But "Raptor"'s
drop is necessary when you consider it comes after a stretch of silence. You
need noise to drown out the quietude in that case. The reason "Go"'s
anvil-like drop is so fascinating is that it may not even be needed. Before its
leaden appearance "Go" is a mid-tempo languisher with an eerie clock
rhythm and elegiac piano ringing out. Grimes half-whispers about dreams and
memories being indistinguishable and time cruelly stretching out past some
far-off horizon. Bolstered by mechanical drum claps, its best described as
"haunting."
However once the bass goes from
a mid-volume rumble to a speaker busting boom, "Go" becomes something
else entirely. "Bubblegum trap rave" may be a clunky way to describe
it, but that's what immediately came to mind. If that is the descriptor though,
it's not syrupy sweet bubblegum pop you'd hear on an AM station in the 60s.
This is the sugar-free variety, where the bubble's been popped and
disappointment hangs where a smile once resided. Under Blood Diamond's massively
stuttering samples, you can hear Grimes' head hanging down when she sings of
"stupid dreams." Her best work often captures peril in mundane
situations (night-walks becoming panic-stricken runs on "Oblivion")
and "Go" is no different. We all dream, it's just rarely as vivid or
panoramic as this.
In an on-air interview with Zane Lowe today, Grimes intimated she'd be releasing a new album "sometime next year" so "Go" will have to tide you over until then.
Critics of de-facto ratchet-music
producer DJ Mustard I'm no longer talking to you. Since Mustard first knocked rap
upside the head with the stark, mechanical beat for "Rack
City" all he’s done is creep into every corner of the rap landscape.
2013 saw him drop one of the year's best albums with the Ketchup
mixtape and team up with gangster-crooner Teeflii for the endlessly
replayable Fireworks. Not even halfway into 2014, he and frequent
collaborator YG leveled West Coast competitors with My Krazy Life.To
say he's winning is a vast understatement, he's already won and it’s a
landslide victory.
Despite the success, Mustard has
yet to have an official studio release which will change when 10 Summers debuts
later this year. If first single "Down On Me" is any indicator of the
record's caliber, 10 Summers will be polished chrome. Though the
producer doesn't rap himself, the track has every idiosyncrasy of a primo
Mustard song. An eerie hum floats above the beat like the "lights over the Night Vale
Arby's." Bass clonks rise up from the house party downstairs.
Handclaps ring out with cultish fervor. Somewhere in the maelstrom a keyboard
can be heard twinkling. "Weird" doesn’t begin to describe the
effort.
Fortunately, Mustard was able to
recruit two of rap's burgeoning weirdoes for "Down On Me". Oversexed
freakzoid Ty
Dolla $ign mumble croons about having girls "walking funny" and
doing the deed sans protection. It's all fairly deplorable behavior, but Dolla
$ign so effortlessly catalogs it you end up leaning in to listen closely.
However, no amount of attentive
listening will be able to help with 2
Chainz. Though Chainz and DJ Mustard have only worked together once before,
on the impeccable "I'm
Different", "Down On Me" suggests they're attached at the
hip. For everything Mustard beats are filled with they're rarely overstuffed,
leaving rappers ample room to s***-talk to their heart's content. And no one in
hip-hop right now does s***-talking quite like the man born Tauheed Epps. You
need your own dictionary and a finger ready to hit rewind when Chainz comes on.
If the Atlanta-drawl doesn't do you in, the ad-libs will. According to
"Down On Me" he's paying car notes after copulating and goes
"turtleneck in the summer." 10-plus listens and I'm still not sure
what his sweater has to do with anything. But like a Mustard beat at large, his
eccentricity should be enjoyed on its own accord.
"Apologies go out to all my fans cause they waited so patiently," enigmatic New Orleans rapper Jay Electronica delivers early in his verse from a remix of Soulja Boy's booming "We Made It". Considering the beautifully elegiac "Better In Tune with the Infinite" he released last week and now this, he no longer has anything to apologize for.
And while everyone is already focusing on label-boss Jay Z's shots thrown at Drake, Jay Elec's take on the pure giddiness that is "We Made It" is an unqualified success. Contorting his voice into the much discussed "Migos flow" Electronica gets sociological early and often. He plots a line of black heroes from "Solomon to Sambo to Django" while discussing the suffering that dogged all of them. "Obamacare won't heal all that anguish" he starkly reminds everyone, the roots of the pain go much deeper than that. What keeps Electronica upright in spite of that overwhelming pain is an unflinching motivation, carrying him from "from the cotton fields, straight to spaceship." That said, it's impossible not to discuss "We Made It" without dissecting what's motivating Jay Z on the song. Apparently Drizzy's comments "Hov can’t drop bars these days without at least four art references," light a fire under Jay to respond. "Sorry Mrs. Drizzy for so much art talk, silly me rapping 'bout s*** that I really bought," Hova raps with an audible smirk over the shifty trap beat. It's not a shot fired, so much as it is a lyrical autocorrect. Most rappers are stuck living in the land of imagination, Jay's successful enough to make his dreams a reality. He's already hopped off the slave ship and can now be seen "stuntin' on stage" with a black tux befitting John Gotti. In "We Made It"'s interlude the loathsome Kenny Powers wonders aloud "why the hell are so many people trying to tell me to slow down? Seems like motherf***ers should be shutting the hell up and enjoying the show." Stop focusing so much on album delays and disses, instead just kick back and relax. Still no recent date for Jay Electronica's Act II though one may be coming very soon with this recent uptick in material.
