Probably as you look at this image, you are wondering if you accidentally found a secret time-warp blog that sent you back to 1988, when rap was all about gold chains and White Sox hats with the tag left on them. But nope, it's Chicago's own throwback rap act, The Cool Kids, who have released one of the best records of the year, the very short and delightful The Bake Sale. Cool Kids were described to me as "Hipster Rap" and I'm sure they will be a huge hit with white kids across the nation...but hell, whatuva. If Saul Williams can make a record with Trent Reznor, (somehow creating the ultimate in highly complicated anger music management) then maybe there really isn't any color left in music, right?
Yeah right.
Well The Cool Kids dont care about all that. All they care about is thier bikes, their gold, parties, and great, simple beats. I love it. The album rings in at about 30 minutes-it's really more of a long EP-and that's just about perfect for this sound. It's throwback but fresh too. If all the hipsters start rolling around Capitol Hill, blasting The Cool Kids from their Vespas, well, then fuck it-let's just all have a good time. 4 Molos
Speaking of having a good time, do you think that Trent and Saul had a good time making their concept-NIN meets David Bowie meets the Black Panthers? You bet they did. The result of this pairing, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, is quite something. It's good, I think. Good in that way that I'm not sure I could listen to it very often. But that's Saul Williams for you. The album is supposed to have a really hard edge I suppose, but it all comes off as a touch silly, actually. Maybe I just have a hard time buying those NIN-rage-filled mechanical guitar screeches as actual danger these days. I suppose I should go and listen to "Wish" again. See if it still affects me. Any who, I can't really recommend or not recommend this album. I do think it's worth a listen-if you are into this sort of thing. 3 Molos
I heard many good things about the new Nas album...I should not have listened I guess. There are good moments on the record-like when Nas goes off on FoxNews and in general when Nas is just ripping away, I am fully into all that. However, the album is filled with standard, formulaic hip-hop choras vocals, and uninspired song crafting, plus too many corny flourish elements. The kind of stuff that always pops up on big rap albums that studios put a bunch of time into. If I could reproduce this album, taking out all of the female vocals, all the pretty stuff and just have Nas and some beats-now that would be a great comeback album. Someone teach me one of those programs so I can do that! 2.5 Molos Oh, and the albums is untitled because he wanted to call it Ni**er and there was some sort of label dispute regarding that.
In Film:
Nothing new to report. Except that Batman has made 400 Million already. In 3 weeks. Watch out, Titanic! All that despite my rant about the poster being some kind of weird 9/11 exploitation marketing tool in my previous blog. I guess molo's sketchbook doesn't have the power I image it to have....yet. Muhahahah.
Best albums of the year, so far, that I have heard:
(by the way, it's been very hard to rank albums this year...seems like nothing has really stood out for me-lots of good albums but nothing has blown me away...yet...although, probably i just haven't come across the good stuff yet)
1 The Cool Kids The Bake Sale
2 Tapes N' Tapes Walk It Off
3 Grand Archives Grand Archives
4 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Dig Lazarus Dig
5 Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend
6 M83 Saturday = Youth
7 Neon Neon Stainless Style
8 Sigur Ros Meo Suo I Eyrum Vio Spilum Endalaust
9 Sun Kil Moon April
10 Stephen Malkimus and the Jicks Real Emotional Trash
11 Devotchka A Mad and Faithful Telling
12 Portishead third
13 Vetiver Things of the past
14 Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes
15 Silver Jews Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
16 Giant Panda Electric LazerPortishead third
17 MGMT Electric Feel
18 The Roots Rising Down
19 Saul Williams The Enivitable rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
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