Is there a Noname thread?

LEGENDARY SHIT pic.twitter.com/L20U5EfSlJ

— Noname (@noname) October 18, 2018

She was on Stephen colbert loast night. I wasn't aware of her before that.
Reminded me of something I wished I'd seen Gift of the Gab of Blackalicious do, play with a live band.

THought she was quite good, will look further into her.

new song out today. i want to make a pillow out of the organ sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a4PD4SwEAs

A bit of realtime commentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp1eW2bihg
also because we somehow missed Song 31:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkJ0R6FUrLE

she killed it, amazing madlib beat too

I saw the online discussion with Boots Riley earlier this week, the guy talked all over her and tried to shut down any discussion of misogyny and transphobia as urgent issues. She was not impressed.

i don't always agree with stuff she tweets, but Boots showed his whole transmisogynist ass in that exchange. i felt embarrassed for him and it lent some credence to my friend's take that his film was deeply transphobic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKYrGdvmeqc

swoon

rainforest is extremely good. played it a lot the last few days, and then was reminded of it again reading this (from chris richards of the washpost):

She brings the same sang-froid to “Rainforest,” patiently unloading her most urgent words into a bossa nova rhythm’s gentle churn. “You ain’t seen death, I can hear the blood on the moon,” she raps, casually doling out one of the most paralyzing couplets you could ever hope to hear in a song. And then, “These n----- put a flag up on it, all they do is consume/Only animal to ravage everything in its path/They turned a natural resource into a bundle of cash/Made the world anti-Black, then divided the class.”

Outraged and unflinching, it’s a lullaby and a prayer, a salvo presented as inner-monologue, a protest anthem for the inside of your skull, a hushed blast of hyper-empathy from someone who can hear the blood on the moon, the loud part quiet.

rainforest is extremely good. played it a lot the last few days, and then was reminded of it again reading this (from chris richards of the washpost):

She brings the same sang-froid to “Rainforest,” patiently unloading her most urgent words into a bossa nova rhythm’s gentle churn. “You ain’t seen death, I can hear the blood on the moon,” she raps, casually doling out one of the most paralyzing couplets you could ever hope to hear in a song. And then, “These n----- put a flag up on it, all they do is consume/Only animal to ravage everything in its path/They turned a natural resource into a bundle of cash/Made the world anti-Black, then divided the class.”

Outraged and unflinching, it’s a lullaby and a prayer, a salvo presented as inner-monologue, a protest anthem for the inside of your skull, a hushed blast of hyper-empathy from someone who can hear the blood on the moon, the loud part quiet.

rainforest is worth posting twice about i guess

Yeah "Rainforest" is great. I'd listened to her before but nothing else had grabbed me like that.

late on "rainforest." holy shit.

nominating "rainforest" as a new standard. play it during 7th inning stretch ferchrissakes.

rainforest is worth posting twice about i guess

― Zach_TBD (Karl Malone), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 6:45 PM

thrice, even.

Rainforest for president!

sheeeit, fatimah for president!

it's so great, and fuck a billionaire

https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/770x0/0f8b218d0d592d54c6c686409971187d.jpg

"they found nutritional content at the base of my conscious. it tastes like peaches."

whatever she does next has officially usurped everything else that i've told myself i care about.

while i bide my time, i've been going back through her features and collabs. this is a jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYsjpoYKAKw

closed sessions, mick jenkins, noname, dally auston, saba, ongaud - "realer than most" (2014)

new album, sundial, out friday

I’ll believe it when I hear it! Fingers crossed.

she's been teasing aug. 11 for a few weeks now.

shared the tracklist two weeks ago: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvpcrEqL5UG/?hl=en

and the cover art today: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cu63IfWreJk/?hl=en

the new album is good but nothing really more than that? just a familiar sound fairly well executed. letting jay electronica spend his whole verse doing his nation of islam bullshit sure is a choice though

“Hold Me Down” is choice

I thought it was good. Nothing “Rainforest” good tho.

this feels like a pretty special record, the former jay elec-hanukkah aside

late here, but yeah this is very solid. the common feature lol!

yeah, this has grown on me.

Noname Is Not Apologizing For Jay Electronica’s Anti-Semitic Verse On New Album
The New Orleans rapper appears on the track "Balloons."

https://www.vibe.com/music/music-news/noname-statement-jay-electronica-anti-semitic-verse-apologize-1234780279/

It’s all a hoax, quite simple, a joke like Zelenskyy

Yeah not cool. I'm over it and if by extension Noname is supporting this Farrakhan holocaust denialist bs that has more in common with actual white supremacy and fascism than they realize, I'm as disappointed by this as the shit with Roisin Murphy.

Is it so hard not to hate?

that stuff aside -and not to diminish because yeah not cool but a couple things 1) i've never been taken with jay electronica so whatever and 2) the song is one of the weaker points on the album anyway lol-

have to agree that no real surprises happen and it's mostly a restatement of her strengths. nice to hear her having some fun again and "boomboom" is downright infectious. i chuckled at the common feature initially, but he sounds good! and that's actually become my album highlight for now. really sick beat and that whole "I'MMA TALK MY SHIT!" bit in the hook stays with me. really appreciate that i was anticipating this so heavily and it neither disappointed nor exceeded my expectations, instead just met and satisfied. she does seem to be treading water a little more on this album, but whatever. still consistent.

i finally got into noname and i love her

Surprised with the lack of enthusiasm in this thread. The album is flawless.

I mean there is one clear flaw as noted above lol Still yeah it's good.

Poor choice of words. Obviously abhorrent lyrical content aside, I'm a fan.

Yeah this album is up there with Murphy's as a "record that sounds nice but the artist is irredeemable to me now". She has doubled down in a more stern fashion than Murphy. Nomame's shit hits different now and by her own headline quote above, she's cool with that. Well fuck you too! As a Jew this, I imagine this is how ILM queer folk feel about Hit Parade.

argh I mean to say, as a Jew I imagine this is how ILM queer folk feel about Hit Parade.

it definitely doesn't seem to get the same pushback here or elsewhere as roisin murphy

she seemed to get really twitter brain damaged, i had to unfollow her

but obv conscious rap has always had a big anti-semitism problem, farrakhan, 5 percenters, PE/professor griff, ice cube, etc etc etc and i've not been as hard on that stuff as i should be just cuz it's childhood/high school memories etc. jay electronic is 46, part of that era, so is kanye.

i had not heard about this, and now i'm fuckin annoyed. i just got into her!

it's disappointing because she has responded unusually well to political critiques in the past (compared to her peers) but I guess those days are over now

My kid has my last name, which is irish. But he identifies as Jewish through his mom. His grandfather survived the holocaust. I've already had to tell him gently that he might hear anti-semitic shit out in the world in passing, maybe from people talking to him who don't know he is of Jewish descent. And these little bits that people just have to let slip into their work increasingly piss me off. It's just unforgivable sorry. The Kanye stuff is on another level but even just one little sliver of it sneaking in is irredeemable. It's exceptionally easy not to hate imo but people seem to love letting this kinda tripe infest their work. Such banal stupid content.

This really glosses over the "balloons" criticism huh

https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/noname-sundial-interview/

"If we're not willing to give a platform to racists, how are we ever going to have a conversation about racism"

new piece in Pitchfork (reposting is not an endorsement of the JE guest, which is discussed unsatisfactorily): https://pitchfork.com/features/profile/noname-sundial-interview/
apparently the cover art for sundial is a digital painting based on the Homo floriensis reconstruction in the Smithsonian:
https://images.theconversation.com/files/295885/original/file-20191007-52202-lzkp34.jpg

i do appreciate everyone's views here and it's really important to keep things in check. i feel like most of the persecution that has happened throughout our civilization was on account of a lot of folks just sitting by going, "well it's just words" when it's clearly not. thoughts become words become actions and so on. i don't know how to feel about the new record when listening with ya'lls thoughts in mind. i like her, but yeah... big sigh

that said, separate the art from the artist and upon further listenings, "boomboom" is actually kinda sorta soty status for me. it's so much fun, jesus criminy. ayoni sounds completely angelic in the first verse and then kicks into the chorus -- god DAMM, that's some transcendence. and then fatima just goofs the entire time. "come and eat a georgia peach, ya freak!" i can actually hear her winking. such a fucking rad jam.