Post a controversial music opinion

modern vampires of the city sounds like old beulah. or the miles kurosky solo album.

(not meant as a dis. ezra even sounds like miles sometimes. just doesn't seem like a very cool reference to make. idk maybe elephant6 stuff has cred with vw fans?)

Neko Case will have a wonderful Best Of, but she has a Morrissey-ish sense of melody (which is to say not a great one, based more on intervals relentlessly seeking the root note than on an actual line) so her albums get monotonous. I prefer her singing covers, or songs that other people have written — such as Andy by Mike O’Neill from Canadian Amp, or the Newps’ stuff. (O’Neill has the opposite problem: he’s a wonderful writer but a reedy singer. I wish they had just formed a partnership long ago. They would have been unstoppable.)

Neko put out a digital Best Of... in 2022! It's idiosyncratic!

https://open.spotify.com/album/0KGcCenSL9QAN9mhonWfx5?si=o9IQzmtmRkiqxXlk-yzJeQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A0KGcCenSL9QAN9mhonWfx5

No "Margaret v. Pauline", no credibility

i really have to stop this horrifying discussion. okay i got one:

The Beastie Boys were the Sha Na Na of rap.

i thought of this because i heard some 90s song of theirs the other day and i thought: wait, rappers weren't allowed to sound like 1985 in the 90s! how come the beastie boys got to? and heck into the 21st century even. regular older rappers would have been laughed out of town. they either adapted or perished. but i guess the beastie boys were special. and by the 90s not considered a part of the regular rap game anyway if they ever were. so they became more like indie rock with 1985-style gen x rapping on top and "hip" production. sui generis novelty rap. also, they invented rap metal. but we won't blame them for that. also, they were the sha na na of rap. except not really because they didn't come after the fact like sha na na. okay they were the weird al of rap. because even polka musicians had to progress over time but weird al didn't have to because he was so funny! okay, you're right, funny trumps everything. (and i'm not saying that the beastie boys weren't technically proficient rhymers just saying that they still used those old cliches that marked them as 80s rappers and they never felt the need to do boom bap collabs with onyx in an attempt to look/sound current. yesyesyallandyadon'tstop...they WERE funny. they still make me laugh.)

i suppose if you start out as "goofy white skater kids pretending to be run dmc" you can go anywhere you want from there. i think i'm gonna listen to nothing but 80s gone 90s for the rest of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ZbxQR4SYA

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

so good...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_FbHGMM08

Fat Boys did a good Ice Cube in the 90s...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ06EDSa7pk

I've probably mentioned this before, but none of the dyed-in-the-wool rap fans I knew growing up - which would have been the majority of my friends at the time - had any love for the Beasties. They weren't actively hated or anything, they just simply weren't part of the conversation. To the heads trading Funkmaster Flex tapes and watching Rap City, the Beastie Boys may as well have been the Gin Blossoms. I liked them and I still do, but then, I was more into Nirvana and Sonic Youth than Mobb Deep and Biggie, which probably underscores scott's point

yea I don't think Beastie Boys were really part of the hip-hop scene as it were but I wouldn't say they were novelty, at least not past the first album. they did a lot of real interesting things musically and developed their own instantly recognizable style which was imitated in its own way (mostly poorly). they were way more Beck than Weird Al.

Early Beasties were absolutely part of the rap scene, "Boyz N tha Hood" was directly inspired by the Beasties, and NWA used to rap over Beastie Boys music in the early days

Chuck D and PE were huge fans, Ad Rock got LL Cool J signed by giving Rubin his demo tape

another important thing that I think is underrated in terms of BB in the core hip hop market is their falling out with Def Jam and eventual signing with Capitol really cost them a lot of momentum. Hip hop years were like dog years back then, and the difference between dropping their second album in '89 vs it coming out in '87 or '88 was a big deal.

i agree about their early def jam days and turning rick on to LL and all that. they definitely had some 80s cred.

but it is really more about hearing their later stuff occasionally and thinking: oh man i can't believe they were still rapping like that! its funny. i mean into the 2000s! the beats and music could sound cool though for sure. i still wish their was an instrumental version of paul's boutique that i could buy on CD.

yeah I'm only referring to the 90s when I became familiar with them, back in the 80s they were definitely part of a scene which was way more novelty as a whole

Hip hop years were like dog years back then, and the difference between dropping their second album in '89 vs it coming out in '87 or '88 was a big deal.

makes me think of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, they were so ahead of the curve in 1982 but three years later seemed to be a decade behind somehow

the one dude probably did some good for Tibet but I have no use for them

the best beastie boys album is the instrumental one that copied the perry+kingsley album cover.

(mean that genuinely, btw. this groove is rather infectious, there's a song with "bobo" in the title, + oh hey another killer beat.)

I used to have that album. It was nice of Money Mark to make an album for the Beastie Boys and let them take all of the credit. I looked him up on Wikipedia and it seems like he has had a pretty interesting career since. I didn't realize he'd played keyboards in Cypress Hill's Tiny Desk last year (which I really enjoyed watching). I'm glad he's still around.

I was a huge fan of them up through Check Your Head, which was made by the Money Mark instrumentals. Even by then their rap style was starting to sound like how your dorky boss thinks people rap. After that they just paid a bunch of A-list producers to prop up the same old shit. They could have been worse as aging celebrities go, though. I respect that they just retired after MCA died and have stayed pretty quiet since.

Ad-Rock and Kathleen Hanna appear to be still married? maybe he is a retired house husband.

nah Hello Nasty is their best, I think it's wildly creative album, hard to even tag it as 'hip hop' really

not really a fan of the ones after that - when that anthology came out it was strongly implied they were retiring. their live shows at least still ruled.

I think the Beastie Boys did update their rap style after Paul's Boutique. Their first two albums have a lot of the group-focused approach where they trade single lines back and forth, one guy setting up a rhyme and another finishing it. On Check Your Head and Ill Communication, they did a lot less of that, and lot more taking turns reciting sets of their own lines. Four bars of just MCA, then four of just Mike D, etc. CYH and IC also have a lot less of the move where everybody shouts the word at the end of a line. I suspect both shifts were influenced by the way rap had changed in general by that point.

It's not that the first two albums have no songs where one guy raps a bunch of lines in a row, or that the next two have none of the old school group-focused approach. But there's a clear trend. Compare "Brass Monkey" and "Shadrach" with "So Watcha Want" and "Sure Shot".

Then they shifted back on Hello Nasty, which is interesting. It seems more self-consciously retro at that point.

After that they just paid a bunch of A-list producers to prop up the same old shit

I don't think the Beastie Boys ever used an A-list producer after Rick Rubin, outside of a remix here and there. Unless you count the Dust Brothers because of their stuff with Tone Loc.

yeah I think they are largely self produced after Pauls

You're right. I should have looked that up before posting. I don't know why I thought that was the case. I think I also overstated Money Mark's involvement on "In Sound".

i think that constant self-improvement as musicians (NOT rappers lol) is part of what helped their enduring goodwill among fans+colleagues. also, personal opinions about some of its topics aside, they mostly made really positive vibe music. same kinda energy as people like biz markie.

(note to self: de la soul collabed with both the beasties+biz.)

"dance away" is annoying, bry stop whining challenge

barry white sang it better

My mum loved that song - and Bryan Ferry, frankly - so I must disagree.

out of reach is out of touch

he shd have stuck to doxxing her car's numberplate imo

It goes over well at karaoke, despite American audiences not having a clue what it is; and I like the weird dissonant bass pokes in the verses.

real hedz kno that best roxy-karaoke practice is to screw up yr eyes as u bellow-emote "GROWING POTATOES BY THE SCORE"

The version on the Babylon Berlin soundtrack is so good.

Money Mark? I chatted with his kid at a coffeshop here in Ams a couple of summers ago.

(maybe that belonged in the name-dropping thread)

"Lean On Me" is the single most overrated song of the 1970s

Maybe not most, but def vastly overrated. Always flip the station when that comes on, and that goes for the Timex Social Club version too.

its just overplayed.

my dad has an al jarreau cd that he plays at night and i can hear al's version from my dad's bedroom sometime and i kinda always wonder why al jarreau felt he had to cover a massive 70s hit IN the 70s. its not that different. he did a whole album of bill withers in the late 70s. but my dad just has it on a best-of.

practically alone among early 90s pop rave hits i don't think i get bassomatic's fascinating rhythm

should "Lean On Me" replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the US national anthem?

should “lean back” replace “the star spangled banner” as the US national anthem?

practically alone among early 90s pop rave hits i don't think i get bassomatic's fascinating rhythm

appropriately sampled by real lies for 'one club town'

I buy and enjoy about 75% of International Anthem's releases but I can't believe people take Carlos Niño seriously

dying at the CPAC rendition upthread which I somehow missed. holy shit.

oops wrong thread

Fugazi would have been a better band with more Guy and less Ian.