2010 Best of
Well here we are again. As many of you know every year I compile some of my favorite songs that came out in the year and give the mix away at the end of the year. I used to send out actual cds but now I just post things and let you download them yourself. I still limit myself to what will fit on an 80 minute cd-r. Each year I do one “best of the year” cd and one cd of something else. This year the bonus cd is all Bounce (more on that later). This year the two cds are on google docs, you can find the cds at the following links:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5gSrfeTxCNtZjg1NTQwOWUtNTkxMS00YmUyLThkNDYtODkxMzc2NGU5ZTMx&sort=name&layout=list&num=50
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5gSrfeTxCNtZWY0ODQxNDgtOWQ0ZC00ZjcwLWIwNTYtN2IzNTM1MzNhOTA0&hl=en&authkey=CJGXj_UK
With that, here is the list, write-up is below! Happy New Year!
1. Freaknik Is Back by T-Pain (from: Freaknik: The Musical)
2. Monster by Kanye West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver (from: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy)
3. Katey vs. Nobby by Galactic ft. Katey Red and Sissy Nobby (from: Ya-Ka-May)
4. Evil Boy (F**k You In the Face Mix) by Die Antwoord (from: $O$)
5. Shine Blockas by Big Boi (from: Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Son Of Chico Dusty)
6. Turn Me Away (Get Munny) by Erykah Badu (from: New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh)
7. Rude As Jude by Dom (from: Sun Bronzed Greek Gods)
8. Gay Human Bones by Harlem (from: Hippies)
9. Time Fading Lines by Woods (from: At Echo Lake)
10. The Mermaid Parade by Phosphorescent (from: Here's To Taking It Easy)
11. Loose Change by Suckers (from: Wild Smile)
12. Victory by The Walkmen (from: Lisbon)
13. Occident by Joanna Newsom (from: Have One On Me)
14. Zebulon by Rufus Wainwright (from: All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu)
15. Everything Is New by Antony & The Johnsons (from: Swanlights)
16. I Think Ur A Contra by Vampire Weekend (from: Contra)
17. He Would Have Laughed by Deerhunter (from: Halcyon Digest)
Details:
1. Freaknik Is Back
OK I know. It’s T-Pain. But this is not the first time something like this has ended up on my year-end list. Shakira and Beyonce have both made appearances before, and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” almost ended up on this year’s list too. Plus Missy Elliot and Outkast have been included before, and, while they both tend to be critically lauded, they unquestionably make what is most reasonably described as simply “pop music.” Now that we are post-post- everything, I have taken the position that there is no such thing as “so bad it’s good” music. Some music is just bad. Some music is just good.
That being said, “Freaknik: the Musical” was legitimately amazing.* And above all else, in this song, T-Pain rhymes “rice pilaf” with “jacking me off.” If that does not make you happy there is something seriously wrong with you.
*For those that don’t know this is what Freaknik was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaknik. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaknik_The_Musical
2. Monster
There are several reasons why this is the Kanye track I have included:
A. because of the song is awesome, but I could have easily included any one of about six songs from this album.
B. because of how much he polarizes people with his words/behavior, and I get the impression that what this song is about. I never understand this- with any artist. What do you care what Kanye says or does outside his music? He’s a rapper, not a member of congress. Relax.
C. and finally, because Nicki Manaj’s verse at the end of this song is probably the single best moment on what is unquestionably one of the best albums of the year- and it’s not even her album. She has publicly stated her plan is to make enough money to take care of her family making whatever shitty music sells the most, and her recent solo album unfortunately reflects this sentiment. Maybe when she makes enough money making top 40 stuff she will make rap records that sound like her verse on this song. That would be nice.
3. Katey vs. Nobby
You will find both Katey Red and Sissy Nobby on the group of bounce songs I am posting as this year’s “bonus” compilation. Bounce is a kind of rap music from New Orleans that I have an ongoing infatuation with and love for (Sissy Nobby was on last year’s best of). Galactic is a band from New Orleans best known to me before their record this year, “Ya-Ka-May,” as one more in the homogenous herd of jammy-jam bands that hippies love to go see at outdoor festivals.
For Ya-Ka-May however, Galactic got at least one guest musician for every track and created a record that is a true celebration of the breadth of real, local New Orleans music- not just the Bourbon street “jazz” that inspires tourists to buy awful paintings of turquoise trumpets on Jackson Square, but all kinds of music, from “underground” artists like the sissy rappers to Alan Toussaint to the Mardi Gras Indians.
I had a hard time choosing which track to include here, but Katey Red’s line in this song about what she wants to order at Popeye’s has pretty much given Jason the anthem of his life, so this one ended up on top. Every track on the album is great though.
Props to my friend Toups for basically forcing me to take a copy of this album at our ill-fated bounce night at Mary’s, I never would have listened to it otherwise.
4. Evil Boy
Now that I am officially an adult, white, male, American contemporary music lover I am legally obligated to be fascinated with African music. Die Antwoord are rappers? performance artists? weirdoes from South Africa. I am going to let the song speak for itself here in what is apparently a mix of English, Afrikaans, Dutch and Xhosa.
Selected [Translated] Lyrics:
Yo evil boy! Why is your incana [dick] so big? // All the better to love you with. // No glove no love, if you don't believe me, take your dirty hands off my umthondo wisizwe. [spear of the nation]*
*A dick joke. Umkhonto we Sizwe, “Spear of the Nation”, was an armed group that Nelson Mandela led to fight apartheid years ago.
Girls wanna say hello to me. // From the zef* side to the fuckin overseas. // I'm looking at who's looking at me. // Looking at you looking back, who can that be? // When I'm all up this, Bitch you know who the motherfuck it is. // Roll through the club like a tikoloshe.**
*”Zef” is South African slang for what they call “common” whites and low-class culture. We would say “white-trash.”
**A common African superstition/ boogy-man/ hairy little demon thing with a giant penis.
Mamelapa umnqunduwakho. [Listen here you fucking asshole] // andifuni ukuyaehlatini. [I don't want to go to the bush with you] // Sukubammba incana yam. [Don't touch my penis] // Andi so staban. [I'm not gay] // Incana yam yeyamantobi. [This penis is for the girls] // Incana yam iclean. [My penis is clean] // Incana yam inamandla. [My penis is strong] // Ndiyinkwekwe enkulu. [I am a big boy] // Angi funi ukuba yeendota. [Don't want to be a man] // Evil boy for life, yebo. [Yes] // Evil boy for life!*
* While this verse translates to something that seems really homophobic, it is apparently actually about the rapper refusing a ritual circumcision in the bush. His refusal to participate in this tradition means, in the eyes of his people, he is unclean and/or gay and will never be a man. Hence, the name of the song.
For a bonus craziness here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbW9JqM7vho
5. Shine Blockas
This album is a great example of how useless the old guard music industry is at this point. The album was held back so long (over two years) that pretty much every song on two different versions of it leaked at some point while the record label was refusing to/waiting to release it.
So, rather than release an album of songs the world had already heard, Big Boi just recorded an entirely new set of songs this year and the thing turned out to be great. Big Boi showed on this album that he is not simply a great rapper, but really a great songwriter- certainly giving his (I say somewhat overrated) other half a run for his money. This is my favorite song from the album.
6. Turn Me Away (Get Munny)
So Ms. Badu made another amazing record this year, and I was hesitant to put what is basically a joke song about being a gold-digger on this list, but that base line is ridiculous, and in the end maybe the song is less a joke and more just keeping it really real.
7. Rude as Jude
Dom’s “Sun Bronzed Greek Gods EP” is my choice for album of the year (though it is just an EP). I FUCKING LOVE every single song on the album. The whole thing sounds like you are living in these photos: http://ryanmcginley.com/photographs. And given my choice, that is how I would always prefer to live: ugly, sexy, 23 years old and out of goddamn town.
8. Gay Human Bones
My friend Chip told me this was the best show he saw this year so I got this record. It’s pretty damn good. I can see people saying it sounds too much like the Black Lips, but those guys kind of have their heads in their asses so I’m totally fine with Harlem being a little derivative if they keep things this hooky. “Gay Human Bones” is crazy catchy though I have no idea what it is about. As far as I can tell the chorus is, no joke: “My basketball team’s name is ‘Gay Human Bones,’ we win most the games that play at my home.” Marvelous.
9. Loose Change
An incredibly optimistic song with few lyrics. I believe it is about being open to anything at any time so you don’t miss any love or any chance for love, or something to that effect.
But no matter what it is about, it is unquestionably uplifting and full of feeling. I said last year I hoped for good things from this band and while they have not gone the direction I expected, they have not disappointed, adding a pleasant bit of substance to their already interesting and expansive songs.
10. Victory
I think this is either a breaking-up or getting-back-together song. Either way I love it because it takes the best part of one of my favorite songs from their last record (the last minute or so of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkBFwGvh2I&feature=related ) and turns it into a whole song. This kind of controlled, repeated detonation is what this band does best.
11. Time Fading Lines
As I get older and consume more and more and more music I am forced to acknowledge that the primary reason I like some new things is because they sound like other/older things. See my Killer Mike/ Ice Cube discussion from a couple years back.
I have pretty much loved everything this band has done. But I believe it is mostly? at least partly? because everything they do sounds, for me, like a combination of two things I love:
A. This theme song from Louie CK’s old sitcom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd5ufEvoZX8; and
B. The entire After the Gold Rush album, which I cannot link to because Neil Young’s sings keep getting pulled from youtube.
12. The Mermaid Parade
My favorite country album of the year is from a band from Athens, Georgia, now, of course, based in Brooklyn. I did not know this was an Athens band until I started writing this blurb and I did a little research, but it makes perfect sense. The speaker in this song is like so many people I knew there. Utterly devastated and somehow, despite being an artist, surprised, by the treachery of love and circumstance.
I liked this song initially because it reminded me of the way my dad wrote lyrics, and I liked the way none of the instruments were quite together. But when I heard the lyric “Goddamn it Amanda goddamn it all” my heart just broke open. This is one of the saddest songs I have heard in ages, and in contrast to the other very sad song on this list, “Zebulon,” which is clear and certain, this song is ragged, and so will either grab you immediately and make you cry, or, unfortunately, irritate you and lead you to conclude it is a bit cheesy….
13. Zebulon
Rufus Wainwright’s mother, also a famous musician, was dying when he wrote this album and was dead by the time it was released. This was apparently her favorite song on the album. The song is sad and has a feeling of darkness that is miraculously palpable, yet the song still manages to give a feeling of peace.
I like the extended silence at the end of the song- an interesting contrast to another song on this list, “He Would Have Laughed.”
14. Occident
I know I am beginning to repeat myself, but again, the whole “Have One On Me” album is amazing- and it is a triple album. There are so many good songs on there that it was difficult to choose one but I am a sucker for art about art (that might also be about love) and the first lines of this song had me from the first time I heard it: “Mercy me, the night is long // Take my pen to write you this song // Lord is it harder to carry on, or to know when you are done?”
15. Everything is New
Starting last year I asked Jason to pick one song to be on the list. Last year he chose Twista’s “Wetter,” so this year’s pick is quite an improvement. The lyrics pretty much consist entirely of the title phrase repeated again and again, nevertheless, in context it is not difficult to understand what Antony is trying to get across.
16. I Think Ur a Contra
I have no idea what this song is about but it gives me a feeling of absolute anarchistic rebellion against love and domesticity. And while I know that the arrangement is kind of a Wilco rip off (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxH9-TYseY), this is my favorite song these guys have ever made, and I like pretty much everything they do. I really hope they develop this kind of sound more as they make more music.
17. He Would Have Laughed
The liner notes for this album apparently indicate that this song is dedicated to Jay Reatard, a kind of badass, up and coming musician and friend of the band that died of a cocaine overdose this year. The lyrics do not make much sense to me read all together, but I like the lyrics a lot anyway because of their strange poetic familiarity: “only bored as I get older” and “I don’t need nobody on my bond”- like that Taj Mahal song. The music itself is beautiful and then suddenly changes near the end, then abruptly cuts off.
____
Now to the bonus cd: Bounce! This was very arguably the year bounce broke. Thanks to the near total dominance of the bounce scene by the sissy rappers there have been articles and stories in all kinds of national media about this very local New Orleans kind of music. Magnolia Shorty’s song “Smoking Gun”, which was my favorite song of the year and would have been on the best of list if I hadn’t planned on making this bounce mix, is also getting some national attention now because she was fucking shot to death in her car a few weeks ago.
The songs on this mix run from about 1993-2010, all the way from some of the first popular bounce songs to a song that came out this year on a kind-of pop remix bounce record. Jason really helped me out on this in trying to guess the year some of this stuff came out, and in some cases, trying to figure out what the song/artist was actually called. Because so much of this music began life as a bootleg, there is no publication data- sometimes our first guesses about when something came out were revealed by a little internet research to be off by as much as five years. So, take the information presented here with a grain of salt, but take the music and catch a goddamn wall:
1. Sporty Talkin Sporty by Sporty T - 1993
2. Shake Fa Ya Hood by Ricky B- 1995
3. Pump Tha Party by Partners -N- Crime- 1995
4. Lemme Get That Outcha by Cheeky Blakk - 1995
5. Smokin Dat Weed by Lady Red - 1996
6. Monkey on the Dick by Magnolia Shorty - 1996
7. Back That Ass Up by DJ Jubilee - 1996
8. N.O. Block Party (Hot Girl Bounce) by Partners -N- Crime w DJ Jubilee - 1997
9. Melpomene Block Party (Punk Under Pressure) by Katey Red & Dem Hoes - 1999
10. Gin in my System Big Freedia - 1999
11. Where Ya Baby Mama by 5th Ward Weebie - 2001
12. Bend Over by Gotti Boy Chris - 2008
13. Ugly Buggin Me by Katey Red - 2008
14. Gitty up by Sissy Nobby - 2009
15. Beat It Out the Frame by Sissy Nobby - 2009
16. Ya'll Get Back Now by Big Freedia - 2010
17. Smoking Gun by Magnolia Shorty - 2010
18. Drop Real Low by MC Shakie - 2010
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5gSrfeTxCNtZjg1NTQwOWUtNTkxMS00YmUyLThkNDYtODkxMzc2NGU5ZTMx&sort=name&layout=list&num=50
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5gSrfeTxCNtZWY0ODQxNDgtOWQ0ZC00ZjcwLWIwNTYtN2IzNTM1MzNhOTA0&hl=en&authkey=CJGXj_UK
With that, here is the list, write-up is below! Happy New Year!
1. Freaknik Is Back by T-Pain (from: Freaknik: The Musical)
2. Monster by Kanye West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver (from: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy)
3. Katey vs. Nobby by Galactic ft. Katey Red and Sissy Nobby (from: Ya-Ka-May)
4. Evil Boy (F**k You In the Face Mix) by Die Antwoord (from: $O$)
5. Shine Blockas by Big Boi (from: Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Son Of Chico Dusty)
6. Turn Me Away (Get Munny) by Erykah Badu (from: New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh)
7. Rude As Jude by Dom (from: Sun Bronzed Greek Gods)
8. Gay Human Bones by Harlem (from: Hippies)
9. Time Fading Lines by Woods (from: At Echo Lake)
10. The Mermaid Parade by Phosphorescent (from: Here's To Taking It Easy)
11. Loose Change by Suckers (from: Wild Smile)
12. Victory by The Walkmen (from: Lisbon)
13. Occident by Joanna Newsom (from: Have One On Me)
14. Zebulon by Rufus Wainwright (from: All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu)
15. Everything Is New by Antony & The Johnsons (from: Swanlights)
16. I Think Ur A Contra by Vampire Weekend (from: Contra)
17. He Would Have Laughed by Deerhunter (from: Halcyon Digest)
Details:
1. Freaknik Is Back
OK I know. It’s T-Pain. But this is not the first time something like this has ended up on my year-end list. Shakira and Beyonce have both made appearances before, and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” almost ended up on this year’s list too. Plus Missy Elliot and Outkast have been included before, and, while they both tend to be critically lauded, they unquestionably make what is most reasonably described as simply “pop music.” Now that we are post-post- everything, I have taken the position that there is no such thing as “so bad it’s good” music. Some music is just bad. Some music is just good.
That being said, “Freaknik: the Musical” was legitimately amazing.* And above all else, in this song, T-Pain rhymes “rice pilaf” with “jacking me off.” If that does not make you happy there is something seriously wrong with you.
*For those that don’t know this is what Freaknik was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaknik. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaknik_The_Musical
2. Monster
There are several reasons why this is the Kanye track I have included:
A. because of the song is awesome, but I could have easily included any one of about six songs from this album.
B. because of how much he polarizes people with his words/behavior, and I get the impression that what this song is about. I never understand this- with any artist. What do you care what Kanye says or does outside his music? He’s a rapper, not a member of congress. Relax.
C. and finally, because Nicki Manaj’s verse at the end of this song is probably the single best moment on what is unquestionably one of the best albums of the year- and it’s not even her album. She has publicly stated her plan is to make enough money to take care of her family making whatever shitty music sells the most, and her recent solo album unfortunately reflects this sentiment. Maybe when she makes enough money making top 40 stuff she will make rap records that sound like her verse on this song. That would be nice.
3. Katey vs. Nobby
You will find both Katey Red and Sissy Nobby on the group of bounce songs I am posting as this year’s “bonus” compilation. Bounce is a kind of rap music from New Orleans that I have an ongoing infatuation with and love for (Sissy Nobby was on last year’s best of). Galactic is a band from New Orleans best known to me before their record this year, “Ya-Ka-May,” as one more in the homogenous herd of jammy-jam bands that hippies love to go see at outdoor festivals.
For Ya-Ka-May however, Galactic got at least one guest musician for every track and created a record that is a true celebration of the breadth of real, local New Orleans music- not just the Bourbon street “jazz” that inspires tourists to buy awful paintings of turquoise trumpets on Jackson Square, but all kinds of music, from “underground” artists like the sissy rappers to Alan Toussaint to the Mardi Gras Indians.
I had a hard time choosing which track to include here, but Katey Red’s line in this song about what she wants to order at Popeye’s has pretty much given Jason the anthem of his life, so this one ended up on top. Every track on the album is great though.
Props to my friend Toups for basically forcing me to take a copy of this album at our ill-fated bounce night at Mary’s, I never would have listened to it otherwise.
4. Evil Boy
Now that I am officially an adult, white, male, American contemporary music lover I am legally obligated to be fascinated with African music. Die Antwoord are rappers? performance artists? weirdoes from South Africa. I am going to let the song speak for itself here in what is apparently a mix of English, Afrikaans, Dutch and Xhosa.
Selected [Translated] Lyrics:
Yo evil boy! Why is your incana [dick] so big? // All the better to love you with. // No glove no love, if you don't believe me, take your dirty hands off my umthondo wisizwe. [spear of the nation]*
*A dick joke. Umkhonto we Sizwe, “Spear of the Nation”, was an armed group that Nelson Mandela led to fight apartheid years ago.
Girls wanna say hello to me. // From the zef* side to the fuckin overseas. // I'm looking at who's looking at me. // Looking at you looking back, who can that be? // When I'm all up this, Bitch you know who the motherfuck it is. // Roll through the club like a tikoloshe.**
*”Zef” is South African slang for what they call “common” whites and low-class culture. We would say “white-trash.”
**A common African superstition/ boogy-man/ hairy little demon thing with a giant penis.
Mamelapa umnqunduwakho. [Listen here you fucking asshole] // andifuni ukuyaehlatini. [I don't want to go to the bush with you] // Sukubammba incana yam. [Don't touch my penis] // Andi so staban. [I'm not gay] // Incana yam yeyamantobi. [This penis is for the girls] // Incana yam iclean. [My penis is clean] // Incana yam inamandla. [My penis is strong] // Ndiyinkwekwe enkulu. [I am a big boy] // Angi funi ukuba yeendota. [Don't want to be a man] // Evil boy for life, yebo. [Yes] // Evil boy for life!*
* While this verse translates to something that seems really homophobic, it is apparently actually about the rapper refusing a ritual circumcision in the bush. His refusal to participate in this tradition means, in the eyes of his people, he is unclean and/or gay and will never be a man. Hence, the name of the song.
For a bonus craziness here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbW9JqM7vho
5. Shine Blockas
This album is a great example of how useless the old guard music industry is at this point. The album was held back so long (over two years) that pretty much every song on two different versions of it leaked at some point while the record label was refusing to/waiting to release it.
So, rather than release an album of songs the world had already heard, Big Boi just recorded an entirely new set of songs this year and the thing turned out to be great. Big Boi showed on this album that he is not simply a great rapper, but really a great songwriter- certainly giving his (I say somewhat overrated) other half a run for his money. This is my favorite song from the album.
6. Turn Me Away (Get Munny)
So Ms. Badu made another amazing record this year, and I was hesitant to put what is basically a joke song about being a gold-digger on this list, but that base line is ridiculous, and in the end maybe the song is less a joke and more just keeping it really real.
7. Rude as Jude
Dom’s “Sun Bronzed Greek Gods EP” is my choice for album of the year (though it is just an EP). I FUCKING LOVE every single song on the album. The whole thing sounds like you are living in these photos: http://ryanmcginley.com/photographs. And given my choice, that is how I would always prefer to live: ugly, sexy, 23 years old and out of goddamn town.
8. Gay Human Bones
My friend Chip told me this was the best show he saw this year so I got this record. It’s pretty damn good. I can see people saying it sounds too much like the Black Lips, but those guys kind of have their heads in their asses so I’m totally fine with Harlem being a little derivative if they keep things this hooky. “Gay Human Bones” is crazy catchy though I have no idea what it is about. As far as I can tell the chorus is, no joke: “My basketball team’s name is ‘Gay Human Bones,’ we win most the games that play at my home.” Marvelous.
9. Loose Change
An incredibly optimistic song with few lyrics. I believe it is about being open to anything at any time so you don’t miss any love or any chance for love, or something to that effect.
But no matter what it is about, it is unquestionably uplifting and full of feeling. I said last year I hoped for good things from this band and while they have not gone the direction I expected, they have not disappointed, adding a pleasant bit of substance to their already interesting and expansive songs.
10. Victory
I think this is either a breaking-up or getting-back-together song. Either way I love it because it takes the best part of one of my favorite songs from their last record (the last minute or so of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkBFwGvh2I&feature=related ) and turns it into a whole song. This kind of controlled, repeated detonation is what this band does best.
11. Time Fading Lines
As I get older and consume more and more and more music I am forced to acknowledge that the primary reason I like some new things is because they sound like other/older things. See my Killer Mike/ Ice Cube discussion from a couple years back.
I have pretty much loved everything this band has done. But I believe it is mostly? at least partly? because everything they do sounds, for me, like a combination of two things I love:
A. This theme song from Louie CK’s old sitcom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd5ufEvoZX8; and
B. The entire After the Gold Rush album, which I cannot link to because Neil Young’s sings keep getting pulled from youtube.
12. The Mermaid Parade
My favorite country album of the year is from a band from Athens, Georgia, now, of course, based in Brooklyn. I did not know this was an Athens band until I started writing this blurb and I did a little research, but it makes perfect sense. The speaker in this song is like so many people I knew there. Utterly devastated and somehow, despite being an artist, surprised, by the treachery of love and circumstance.
I liked this song initially because it reminded me of the way my dad wrote lyrics, and I liked the way none of the instruments were quite together. But when I heard the lyric “Goddamn it Amanda goddamn it all” my heart just broke open. This is one of the saddest songs I have heard in ages, and in contrast to the other very sad song on this list, “Zebulon,” which is clear and certain, this song is ragged, and so will either grab you immediately and make you cry, or, unfortunately, irritate you and lead you to conclude it is a bit cheesy….
13. Zebulon
Rufus Wainwright’s mother, also a famous musician, was dying when he wrote this album and was dead by the time it was released. This was apparently her favorite song on the album. The song is sad and has a feeling of darkness that is miraculously palpable, yet the song still manages to give a feeling of peace.
I like the extended silence at the end of the song- an interesting contrast to another song on this list, “He Would Have Laughed.”
14. Occident
I know I am beginning to repeat myself, but again, the whole “Have One On Me” album is amazing- and it is a triple album. There are so many good songs on there that it was difficult to choose one but I am a sucker for art about art (that might also be about love) and the first lines of this song had me from the first time I heard it: “Mercy me, the night is long // Take my pen to write you this song // Lord is it harder to carry on, or to know when you are done?”
15. Everything is New
Starting last year I asked Jason to pick one song to be on the list. Last year he chose Twista’s “Wetter,” so this year’s pick is quite an improvement. The lyrics pretty much consist entirely of the title phrase repeated again and again, nevertheless, in context it is not difficult to understand what Antony is trying to get across.
16. I Think Ur a Contra
I have no idea what this song is about but it gives me a feeling of absolute anarchistic rebellion against love and domesticity. And while I know that the arrangement is kind of a Wilco rip off (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxH9-TYseY), this is my favorite song these guys have ever made, and I like pretty much everything they do. I really hope they develop this kind of sound more as they make more music.
17. He Would Have Laughed
The liner notes for this album apparently indicate that this song is dedicated to Jay Reatard, a kind of badass, up and coming musician and friend of the band that died of a cocaine overdose this year. The lyrics do not make much sense to me read all together, but I like the lyrics a lot anyway because of their strange poetic familiarity: “only bored as I get older” and “I don’t need nobody on my bond”- like that Taj Mahal song. The music itself is beautiful and then suddenly changes near the end, then abruptly cuts off.
____
Now to the bonus cd: Bounce! This was very arguably the year bounce broke. Thanks to the near total dominance of the bounce scene by the sissy rappers there have been articles and stories in all kinds of national media about this very local New Orleans kind of music. Magnolia Shorty’s song “Smoking Gun”, which was my favorite song of the year and would have been on the best of list if I hadn’t planned on making this bounce mix, is also getting some national attention now because she was fucking shot to death in her car a few weeks ago.
The songs on this mix run from about 1993-2010, all the way from some of the first popular bounce songs to a song that came out this year on a kind-of pop remix bounce record. Jason really helped me out on this in trying to guess the year some of this stuff came out, and in some cases, trying to figure out what the song/artist was actually called. Because so much of this music began life as a bootleg, there is no publication data- sometimes our first guesses about when something came out were revealed by a little internet research to be off by as much as five years. So, take the information presented here with a grain of salt, but take the music and catch a goddamn wall:
1. Sporty Talkin Sporty by Sporty T - 1993
2. Shake Fa Ya Hood by Ricky B- 1995
3. Pump Tha Party by Partners -N- Crime- 1995
4. Lemme Get That Outcha by Cheeky Blakk - 1995
5. Smokin Dat Weed by Lady Red - 1996
6. Monkey on the Dick by Magnolia Shorty - 1996
7. Back That Ass Up by DJ Jubilee - 1996
8. N.O. Block Party (Hot Girl Bounce) by Partners -N- Crime w DJ Jubilee - 1997
9. Melpomene Block Party (Punk Under Pressure) by Katey Red & Dem Hoes - 1999
10. Gin in my System Big Freedia - 1999
11. Where Ya Baby Mama by 5th Ward Weebie - 2001
12. Bend Over by Gotti Boy Chris - 2008
13. Ugly Buggin Me by Katey Red - 2008
14. Gitty up by Sissy Nobby - 2009
15. Beat It Out the Frame by Sissy Nobby - 2009
16. Ya'll Get Back Now by Big Freedia - 2010
17. Smoking Gun by Magnolia Shorty - 2010
18. Drop Real Low by MC Shakie - 2010