my music “life” is not what it was when i was still in Denton. i have limited access to downloads and general internet access outside of my workplace. i was listening to new music on a daily basis back in college (equal parts thrilling and overwhelming), whereas here in Houston i’ve been focusing either on particular (sub)genres or artists.
it’s not a bad thing, per se, it’s more or less the way i operated through most of my middle school and high school years- it makes for genre “expertise” or what have you, which can be seen as either a good or bad thing.
my main fix of the past year and a half or so has been anything “hop,” sprinkled with any new releases from friends, favourite labels, and suggested artists. that hasn’t changed much, i suppose, as much as the source of my music has changed.
i’ve been listening to a lot of underground and/or classic rap and hip hop on my phone through an internet radio station, but i’ve been taking a break from it for the past month because i jammed nothing but Beats Basement through ALL of September. up until late August, i also listened to a lot of clic-hop and glitch-hop on Soma.fm, i cannot recommend them enough- they need and deserve your support.
also, i’ve somehow become saturated with the current hip hop scene, i’m more on top of it than i’ve ever been. thanks to cats like Kid Mero, Blockhead, Fat Tony, and Jeff Wiess (less frequently, but no less noteworthy), i know about the up and coming artists and releases, and i listen to the new mixtapes and singles from time to time, but it’s all harder for me to access (mediafire, megaupload, and most file sharing sites are blocked at work), so i’m sitting on the sidelines listening to people’s opinions on the matter…and i’m mostly okay with it. not as okay as i pretend, but it’s not something i can control.
that said, from the hip hop forefront, i recommend Shabazz Palaces, Homeboy Sandman, and Danny Brown. each one of these guys is pushing hip hop in different directions and i’m curious to see if anyone will decide to follow in their footsteps or if they will remain the exceptions to the current state of the scene. PLEASE CHECK OUT THE SONGS I LINKED, THEY ARE AMAZING.
from a more traditional/classic hip hop side, i have been loving Charizma (and Peanut Butter Wolf), Necro (HILARIOUS), Rasco, Hieroglyphics, and Freestlye Fellowship/Aceyalone for quite some time.
if someone had told sophomore year of high school emma that she would love hip hop the way that she does now, she would have laughed at you and said something like “Southern Lord Forever” or some other metal/hardcore reference. i cannot not express how much i love hip hop. just…cannot. it sounds cheezy, but when it’s done well, it’s otherworldly. delivery and production are everything to me nowadays, and it still surprises me sometimes, but i wouldn’t have it any other way.
on a similar note, i spent most of the summer glued to Flea Market Funk and WeFunk . i say similar, because you’d be surprised by how many hip hop beats come from funk samples. i got really funky in August. hahaha.
this past week, though, i’ve been listening to a lot of instrumental music on spotify. Air France, The Dead Texan, Dimlite (SICKEST JAZZ I’VE HEARD IN A LONG TIME, AND I WENT TO UNT), and Blue Sky Black Death. very different genres, but very much instrumental/background music.
AND GONJASUFI (I ALMOST FORGOT). you have to have zero expectations when you first listen to Gonjasufi, or else you will be disappointed. he gets bundled with the hip hop crowd, but he also gets thrown in with the hippie crowd and the modern psych crowd, but you have to listen to him without expecting ANY of that, trust me. he is a lot of fun (random tangent, i know).
anyway, that’s kind of how it’s been for me lately, a lot of Shugo Tokumaru and Blockhead on CD, mixed in with whatever i can get a hold of. it’s different. it gets old sometimes, but it’s not bad…it’s life, i guess.
this essay took a bunch of weird turns, much like the musical interests in my life. ya’ll should be set on musical suggestions for a while. haha. :)
