Month: March 2024

This could have been the title track for the entire blog. 🙂

Here’s another band I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t give a real chance until last year. Probably even sillier for me to pick a super recent song too. Don’t yuck my yum. I arrived, albeit late. They are legends. I’ve heard their stuff. But this one resonated! Might have to do with the 90,000 minutes of music I listened to last year!

“I’m pillow drumming on the sofa, I keep rocking past the coda, and evn if the world is ending, as I go out, you’ll hear me singing, I don’t feel no pain, when people make me mad, I don’t hear a word they say, just the sound of scratches”

Then we launch into the fantastically catchy part! Earworms gonna earworm.

“I hear records in my head everywhere that I go, I’ve got records in my head spinning out of control, they go ’round and around, and again, ’round and around, and again, ’round and around and, oh yeah, records in my head”

This song just kicks. The whole time. Start to finish. Top to bottom. Inside and out. The driving percussion and electric guitar take center stage, but that bass…

Cool coincidence that they shout out “she who was posted just before them”, Lana Del Rey, in the song. We’ll hear from Rihanna, (also shouted out) fairly soon as I glance at the playlist. We might have some Nirvana. I honestly don’t remember about that one.

I hope you rock today as much as Weezer rocks to this day. What a shelf-life that band has had. Keep kicking ass Rivers and Co.

Be good, do good. Always.

It’s amazing to me that you can be a big fan of a genre and it takes you so long to discover someone this good. The entendres aren’t on display like they are in some Weezy rhymes, but there’s a HARDness to Wiley’s delivery. He has a bit of a growl and it does WORK on this song. This is on display during this section below and in the “hype time” at 2:08.

“Now I only put out good vibrations, I don’t even see the lows, tunnel vision to the paper, I don’t really need…”

The verse starting at 2:22 is just….sustained THAT. Speed, style, you can FEEL it.

That’s a lot of CAPS I guess, but you can hear it, right? This sounds different than what you hear as “Hip Hop” now. Produced by Hippie Sabotage too, which probably explains a lot of that different sound. They are worth listening to as well. I’ve known them for longer so I’m not sure there’s stuff on the blog playlist, but check ’em out for sure.

Do something creative today. Write a poem. Draw something cute. Stretch that right-brain a little!

Be good, do good.

What a collection of sounds this song puts forth. Batiste is no joke of a talent, and paired with Wayne, we get a treat.

Best part of it though, is that it’s such a outside of the box beat for Wayne to rap on in that latter part. It’s definitely not what we’re used to, and it’s Wayne on that electric guitar too!

I won’t pretend to know much about what the lyrics are talking about outside of how it describes The City, but Weezy has a great verse over that beautiful piano.

“Time’s is hard, and the city’s uneasy, been a carnivore ever since I was teethin’, close the shower door on my city, it’s steamin’, I know I’m the God that my city believes in, Amen menage, The Devil been deceivin’ me, hard me on the hardtop, thinkin’ it was easy street, Mama used to scream at me and take me off that scenery, I been about a bag ’cause all I wanted was to be a G, that’s that New Orleans in me, I come from where the demons be, the dungeons and the dragons, I just asked them not to breathe on me, shit get difficult, then get nasty in the easy E, you don’t know what it mean to me, these mean streets, ain’t mean to me, gangster shit, life is a bitch, until she ain’t your bitch, the streets colder than the streets in Anchorage, swisher on my hip, make me walk like my ankle twist”

That’s a long verse to post, but it’s really on of Wayne’s best IMO. To have it over such a cool piano/beat combo is just icing on the cake, if you ask me. “I been about a BAG ’cause all I wanted was to BE A G”. Absolutely great.

I hope you dance through the day today with this song as the soundtrack. Do something fun for yourself. Be good, do good.

This song is way more than a song, as you’ll find out or have found out. The voice you hear on it is that of the late English writer, speaker, and interpreter of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy, Alan Watts.

I discovered Watts through watching reels on Instagram discussing the Yin and Yang. The video that contains the snippet I first heard about the “two fish” concept…essentially what I’ve discovered I need to strive for in all things…”balance”.

I enjoy that this song is set against the track of someone walking on a gravelly path. To me it speaks to being on a journey…and aren’t we all? We don’t talk about our journeys enough. Hell, until the last few years I don’t even know if I would even consider what I was doing “journeying” in any direction at all. I feel like I’ve just begun to get to know myself honestly.

That’s why this song stuck out to me.

Liveliness is change; it’s motion.

Applicable to so much. Really that’s the key to creating your own happiness I think. Discover. Explore.

Set an intention to discover something today, whatever it may be. Happy hunting!

No philosophy from me here today. I am just going to let this one sit and simmer. If this isn’t quintessential 90s Hip-Hop, then I don’t know what it is. In what I’ve listened to, it might be the best Andre 3000 performance there is. Just oozes his legendary style and technique.

So today, “throw your hands in the air and wave ’em like you just don’t care”.

Ben Joyette, wherever you are, thank you from the bottom of my heart for introducing me to Hip Hop. I treasure the memories of bus-rides sharing ear buds and runs with ya man. Hope you’re well.

Be well, everyone. Thanks again for reading.

“Black Metal Sparkle Folk” is how this band describes it’s sound. If that’s not a hook to get someone to listen, I don’t know what is.

“You think you know where I’m going, the truth is I haven’t got a clue, one thing I know where I’m going, there won’t be another you, and that don’t mean I found another man, and that don’t mean that I’ll fall in love again, where the ship is sailing, it don’t need a captain of the crew, where this train is traveling, the tracks lead me far away from you, and that don’t mean I found another man, and that don’t mean that I’ll fall in love again”

The harmonies in this song flit to and fro like bluebirds. Weaving so seamlessly together to evoke that emotions this song is meant to convey.

I am not sure if we have more Black Metal Sparkle Folk on the rest of our journey, but I am sure hopeful that we do!

I wish you peace today, for wherever you need it. Love ya.