Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold

Poor Swoo. My erstwhile, music-loving college buddy couldn’t have seen it coming when he picked up his phone and answered my call one hot May afternoon.

“Swoo—“ I shouted breathlessly into the speaker, on my lunch break from my document review job in North Miami. “I’ve got to talk to you about Parquet Courts.”

Swoo: “I’ve heard good things man, they really worth all the hype?”

I proceeded to break it down for him. “I don’t know if it’s just that they resonate with the point that I’m at in my life, but this is…

Stealing this concept for an entry from Bill Simmons, aka, America's most popular sportswriter, who came up with the idea of designating four standout people, places, events, etc. in a given area of sports or culture as the "Mount Rushmore" of their given field. Now seems like a good time for me to employ it, and for my first entry, I'm discussing the four Memphis Rap albums that belong on my Mount Rushmore.

Introduction:

I was raised in that 901. The grimiest motherfucking city out tha Dirty South, a.k.a, the grimiest motherfucking area out da whole United States of Motherfucking…

On The Run. Tommy Wright III. 1996.

Time for a hilarious metaphor: If Three 6 Mafia is the Beatles of Memphis Rap, and by that I mean the group that everyone heralds as the premiere act synonymous with the genre of rap music, then Tommy Wright III is the Velvet Undeground, a.k.a., the less commercially viable and yet perhaps more widely revered and respected Memphis rap musician within knowledgeable Dirty South rap circles. (Spin Magazine recently published their list of the top 100 alternative albums of the 60's—three Velvet Underground albums made the top 25, and on one of the…

Back 2 Da Basics. Yo Gotti. 2006.

Three 6 and its affiliates aside, Yo Gotti stands as the most prominent rapper to emerge from Memphis. I was fortunate to come of age around the same time as Gotti, and watching him break out as a bona fide star with a consistent streak of badass-ness has been extremely gratifying, especially as Three 6 was going through its post-Most Known Unknown malaise.

Ironically, one of Gotti's most stand-out traits is the fact that his style is distinctly non-Memphis influenced, a fact Gotti himself acknowledged on the first track off Life, the album…

Mystic Stylez. Three 6 Mafia. 1995.

1995. East Coast versus West Coast is entering full bloom. 2Pac was getting out of jail and releasing millions of albums. Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, and Nas were critical and commercial darlings. Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were reveling in success post-N.W.A, while Eazy E was dying from AIDS. Public Enemy had broken up. Jay-Z is still a year away from releasing Reasonable Doubt. “Shook Ones (Part Two)” was rattling trunks in New York and nationwide. Inland from the coasts, Cleveland’s Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was blowing up with E 1999 Eternal. And below the Mason-Dixon…

My Top 25 Tracks of 2011

Note: As with my 2010 list, this list comes from a guy with no real credentials for making some dispositive list of the "best songs" of a given year. The very making of this list is an exercise in futility and a bastardization of music-writing. Oh well.

From my vantage point, 2011 was a strange year for popular music. Whereas 2010 marked a Year of the Juggernaut, with alpha-male artists in the world of hip-hop, Indie Rock, and electronic music (Kanye, Arcade Fire, and LCD Soundsystem, respectively) dropping major albums, 2011 might be considered…

Nos. 20-16

20. White Rune. Iceage. New Brigade

Bleak as a cold Nordic night, “White Rune” rides a bassline that wobbles forward unsteadily while somehow remaining unbearably rigid. Channeling Joy Division around the era they released a track that shares the same name as the band, Iceage kill it by sounding like a bunch of unhinged, post-punk wannabes, executing the sound they’re going for with an amateurish that’s near-perfect in its wanton disregard for composure of any sort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHgZLtJnZHE

19. John (If I Die). Lil Wayne. Tha Carter IV

BIG BLACK NIGGA, Rick Ross bellows in his second verse entrance…

Nos. 15-11

15. Rubber. Yuck. Yuck.

The concluding denouement on Yuck’s exceptional, self-titled debut album, “Rubber” is an exceptional juggernaut of a track that instantly leaps beyond the Dinosaur Jr./late 80’s alternative trappings of the tracks that come before it in its visceral delivery of the twin despotic sensibilities of regret and yearning. “Should I give in?” the chorus howls. Hardly a rhetorical statement, since “Rubber” confronts a very real personal struggle everyone, addict or not, faces at one point in his or her life. Call that no-good ex-boyfriend? Give up on an artistic pursuit to pay the bills? Buy…

Nos. 10-6

10. Video Games. Lana Del Rey. Born to Die

It’s criminal that proper respect for this song became a casualty of the ridiculous furor over Lana Del Rey’s authenticity and the endless adulation for Adele that coincided with “Video Games'” release. “Rolling in the Deep” won all the awards, but only because the general listening public could find it easier to rally around a track with a feel-good, self-empowering take on heartbreak delivered by an Average Jane like Adele than some pin-up girl’s thoroughly depressive, gut-wrenching turn as a downbeat, emotionally broken diva.

Look, there might be nothing…

No. 5-1

5. The Morning. The Weeknd. House of Balloons

The sleaziest song on this list, “The Morning” is equal parts a fascinating, F. Scott Fitzgerald-ian account of materialistic, amoral rich kids and street-level critique of the problems that beset the drug and sex-pushers of our age. “All that money/the money is the motive” the track proclaims, essentially paraphrasing the epochal Wu-Tang chorus “Cash rules everything around me” in an R&B setting. Nonetheless, the track is ambivalent about this fact of life, begrudgingly declaring, “Girl put in work,” despite the underlying ethical questions behind such a directive.

If nothing else,…