Kanye goes to Japan, a great T-Swift cover, remembering two geniuses, and more...
What I'm Listening To in January 2021
Every month, I keep an ongoing playlist of songs that I want to keep in my listening rotation. These could be singles, loosies, album standouts, or just songs I can’t get out of my head, but they often have some significance to my own life or the state of the world. This was a strange, sad month, marked by the loss of two music legends. We remembered their legacy and tried to find joy where we could in January. If you want to get monthly updates on music and other (non-scheduled) things that I’m writing, subscribe to my newsletter.
Here’s what I’m listening to:
SOPHIE
LEMONADE
When I originally put this song on repeat this month, SOPHIE was still here. When I drafted this section of the newsletter, SOPHIE was still here. Now, as of January 30, 2021, she isn’t.
I feel comfortable calling SOPHIE both prolific and visionary. She was so good at creating. Her soundscapes, her lyrics, even her image– everything was so new and so meticulously crafted. “Immaterial” exemplifies this:
Without my legs or my hair
Without my genes or my blood
With no name and with no type of story
Where do I live?
Tell me, where do I exist?
Throughout her entire discography, through her production even, she explores this question. I’m not sure she ever found the answer, but what she did was exert her existence in such a beautifully unique way. In doing so, she planted herself as an icon in the trans community, the pop community, and the world at large.
January has been, to put it lightly, weird. The most cursed invention that man has ever imagined, the month of January is usually very bad. This month was especially so. As someone who hates both Trump for obvious reasons and Biden for reasons that should be more obvious but apparently are not, the ‘transition of power’ and Biden’s seemingly okay first days have been a whole stew of conflicting emotions. Not to mention that whole insurrection thing that happened early on!
Who better to usher in a truly weird month than SOPHIE? While I’ve always loved her 2018 album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, I haven’t delved into her early discography before this past month. “Lemonade” has been a great start.
SOPHIE preempted and birthed so much of today’s popular and experimental music (though it should be noted that she wasn’t a fan of the “experimental” moniker). “Lemonade” is a (literally) bubbly song that dances between bass-heavy electronic and euphoric dance. It’s Hyperpop before we were calling anything Hyperpop. Sometimes I think SOPHIE could see the future, but the truth is that she made this future. The world has lost someone so, so important. I pale at the thought of how much more she could’ve done.
Someone has compiled an extensive list of SOPHIE-produced songs. While the whole thing is worth checking out, personal highlights include “JUST LIKE WE NEVER SAID GOODBYE” (which made me tear up a bit this morning), “Is It Cold in the Water?,” “Faceshopping,” “Immaterial,” Charlie XCX’s “Vroom Vroom” and “After the Afterparty,” Cashmere Cat’s “9 (After Coachella),” Vince Staple’s “Yeah Right,” and Flume’s “Voices.”
serpentwithfeet, Sampha, Lil Silva
Fellowship
serpentwithfeet has delivered us a little warmth at the end of this cold, cold month. Sampha’s laughing backing vocals and Lil Silva’s organic-sounding production play up the lovingness in “Fellowship,” which gives a little hope for the future.
I never understood deep deep breaths
'Til you came around and you just changed the way I laughed
This is the blessing of my thirties
I'm spending less time worrying and more time recounting the love
In just over a month I’ll be turning 23, which makes me feel old and disappointed and generally not great. It’s easy to get caught up in the nowness of your early twenties, especially when one feels like one is squandering them while waiting for the pandemic to lift. This song is special because it not only reminds you that you can have fun in your thirties (and way beyond then, too), but it also reminds me that outlooks change. Maybe a lot of this won’t even matter to me then. Why should it matter to me now?
MF DOOM
Doomsday
Out of an incredibly prolific discography, it’s hard to pick something that can truly represent one of my favorite musicians of all time. Except for the fact that he seems to have a song that kind of sums his whole thing up: “Doomsday.”
This is not to say that, have you not listened to MF DOOM, you can get away with this; you can’t! One of the best rappers of all time, really contending for number one if we’re being honest, DOOM created a discography that is eclectic, prolific, and unbelievably influential. I’d have trouble describing how much his music has meant to me, let alone what it has meant to music. It feels tired to say, but whoever your favorite rapper is, DOOM is their favorite rapper.
Like SOPHIE, DOOM meticulously built his image. He was a recluse; nobody really got a window into who Dumile was, except through his lyrics. “Doomsday” reads like both an introduction and a will:
On Doomsday, ever since the womb
‘Til I'm back where my brother went, that's what my tomb’ll say
Right above my government, Dumile
Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who's to say?
Not only is this song DOOM introducing himself, but it’s also a fitting introduction to his style. He has the classic double entendre: either “right above my government, Dumile” (Dumile being his legal last name) or “ right above my government; DOOM’ll lay.” The production is one of DOOM’s best; the lyrics lay out his supervillain persona– “definition: supervillain/ one who is well-skilled in destruction, as well as building;” and it’s rife with clever wordplay and nerdy pop culture:
Broken household name usually said in hostility
Um… What is MF? You silly?
I’d like to take ‘means to the end’ for two milli.
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, that’s the audio daily double!
Rappers need to fall off just to save me the trouble
He was so good at wrapping lyrics together and tearing them apart. Truthfully, there will never be anyone else like him. There’s so much else to say about him, but at this point, what hasn’t been said?
Christian Lee Hutson
Betty
I never got a chance to write about one of my favorite songs of 2020, the folksy anthem of the Swift-Dessner-Antonoff trio that would have been odd to imagine before that odd year. This Christian Lee Hutson version, from his covers EP The Version Suicides (har har har, like nobody has made that pun before), is not quite as barn-burning as the Taylor Swift triumph, but it’s got a certain charm, as well as a different angle, something that’s paramount in a good cover.
Hutson’s version is quieter, more intimate, and, dare I say it, a little twee (in a non-annoying way). It almost feels like somebody asked Adrianne Lenker to arrange the cover; everything is close to the microphone and whispered like the performers are trying not to wake up their neighbors.
It’s easy, in the original, to get caught up in the parts you want to scream. Who doesn’t love the key change/lyric switchup in the last chorus? It’s a romcom climax and a headbanger moment:
Yeah, I showed up at your party
Will you have me? Will you love me?
Will you kiss me on the porch
In front of all your stupid friends?
and the outro. The outro! Pure bliss:
Standing in your cardigan
Kissin' in my car again
Stopped at a streetlight
You know I miss you
Taylor wraps up a song and an album-spanning narrative arc with gusto.
Christian Lee Hutson’s version, though, forces us to listen to the quiet parts. It feels like the want of a big climax, the moments before James (or, in this cover, Chris) pulls up to the long-awaited party. It’s the absence of catharsis:
Betty, right now is the last time
I can dream about what happens when
You see my face again.
Grimes, Channel Tres
Delete Forever – Channel Tres Remix
Another switch-up! This time in the opposite direction; here, Channel Tres brings some dancey, house vibes to a song that was initially a folksy (or as folksy as Grimes can go), banjo-driven, strangely comforting song about art as addictive self-immolation. With warm piano chords and a head-bobbing beat, it’s still pretty much about that, but a little more fun, I guess?
Teriyaki Boyz
I Still Love H.E.R. (feat. Kanye West)
A week or two ago, in my journey through all of the Fast and Furious movies, I watched Tokyo Drift. The movie was an absolute banger. There’s something about the style and the music choices in the early installments of the franchise that are unmatched. The Fast and the Furious had crop-top/low-rise camo pants content that would put any of these y2k wannabe tiktokers to shame, plus multiple instances of a mesh tank layered over a camo tank, which we should be emulating more, and Ja Rule all over the soundtrack (not to mention the ridiculous Ludacris/Nate Dogg venture “Area Codes”). 2 Fast 2 Furious gave us workwear Luda and some Southern Rap stunners.
Tokyo Drift took a hard left stylistically and went to the Tokyo street fashion scene. The movie has maybe one of the most iconic main themes of all time: the Neptunes-produced Teriyaki Boyz banger “Tokyo Drift (Fast and Furious).” It’s not exactly like The Neptunes were super cutting-edge in 2006, but a collaboration between them and the fathers of BAPE is mouthwatering, especially when it sounds that good.
Hearing the Teriyaki Boyz reminded me of a relic of a bygone internet-rap era: “I Still Love H.E.R.” featuring Kanye West. It’s from a time in Kanye’s life when he could make beats that were just pure endorphins; like “Touch the Sky,” his horns could bring me up on the worst day. My house could fall into a sinkhole and I would just throw Late Registration on and be like, “Yeah! I am coming up in the spot looking extra fly!”
“I Still Love H.E.R.” has Kanye’s fingerprints all over it; not knowing anything about the Teriyaki Boyz’s proficiency in corny mid-90’s Chicago rap, I can only assume Kanye was the one behind the song’s answer to Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” Both use “H.E.R.” to reference rap music–Common’s is “Hip-hop in its Essence is Real” (blah) and Teriyaki Boyz’s is “Hontō E Rap,” which means something like “real rap” (cool because it’s Japanese). The Boyz definitely are on their #realhiphop shit, referencing Pete Rock & CL Smooth and The Pharcyde. It’s a classic, it’s that real rap knowledge, it’s kind of a Common diss, what else could you want?
Nyck Caution
Bad Day (feat. Denzel Curry)
Speaking of #realhiphop, I’m entertaining the part of me that still enjoys the corny side of East Coast revivalism with this cut from Nyck Caution’s latest album, which I have not listened to. There’s stuff to roll your eyes at on here, but something about the Charlie Heat production and the bar-trading chemistry of Caution and Denzel Curry (a real offender when it comes to hip-hop corniness despite his strong discography) that is fun. Maybe this is a guilty pleasure!
Madlib & Freddie Gibbs
Sound Ancestors Uber Freestyle parts 1 & 2
With the slew of recent losses, I’ve been thinking a lot about giving people the flowers they deserve while they’re still here. If any two people deserve it, it’s Madlib and Freddie Gibbs, who are among the best producers and rappers alive, respectively.
On Friday, Madlib released an excellent solo album, arranged and mastered by Kieren Hebden, aka Four Tet. The same day, frequent collaborator Freddie Gibbs decided to take a break from posting grossly explicit videos on his Twitter to tweet two videos, saying “Freestyled in an Uber over some @madlib shit from his new album out today.”
I’m imagining the immaculate vibes in this Uber. Freddie and two friends are packed in the back seat; he’s sitting in the middle, spitting into his upturned phone. They’ve insisted that the driver play the new Madlib shit. It’s obviously very off the dome, as they say, but when Freddie finds the pocket, he’s still impressive. He’s also having COVID-unsafe fun that I can only be jealous of. How I long for a time when we’ll all be able to do that again.
You can listen to the entire playlist for January 2021 here: