Bob Marley and The Stranglers

My only complaint about "Hey Sparrow" from Peaking Lights is that it's too damn short. There's nothing more disappointing than hearing a song, deciding you like it a couple of minutes in, and then seeing that there's only another minute or so left before it's over. It's the musical equivalent of pouring yourself a heaping bowl of delicious cereal only to lift the milk carton and discover - gasp - it's too light! With its entrancingly subtle dub rhythms, delicate keys, and "groove-wave" guitar, "Hey Sparrow" puts the jam on your breakfast toast and will leave you wanting seconds.

Peaking Lights - Hey Sparrow

After considerable thought, I can best describe this track as Bob Marley's "Natural Mystic" crossed with "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. In my musical world, that is a serious compliment. Peaking Lights have been called "post-reggae," and other tracks on their new record 936 do indeed show a heavy dubstep influence. Combining an uncanny number of instrumental tracks for a two-person outfit, they spin a multilayered musical web that sneaks up on the listener and, before you know it, ensnares you utterly. 

I got tipped off to this excellent record by a pretty glowing review on Altered Zones; they have a couple of other tracks from 936 up on their site as well. Leave it to a married couple from Wisconsin, recording out of Los Angeles, to put together the first great record of spring 2011 (morning temperature in Cambridge today: 26 degrees). With superior instrumentation and some beautiful vocals, Peaking Lights are warming things up for all of us with a sound that defies easy classification, but definitely deserves to be in the rotation this spring training. 

Le Chanson Fait La Force

Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti this week from exile in the Central African Republic and South Africa accompanied by a number of political and entertainment figures from around the world. While I have no interest in getting into questions of Haitian politics, I do think it's pretty hilarious that traveling in the company of Danny Glover, an actor known best for playing crotchety veteran Murtough in the Lethal Weapon series 25 years ago, is considered a mark of distinction in the developing world.

Another Aristide supporter is of greater interest to me at the moment though: legendary Haitian singer/songwriter Manno Charlemagne. He's been called "the Bob Marley of Haiti" and any of a number of other superlatives. It's pretty hard to compete with this snippet from Manno's MySpace biography, so just give this a read and you'll get a sense of the esteem in which the artist is held by his fans:

"A soulful yet brazen balladeer, Manno for decades used his acoustic guitar and tender baritone voice as weapons against the brutal Duvalier regime and civilized indifference of Haiti's insulated upper class. A skinny, poor rebel from the slums, he was the little black fly in a cold glass of milk.

Born in 1948, he slipped out of his mother's womb with a clenched fist thrust up in the air; his birthsong was defiance. He picked up his first guitar as a teenager and has been playing, singing and writing songs ever since. In the classic troubadour tradition, he is a teller of truth who disguises his profoundly political messages by placing them inside hauntingly beautiful melodies. Similar to the storytelling traditions of the African griots who passed their history down through the generations from mouth to ear, Manno's protest songs with their caustic lyrics and gentle rhythms documented centuries of abuse suffered by the peasant class in Haiti, and captured the rawness of life in this black republic."

I caught a riveting program on CCTV documenting Aristide's return to Port-au-Prince, and the rabid passion with which his supporters greeted him bordered on the frightening. Part of the broadcast was set to Manno, a longtime Aristide backer and himself the Mayor of the capital city during Aristide's second term. I was moved to share some of his beautiful playing, and it is strictly for the aesthetic value of the music, and with no political implications one way or another, that I offer it up for your listening pleasure. My French Creole isn't really up to par these days anyway, so I can't make out much of what he's saying - though it has clearly not pleased any number of rulers in Haiti's troubled history.

In a country where two of the leading candidates for President were singers (Wyclef and Michel Martelly), listening to Manno and others is a reminder of the power of music to move people and hearkens back to a political tradition in music that has been sadly on the decline in our own country. Au fin en Haïti, peut-être que ça n'est pas l'union qui fait la force - c'est le chanson.

Manno Charlemagne - La Fimen (The Smoke)

Good Morning Vietnam

Check out this surprisingly uplifting track from Saigon's long-delayed and highly anticipated debut (!) studio album. It's hard to believe that the rapper who was introduced to much of the listening public through Turtle on Entourage back in 2005 has only now gotten his act together enough to release this much-hyped record. "Clap" is the first track I've heard off the album, which came out just after Valentine's Day, and I've been digging its triumphantly bouncy beat, perhaps a reflection of the artist's own joy at finally getting his music out there for the world to hear.

The song was produced by Just Blaze, who delivers a solid track. Of course, he's working with some great source material: Lamont Dozier's 1976 baby-making anthem "Let Me Make Love to You" is heavily sampled. The swelling strings and keys are also reminiscent of some more recent hip-hop offerings: Young Jeezy's "Go Crazy" (prod. by DJ Cannon) and Kanye's "Touch the Sky," both of which are themselves built around '70s samples from soul god Curtis Mayfield.

Obviously the use of a '70s sample and a showy R&B chorus isn't exactly uncharted territory in hip-hop production. That said, having the Notorious B.I.G.'s widow Faith Evans sing your choruses is a pretty legit way for a Brooklyn rapper to establish his street cred (Saigon is not actually from Ho Chi Minh City, but from a war zone of a different sort known as Brownsville). Gospel influences shine throughout (the singer's name is Faith, after all), and I'm pretty sure I even heard a "hallelujah" in there somewhere.

Saigon - Clap


I haven't heard the whole album, but my sense is that the positivity found on "Clap" isn't necessarily the record's dominant theme - not that surprising for a guy whose album release was delayed for 6 years by a variety of incidents including weapons charges (a knife) and getting stabbed in the head (gotta watch out for those knives). Still, this is a great track to lead with, if for nothing more than the catharsis it expresses at the release of an album that was a long time coming. Dig it.

Oscars the Grouch

The Oscars are stupid and I'm embarrassed that I watched some of the show yesterday. I had been planning on boycotting because of the sheer idiocy of not nominating Christopher Nolan as Best Director for Inception; whatever you thought of the movie, he should have won that award hands-down. To be totally fair, I haven't seen The King's Speech, so I just can't say if that deserved to beat out a pretty high-quality field. But I saw 8/10 of last year's nominees, and I thought that Hurt Locker was the second-worst of all those that I saw (better only than Up in the Air, which is just a crappy movie that sucks).

With some historical perspective, however, it is clear enough that the category has always had its problems. After all, Godfather III was nominated in 1990, Rocky beat out Taxi Driver in 1976, and Apocalypse Now somehow lost to Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979, the only explanation for which being that the voters were coked out of their skulls.

But enough of this talk about the moving pictures; what about the music? I would have liked to see a classical composer take home the Oscar for Best Original Score, if only because that's one of the rare venues that contemporary classical composers have for making a name for themselves (not to mention a few bucks). One might think that the Academy was swayed by Trent Reznor's personal celebrity in selecting The Social Network over great offerings from composing stalwarts Hans Zimmer and John Powell, but everybody knows that Oscar voters are immune to public pressure and hype, so that couldn't be the case.

Speaking of soundtracks, here's a piece from a Glaswegian band called Dam Mantle. I know nothing about them, but this track I first heard on Gorilla vs. Bear is nothing if not theatrical. Right around the 3:45 mark reminds me of that part in Homeward Bound when Shadow reunites with Peter after surviving his fall into the pit by the train tracks and everybody watching the movie has a good cry. But I digress. Anyway, enjoy the song.

Dam Mantle - Movement

Sounds of Summer

For guys of my generation, no movie conjures up semi-fictionalized memories of childhood quite like The Sandlot. A coming-of-age classic, The Sandlot uses the prism of the American pastime to hearken back to a highly idealized America - the summer of 1962 minus the racial tension and the impending danger of nuclear holocaust. That notwithstanding, the story of Scotty Smalls's struggle to make friends in a new town and the legend of future MLB benchwarmer Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez makes for a timeless look at American pre-adolescence and, as Roger Ebert put it, "its memories of what really matters when you are 12." 

As I re-watched The Sandlot for the 406th time last night, I was also struck by the quality of its period soundtrack. In terms of both era-defining songs and pure musical value, I'd have to put The Sandlot right up there with Forrest Gump in the all-time movie soundtracks Hall of Fame (other first-ballot HOFers: The Big Chill, Saturday Night Fever, Superfly, Pulp Fiction). Here's the tracklist:

1. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters - "Finger Poppin' Time"
2. Bill Black's Combo - "Smokie Part II"
3. The Tokens - "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"
4. The Drifters - "There Goes My Baby"
5. The Drifters - "This Magic Moment"
6. Ray Charles - "America the Beautiful"
7. Booker T and the MGs - "Green Onions"

8.The Champs - "Tequila"
9. The Surfaris - "Wipeout"

It's not just the quality of the music itself, but the situational usage of the songs that really knocks this soundtrack out of the colloquial park. I challenge anyone to find a better pairing of music and scene in film history than The Champs' "Tequila" providing the backdrop for the great Chewing Tobacco - Amusement Park Disaster of '62.

Except, perhaps, for another song-scene pairing from maybe the best-remembered scene of Sandlot: the day at the pool. Squints's unlikely steal of first base with Wendy Peffercorn undoubtedly inspired countless ill-advised attempts at replicating his legendary achievement; champions are often imitated, but rarely duplicated. I can't put it any better than Scotty Smalls did, so I won't even try. Just listen to the sweet sounds of Ben E. King and the Drifters and be transported back to a time when behind every fence was a Beast, every busted baseball was an omen, and the game would go on as long as fireworks lit up the summer sky.

Ben E. King and the Drifters - This Magic Moment


Michael "Squints" Palledorous walked a little taller that day. And we had to tip our hats to him. He was lucky she hadn't beat the crap out of him. We wouldn't have blamed her. What he'd done was sneaky, rotten, and low... and cool. Not another one among us would have ever in a million years even for a million dollars have had the guts to put the moves on the lifeguard. He did. He had kissed a woman. And he had kissed her long and good. We got banned from the pool forever that day. But every time we walked by after that, the lifeguard looked down from her tower, right over at Squints, and smiled.

The Best Rapper Ever

The debate over who is the best rapper ever really isn't a debate at all. It's just a lot of people bringing their opinions to the table and making the case for their guy without seriously considering any alternatives. Actually, that sounds a lot like political debate.

In the musical context at least, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, and the debate breaks down in some distinct ways. The usual suspects get a predictable amount of support: Biggie, 2Pac, Jay-Z. Underground breakthrough favorites like Talib Kweli and Mos Def have their advocates. Hip-hop heads of a certain age, like my 9th-grade history teacher Jose, will insist that KRS-One or Rakim were the greatest MCs of all time and that all rappers who came after are just pretenders to the throne. Lots of Puerto Ricans will argue that Big Pun is the best, and white boys will throw Eminem's name in the ring. Plenty of young kids these days will say Lil Wayne.

There are good arguments to be made for all these rappers, but those aren't the arguments that interest me so much. I'm more interested in the arguments over a particular class of rappers, those whose supporters make up for their modest numbers with their outsize passion and dedication. Some lesser-known MCs with such a hard core of dedicated fans include Del the Funky Homosapien, Canibus, MF Doom, Immortal Technique, and Papoose. My unequivocal favorite rapper of all time falls squarely in this category: the late, great Big L.

This Tuesday marked the 12th anniversary of Lamont "Big L" Coleman's murder in his Harlem neighborhood. At the time of his death he had only released one album, 1995's seminal Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous. Lifestylez is a difficult album to categorize. The opening track, "Put it On," is characteristic of the punchlines and multisyllabic rhyme schemes that would become his hallmark; that almost playful sensibility is also on display in "MVP" and "Let 'em Have It, 'L.'" The album suffers from generally terrible production: the beats scream mid-90s tackiness as surely as ripped baggy t-shirts or Mark-Paul Gosselaar. But it's not enough to obscure L's lyrical mastery, as evidenced by lines like, "no other rapper writes rhymes like these/ I'm cool as a light breeze/ I'm playing rappers out like strike threes."

Big L - Let 'em Have It, 'L'


Lifestylez also contains several tracks that may be the best "horrorcore" ever recorded. Tracks like "Danger Zone" and "Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous" are masterpieces of the genre, and so explicit that I've opted not to post any of those songs directly on the blog in case I ever run for office or otherwise seek employment in respectable society. Yet even in those nightmarish tracks, L doesn't lose his wit or take himself too seriously: "I've got styles you can't copy b----/ it's the triple six in the mix/ straight from h-e-double hockey sticks." H-e-double hockey sticks?? How bad a guy could he be?

 While Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous established Big L firmly in the underground rap scene, he was poised to explode onto the scene with 2000's The Big Picture, which was nearing completion at the time of his death. L had changed labels and was getting steady airplay for "Ebonics," the lead single off The Big Picture and a radio favorite back when people still listened to the radio.

When the album finally did come out, it didn't disappoint. Its opening track may be my single favorite hip-hop recording of all time: "The Big Picture (Intro)." It starts with an excerpt from Gang Starr's performance of "Full Clip" at a Big L tribute concert, and the song's dedication to Big L on the studio version has ensured that his name lives on over a classic Premo track. DJ Premier then cuts in with a legendary beat, and Big L finally starts rapping and absolutely rips the track to shreds. "What's this mf'ing rap game without L?/ Yo that's like jewels without ice/ that's like China without rice/ or the Holy Bible without Christ/ or the Bulls without Mike/ or crackheads without pipes..."

Big L - The Big Picture (Intro)


The first half of The Big Picture holds several more gems. "Size 'Em Up" backs Big L's high-intensity delivery with an equally explosive beat, creating the perfect tableau on which to work his multisyllabic magic. It is not unusual for his raps on this track and several others on the album to have four- or five-syllable rhymes at the end of each line; most rappers rhyme one or two syllables at most. For example: "MCs I squash and disgrace/ it's all about the Benjies/ so why your bills got Washington's face?" "Deadly Combination" with 2Pac is a classic too, and "98 Freestyle" shows Big L at his best, just rhyming and wowing the in-studio audience.

Big L - Size 'Em Up


Some of the later tracks in The Big Picture suffer from lack of actual Big L material and try to substitute guest verses or over-production to compensate. But other tracks show L leaving behind the punchlines and battle raps and demonstrating mastery of another rap style: storytelling. "The Heist" and "Casualties of a Dice Game" are straight narratives, breathless and innovative. When necessary for rhyming purposes, he doesn't shy from using decidedly un-gangsta words like "dames," "hasty," and "well-writ", or even inventing words like "crimey" (def.: a criminal associate; used for an internal rhyme with "grimy").

Some celebrities' careers probably benefited from their untimely deaths; imagine how depressing it would be to see Stevie Ray Vaughn headlining at Foxwoods or Jimi Hendrix playing the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for the benefit of the corporate sponsors. But Big L was very much the opposite. Clearly ascendant, and at the top of his craft, he was ultimately a victim of the violent street culture that ironically was the force behind his creative output.

There are arguments against anointing such a short-lived artist as the greatest rapper of all time, and they're frequently heard around the discussion of Biggie as well. To take an analogy, if a baseball player came in and played two seasons, hit .410, and had 75 homers each year, but then died or retired, could you legitimately call him the greatest baseball player ever? Well, it's my blog, and I say yes. Big L did what he could in the life that he had, dropping two unbelievable albums, and making the most of every track he was on. Sure, it's a shame that more people don't know his name. But for those who do know it, and know it well, there's really no question that he was the greatest of all time.

Best Rapper Alive

Given all the terrible tragedies in the news in 2010, I was surprised how touched I was on a human level by this little tidbit about Lil Wayne's time in Riker's Island. No music allowed? Where's the Eighth Amendment when you need it? The thought of poor Wayne having his iPod torn away from him by some Percy Wetmore wannabe tugged at my heartstrings as I counted down the days until Weezy's enigmatic middle initial "F" would finally stand for freedom. Wrongly incarcerated for merely exercising his Constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms, the Best Rapper Alive walking out of prison like a modern Mandela was cause for celebration for music fans and Second Amendment enthusiasts alike.

The title "Best Rapper Alive" shouldn't be handed out lightly, and it is with some trepidation that I rank Lil Wayne above Nas, a true icon and the man responsible for arguably the greatest rap album ever (Illmatic). For the record, my top five rappers of all time is as follows:

1. Big L 

2. Notorious B.I.G.

3. Lil Wayne

4. Nas

5. Jay-Z 

Nas gets bumped below Lil Wayne for, in my mind, releasing a slew of sub-par albums after Illmatic (see: Nastradamus, I Am..., Street's Disciple), notwithstanding a recent flurry of strong singles. 

In any case, the man of the hour is Lil Wayne. Not since Big L has a rapper kept you hanging on his every word and wondering where he'll go next, whether through the deftest of wordplay or outlandish statements like his repeated proclamations that he is in fact an alien. In a genre like hip-hop, where a lot of stuff can sound the same, Weezy scores major points for his unbelievable creativity and the sheer range of sounds that he's tried out. Not everything works - his rock album, Rebirth, was a disaster - but he gets points for effort, and even that flameout featured must-listen single "Drop the World." 

Now with Wayne a free man and Tha Carter IV tentatively scheduled for an April release, Weezy has unleashed a new single to show the world he's still the boss. I doubt I'm the first person to observe that "Six Foot Seven Foot," with its sample of "Day-Oh" and lack of a hook, bears a striking resemblance to "A Milli." But then again, "A Milli" was awesome, and "Six Foot Seven Foot" shows that Wayne didn't lose a step in prison, and maybe even regained some of the passion for rhyming that made 2008's Tha Carter III such fire.

Lil Wayne - Six Foot Seven Foot

The track from start to finish is quintessential Lil Wayne - braggadocio, turns of phrase, and puns that take a second or two to compute before you crack up laughing. The line "real g's move in silence like lasagna" alone puts the lie to anybody who would dare suggest that Wayne had fallen off. The track's only real weakness is the inclusion of Corey Gunz, son of one-hit '90s rapper Peter Gunz. Corey Gunz riding his father's dubious coattails to a record deal is a bit like Ben Quayle leveraging his father's Vice Presidential legacy to get into Congress.

Lil Wayne has more or less singlehandedly saved hip-hop from a pretty weak time, and laid the groundwork for other ultra-weird rhymers like Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler the Creator of the Odd Future family to get some of their stuff out there. Rap would be in a sorry place right now if it wasn't for Lil Wayne; instead, if "Six Foot Seven Foot" is anything to judge by, we could be in line for another classic when Tha Carter IV leaks in its entirety (why even bother talking about its actual release date?) and gives us another piece of Wayne's extraterrestrial mind.