Missed a couple of weeks. It’s like I always say, with blogging it doesn’t matter how frequent it is, you just gotta make sure it’s out consistently.
An incoherent set of four this week. That’s fine. I dreamt I dreamt that someone gave me a big presentation set of Cutty Ranks cd singles.
Cutty Ranks – Mi Aim
So… starting with Mi Aim. I mean we all know Limb by Limb is his greatest, but the hit rate is high. There’s plenty of classics on The Shooter, and in Mi Aim the voice is full of iron and clear with the purity of his intent; he really rides the bucking beat and exclamations. It’s that intent he brought to dancehall; it says in this blurb “Ranks took a more cultural approach to dancehall, deeming the existing tone too vulgar and slack.” Citation needed, but that sounds right. It’s spare but playful too, and that’s a great combination.
Elle King – Tulsa
Speaking of playful, the production function of female country singers has been running hot for some years now – any year you’re going to get two or three effortlessly classic tracks. There’s nothing new in Elle King’s Tulsa, but it simply doesn’t matter – it all happens in two and a half rocking minutes of guitar and good riddance.
$ilkMoney – I Ate 14gs of Mushrooms and Bwoy Oh Bwoy
I can’t deny that it was the title that first attracted my attention to I Ate 14gs of Mushrooms and Bwoy Oh Bwoy by $ilkMoney but the track and the album it’s on are a+. Trap cadences and a mind on overdrive, going head to head with ‘the algorithms’. Music that feels it’s in the mix of the current moment, priming you to the right state of paranoid, arming you with the words and thoughts to dodge roll and skate through the frame rate windows of our data constituted and managed experience.
A$AP Ferg with A$AP Rocky – Shabba
I was cycling past a club in Brixton, doors open early in the morning, with a queue outside, and Shabba by A$AP Ferg (+A$AP Rocky) was filtering out through the dark inside. (PSA: if you are a white middle aged man on a dutch omafiets bike this is not a song to get in your head such that you find yourself singing it out loud.) Anyway, this has been a song that’s long been on my ‘permanent jukebox’ – those tracks that are always capable of popping into your head for no apparent reason or provocation. It’s a classic, a posing and bling tribute to another Ranks – Shabba, all sex where Cutty was drive. Part of the fun is that it’s a tribute, it brings charm to the posturing imitation – ‘this is what Shabba means to us’. Those DAMNs in the background as well.