The tax man's taken all my dough, And left me in my stately home, Lazing on a sunny afternoon. And I can't sail my yacht, He's taken everything I've got, All I've got's this sunny afternoon.
So sang The Kinks' Ray Davies in 1966, in "Sunny Afternoon." That was the same year that George Harrison kvetched about the taxman taking 95% of his income. There was quite a bit of artistic license in these gripes from newly wealthy rock stars.
It turns out Davies and Harrison weren't the only classic rock legends with money on their mind. Indeed, nearly every British classic rock band of the 60's and 70's has tussled with taxes in song or in their lives. It's astounding, actually, the lengths to which these groups--all of these groups--went to complain about paying taxes and protect their assets.
For a genre that reveled in revolutions in consciousness, politics and sex, it was an unusually conservative stance. In more ways than one, these guys had regressive attitudes towards tax policy.
Many of these acts were happy to take on the mantle of the working man. They just didn't want to help pay for his health care, his children's education, or his public transit. And why would they, when there were mansions to buy. So who were these tax-averse Brits?
The Beatles--George Harrison's "Taxman" has become an iconic song to American conservatives, and not for its richeous Paul McCartney guitar solo. Bob Dole used it in his 1996 campaign, and online you can find organizations like Americans for Tax Reform claiming that taxes broke up the Beatles. Harrison and Ringo Starr both chose to leave the UK in the 1970s as "tax exiles."
The Rolling Stones--The Stones fled England in the early 70's, penniless, to escape onerous british taxes. That's the story Mick and Keith tell about how the Stones wound up recording their 1973 classic Exile On Main Street in a French Chateau. But, if the Stones ever had real problems with taxes, those days are long behind them. Between 1986 and 2006 they paid just 1.6 percent in tax on hundreds of millions of pounds in income.
Rod Stewart--Probably the second most famous tax exile on this list. Stewart's "Atlantic crossing" to Los Angeles came as his solo success eclipsed The Faces' profile. According to Stewart, taxes had made it "not worth living in England any more."
Pink Floyd--The Floyd spent the entirety of 1978 abroad, for tax purposes. This seems to have been a more important concern than visiting Syd Barrett. Roger Waters has changed his tune on taxation since, and is currently promoting himself as a pro-Occupy musician.
Led Zeppelin--Taking their accountants' advice, Led Zep left the UK for 1975 as tax exiles. During this time, Jimmy Page would screen his answers to questions in interviews, to make sure they didn't jepordize his tax status. And Robert Plant was whisked out of the country shortly after a serious car accident, so that Led Zep's tax status wasn't affected.
The Who--The quartet went on their own 1970s tax exile. Bassist John Entwistle's song "Success Story" contained the lyrics: "Away for the weekend/I've gotta play some one-night stands/Six for the tax man and one for the band." Sounding a different note, Roger Daltry recently criticized U2's efforts to dodge taxes in Ireland.
David Bowie--Bowie kicked off his "Berlin period" by moving to Switzerland--a decision motivated, in part, by the desire to avoid British tax rates.
This is hardly a complete list. The next generation, including Sting, Phil Collins, Ozzy Osbourne and Queen, carried on the tradition of tax-dodging. More recently, Adele claimed her tax bill made her want to "go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."
So what is it with Brits and taxes? American musicians haven't made a similar stink about taxes, and anti-tax sentiment is far higher in the US.* Of course, British tax rates are somewhat higher. But structuring your life to avoid paying taxes--as all the above artists have done--is about the least rock and roll thing you can do. Seriously, even Drake is cooler on the subject of taxes than Jagger, Bowie or Page.
In a definitive article on this subject, Simon Firth chides tax exiles for not taking advantage of a great number of options for reducing their tax bills in the UK. He also makes the point that taxes apparently don't pose a threat to artistic innovation, as free market fetishists might claim.
And let's talk about that term--tax exile. Exile is a strong word. Musicians have been exiles before: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil had to leave their native Brazil for England, to escape political persecuption. Arnold Schoenberg was driven from Germany by the Nazis. These are not remotely similar to the situation that Led Zeppelin faced. Tax exile is a histrionic turn of phrase for millionaires who want to keep more money to themselves. These wealthy Brits haven't been persecuted or exiled out of principle. They were just greedy.
*American musicians do complain, sometimes. Take Big Boi's verse in "Gasoline Dreams," where he complains that even though he has the key to the city, "I still got to pay my taxes and they give us no pity."
It's not news that the Beatles began their recording career heavily indebted to black American music. Early rock and roll, R&B and the blues were all important ingredients of their sound, as Anglicized as it was (the Beatles were probably less shameless in their appropriation of these genres than most of their peers). Anyways, a quick listen to their earlier recordings, or glance at the covers they recorded, reveals that R&B had made an impact in Liverpool.
However, as I've been immersing myself in R&B this past year, I've been surprised by the extent to which the influence was mutual--the Beatles' influence is clearly felt in R&B. Not in cover versions, although legends like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin all covered Lennon/McCartney tunes during the 1960s.
The Beatles weren't influencing R&B during the early 60's--when they themselves were aping the genre. It was only after the band left behind their early, more insistently rhythmic music that the influence filtered back. It was the studio-based, baroque and psychedelic Beatles--the Beatles of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"--whose music altered American R&B.
It was connecting a couple anecdotes that led me to recognize R&B's embrace of the Beatles. The first was about Otis Redding. In the months before his death, Redding became obsessed with Sgt. Pepper's. He had previously covered the Beatles,* but this was different. He channeled Pepper's psychedelic sounds in writing "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of A Bay"--a song whose pensive beauty resembles "Strawberry Fields Forever." "Dock Of A Bay" was drastically different from anything Redding had previously written. Different enough that Stax was reluctant to release it at all. Otis, of course, knew better: he predicted the song was a number one hit, although he didn't live long enough to see that come true himself.
A couple years later at Stax, Booker T found himself so inspired by Abbey Road that he and the MG's recorded an entire album of Abbey Road covers. They called it McLemore Avenue--where the Stax studio was--and that's the album cover, at the top of the post.
The second anecdote is about Richard Pegue, a Chicago DJ who ran the Nickel and Penny record labels. The wonderful work of Pegue's labels was recently excavated by the Numero Group. In that release's liner notes, it mentions that Pegue's record collection featured lots of British Pop, including several Beatles LPs. The influence is clear on some of the later cuts on the reissue, when Pegue began using colorful production techniques in his R&B.
This was more broadly true of R&B acts. Stevie Wonder--who hit number one with a cover of "We Can Work It Out" in 1970--took the studio-as-instrument and synthesizer to astounding places. These were sounds that the Beatles and producer George Martin helped introduce into the pop vocabulary. Stevie's Motown colleague Norman Whitfield, in his work with the Temptations and the Undisputed Truth, was transforming R&B into something as psychedelic as anything from Magical Mystery Tour.
By the early 70's studio experimentation had taken firmly taken hold in R&B. So had the album format, as opposed to the barrage of singles. Credit to that goes to Isaac Hayes more than the Beatles. But it's clear that Hayes was listening to the Beatles--he does a ten-minute version of "Something" on the brilliant Isaac Hayes Movement, and his sophisticated arrangements and multipart songs recall Abbey Road's medley.
I don't want to overstate this case. Psychedelic ideas were in the air. The Beatles were a gateway to those sounds for music fans like Richard Pegue, others in the R&B world. But they weren't the only one (Sly & the Family Stone were another crucial gateway group). And the Beatles were hardly the main influence on late 60's and early 70's R&B. That'd be James Brown, who flipped the Fab Four's trajectory on its head and placed all his emphasis on the rhythm.
But it's a story with a nice circularity. That the Beatles, the world's biggest and most revered rock band, were able to inspire a few new sounds in a genre from which they took so much.
*The Beatles, for their part, had shown their admiration by sending limos to pick up Otis and other Stax performers from the airport during a British tour. And--though this seems ridiculous and it's hard to find documentation for this--Wikipedia and other sites report that the Beatles bowed and kissed the ring of Stax guitarist Steve Cropper.
About a week ago, I had an argument with some friends about Nicki Minaj and her relative quality as a musician. Most of them thought little of Ms. Minaj's work, particularly the type of self-consciously vacuous pop music she currently seems most interested in purveying, in the manner of 2010's Pink Friday and its upcoming sequel Roman Reloaded. I maintained that, despite Pink Friday's rather feeble attempts at inoffensive pop-rap ("pap") crossovers, Nicki Minaj was once a rapper of great promise. Scratch that: at one point a few years ago she was a rapper of insane promise, poised to become listed among the best emcees on popular radio. Of course much has already been said about Nicki's chameleonic rapping style, how it encompasses a range of different personality and sexuality types, what it says about gender in hip-hop, etc. I wasn't particularly interested in rehashing any of that material, but I did want to make the point that Ms. Minaj once possessed devastating rhyming skill, even if her MO had been compromised ever since she started releasing albums proper. A few days later, one of my friends emailed me, asking to recommend a specific Minaj mixtape, since I had evangelized her early mixtape appearances so stridently. I replied and sent: check out Beam Me Up Scotty. My friend, never predisposed toward liking Nicki before, loved it, and immediately asked for further suggestions. He had no idea, from what he had seen on TV and heard on the radio, that Nicki Minaj could actually rap.
Of course, there are legions of Nicki fans, hip-hop heads and music critics (especially those who self-describe as "poptimist") who disagree. Maura Johnston maintains that Pink Friday holds up better than Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The platinum success of Friday and its attendant "controversial" Grammy performance and multiple nominations prove that there are obviously a lot of people who love the modern Nicki of "Super Bass" and "Right Thru Me." In this year's Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll, "Super Bass" was voted the third best single of 2011. Pink Friday was culturally significant to the point where non-music writers got on the Minaj train: check out this piece from The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, where he calls Pink Friday "catchy" and expresses his love of the song's "poppy hook, the pleasing cadence of the rap."* Of course there are things to admire about Nicki's persona, her relatively lucid (for hip-hop) stance against gay-bashing, her forthrightness in calling out her abusive father, etc. I wouldn't deny any of that. But this still doesn't change anything about her music post-Friday, which is the sound of compelling artistry and wordplay being focus-grouped to oblivion.
The love for "Super Bass" particularly rankles me. As someone with a deep, abiding love for awesome bass tones, "Super" fails to measure up. The song's chintzy synth claps and pretuned chorus register with no impact, like the opposite of bass. The song is pure air syrup, and has about as much content as that implies--to me, its sonic architecture is the opposite of what hip-hop is supposed to be about. Pink Friday is rife with tracks like that, though--some where Nicki opts to sing autotuned pop hooks, others where she opts to rap, but poorly, and always about the same vacuous nonsense in that stunted, self-conscious style that Kanye made very popular. Call me an old man, but I just wasn't onboard with all the artistics concessions major label Nicki seemed willing, even eager to make, and Roman Reloaded looks to be more of the same:
"Stupid Hoe" is getting the usual good-to-great reviews from pop critics, which puzzles me: how can anyone look at this and say that Nicki has grown at all, as an artist or a rapper? There are the bottom-feeding lyrics--celebrity-baiting fluff about how "I'm Angelina, you Jennifer," rhyming "Roman Zolanski" with "Roman Polanski," etc. The beat, meanwhile, is more or less a slight variation on "Itty Bitty Piggy"from Beam Me Up Scotty, except with extra bloops and more goofy voices. Everything in this song has been done a hundred times by better artists, including Nicki herself.
When Nicki Minaj first came on the scene, she sounded smart and vital. I likely first heard her on "Can't Stop Won't Stop," a track from Lil Wayne's 2007 mixtape-opus Da Drought 3. Her rapping is serviceable on that track--she must have been really, really young at that point--but I didn't pay much attention then. I hate to admit this, but she didn't seem like anything worth paying attention to, other than as one of Young Money's token female rappers (the other one at the time was Shanell). It wasn't until Wayne's 2009 mixtape No Ceilings that I was really taken with one of her verses, via Weezy's take on Beyonce's "Sweet Dreams." Everyone speaks highly of Minaj's mammoth verse in "Monster," a strong example of how her voice sort of mutates from a hard bark to coy, youthful innocence and back in a manner of seconds. But Nicki was already doing that sort of thing very well in 2009:
Nicki's verse in "Sweet Dreams" is arguably superior to "Monster." Or at least it is longer, heavier on actual content, more dense and allusive in its wordplay, etc. The "balloon boy" line might elicit a groan now but back then it seemed insanely well-placed--No Ceilings came out literally a week at most after that "balloon boy" incident happened.
The Nicki Minaj of No Ceilings and Beam Me Up Scotty was thoughtful, inventive and quick-witted. She wasn't concerned with pandering to a global audience or prettying up her message with autotune pop hooks. No, she wasn't a perfect rapper: even then, she fell in the unfortunate trap that is constant beefing with female emcees (as if there can only be one, like Highlander), and like David Bowie she falsely claimed to be bisexual as a way of generating attention. And some of her other mixtapes, like Playtime Is Over, are obviously highly-influenced by the likes of Biggie, but of course that is a path many great rappers start on. The point is, or was rather, that Nicki's personality was once incidental to her skill as a performer. Nowadays, things are quite different. Nicki has less in common with Weezy and more in common with Lady Gaga, who pioneered her own brand of innocuously familiar goo-goo synth music that merely backgrounds the main parts of her show, which are, in descending order of importance, the absurd outfits and creepy, slightly refracted takes on celebrity diva behavior. By that same token, Nicki Minaj is now enough of a marquee player to merit her own brightly-colored Hype Williams videos with absurd costumes, and the focus is now Nicki's mugging for the camera, all those bleeps and bloops, and the epic amounts of cash that are generated thereof. Call this as un-poptimist as you want, but that's not hip-hop to me, and it doesn't yield interesting music, only focused-group commodity bundles disguised under the banner of a "musical experience." The whole enterprise stinks of a business culture superimposed on our own that cares nothing for music qua music.
Unfortunately, this issue is larger than Nicki Minaj, and it speaks to larger trends in sanitized pop radio. Nicki's Young Money-mate Drake is another example of an artist who shows promise at first, puts out a few pretty-good mixtapes, then becomes simultaneously famous, signed to a major label, and no longer interesting musically. Drake's rapping gets a bad rep in some places, but I find it hard to deny a mixtape like So Far Gone, which has a really dynamic, warm sound courtesy his collaborator Boi-1da. But his two major label releases, Thank Me Later and Take Care, are somehow two of the most boring hip-hop albums ever released. Something happened when he made the switch. All over the pop radio board, rappers are choosing to go in this direction. These type of sonic concessions to a broad, unnecessary standard of pablum extend all the way to, if you will, the top--count me as among those perplexed and disheartened by Watch the Throne's unchallenged success.
This is why, as is often the case, the best hip-hop being made these days seems to be coming from everywhere except the pop radio spectrum, broad as that is. There isn't anything wrong with making music that sounds big and universal and popular, but this is music made without the courage of its convictions--it hopes to be popular through bland familiarity, through repetition of the same dumb phrases. People rag on the likes of Odd Future for violating basic decency and proper rap decorum, in part of course because there's no subjects music critics like rehashing every few years more than the propriety of certain hip-hop (and always hip-hop) lyrics. But I would honestly listen to Odd Future at their worst (Goblin, say) than sit through the large majority of Watch the Throne, which is an album that seems possessed by little more than the empty moneymaking qua moneymaking ambitions of its two kingmakers. At least I will be liable to hear something new, a snatch of unexpected gnarly noise, maybe, or a motif that weaves in unexpected directions. A skillful flow means nothing when it is wedded to the same tired words and an overfamiliar beat. There are a lot of rappers right now on the fringes of stardom who are making music in their bedrooms that sounds nothing like what came before. The question is, when they in turn become popular celebrities, will they be subordinated into the system as well? I'd rather have a heinous, rape-n-murder obsessed Tyler, the Creator than a Tyler, the Creator motivated by radio dictates. No matter how unkind it might sometimes sound to our ears, it's better than not noticing we are listening at all.
I worry about the insurgent rappers and their impending success, and wonder if yet another possibly transformative moment in popular music will be co-opted by MTV and robbed of its capacity for political change, like punk and grunge. I wonder, for instance, about A$AP Rocky, whose mixtape was on my Top 10 last year, and who has lately been the subject of an insane $3 million bidding war, which landed him at Sony/RCA. Hopefully his major label debut won't sound like Pink Friday, a repurposed set of already overfamiliar autotuned dross, but like a continuation of the expansive cosmic beats and laconic delivery that made LiveLoveA$AP so enjoyable. Honestly, though, the odds aren't looking amazingly good. Is there any way for alternative rap cultures to make their way into the mainstream without sacrificing at least part of what made their music interesting in the first place? In theory, they should be able to do this easily. So what, or who, is stopping them? And what must we do in turn to stop them?
*Usually I am an admirer of Conor's lucid, rational reporting, but he lost me at that point.
UPDATE: This recently unearthed early video is a good example of how different (and better) Nicki Minaj used to be, pre-fame and goofy voices:
Recalling vintage 1994-era Siskel & Ebert, your Rockaliser writers have independently cast the same vote for 2011's best album, and it's not what you think...unless you've browsed through this blog in the past week and read our lists in written form, here and here--then you know it's Destroyer's Kaputt.
As with last year, I invited my esteemed colleague onto my weekly radio show, which broadcasts Sunday nights live from the Radiohive studios in Manhattan, to talk about our favorite music of the year. Once again it was an excellent discussion, and apart from a momentary Internet shortage toward the end there were fewer technical errors this time around (errors of judgment, on the other hand, still number plenty). Feel free to stream our live "Rockcast" (as we have taken to calling it) below. It's an entertaining two-hour listen, with a murderer's row of high-quality music selections. How much of our discussion will be devoted to Bun B? Will your host be able to summon more precise language to convey music he likes than "hardcore rockin' beats"? Is the Spinal Tap reference at the beginning intentional? And how will either of us justify the lack of SuperHeavy commentary? None of these questions will be answered, befitting the uncertainty of today's troubled economic climate [\desperate end-of-year think piece].
An mp3 of the Rockcast is also available here. For convenience, our respective lists sans commentary:
Thanks to my colleague for an excellent conversation, and for introducing me to a few artists (Van Hunt, Shabazz Palaces) who would have otherwise slipped past my radar. Thus endeth the season of Rockaliser EOY festivities--time to get on to some real writing!
The smoothest, most immersive listening experience of 2011, by a considerable margin. Singer/songwriter Dan Bejar takes a few compositional cues from AOR and soft rock but this nine-song set is the opposite of anodyne--it constantly teems with fresh ideas, from the silvery disco pulse beneath to the proudly anachronistic flute and sax solos on top. If there's a theme to this list, it's that the best music of 2011 didn't care what year it was.
2. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin'
Saadiq is a veteran showman, producer and arranger, but his bounteous command of classic soul productions usually lags behind his skills as a songwriter. Not so with Stone Rollin', an album of immaculately-orchestrated tributes to different eras of soul, entirely devoid of retro-gazing. In 2011, no album made more mellifluous use of the Mellotron, an instrument not traditionally associated with soul and R&B, modern or otherwise.
3. DJ Quik, The Book of David
He may call himself a "crucial if not lesser-known artist from the West" but the pristine beats of The Book of David demonstrate that Quik, if not before, definitely now deserves a place in the top tier of West Coast hip-hop. Few late-career rap albums are as restlessly committed to an unstoppable groove--in Quik's eyes, funk and hip-hop are always mutually reinforced properties, etymologically unrelated to the overprocessed goo-goo synths of much modern hip-hop.
4. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
Though Big K.R.I.T. has garnered a reputation as a Southern rap virtuoso, his 2011 mixtape Return of 4Eva is more than just a collection of a creatively-expressed drawly Southernisms spat over crunkified click tracks. K.R.I.T. is also rapper of great depth and range, and his evocations of life in rural Meridian, Mississippi give this album a country flavor that puts most rap from the city, Southern or otherwise, to shame.
5. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
Just when you thought Fucked Up's massive three-guitar sound couldn't get bigger, they embark on the most epic undertaking of their career--a three-part, eighteen-song concept album about a dude in a lightbulb factory. The overall "concept" might be a bit lost among the fuzz and stentorian talk-vox, but the twin totems of beauty and aggression endemic in Fucked Up's best work are still there, to a transcendent, almost tiring degree.
6. Blouse, Blouse
Call them a dream-pop trio from Portland, but that really fails to do the sounds of Blouse justice. Coasting on the familiar 80s combination of gothic synths and ethereal lady vocals, Blouse makes novel use of common instrumental techniques. Their self-titled debut album is alarmingly dense, averaging an impressive two or three massive hooks per track. Consistency of this sort is harder than it looks.
7. Boris, New Album
In a characteristic move, the beloved Japanese metal band Boris set out to confuse fans as much as possible by releasing three albums in 2011. Attention Please was the more electronic-oriented release, while Heavy Rocks concentrated more on the band's aggressive punk-metal roots--but it was New Album, occupying a nebulous middle between those two extremes, that I found the most compelling. From careening Timbaland percussion stabs to string-laden metal monsters to the occasional dalliance with J-Pop, the diversity of tunes contained was unmatched in metal, or anywhere else.
8. A$AP Rocky, LiveLoveA$AP
As my colleague has previously noted, 2011 was a big year for insurgent rap from the likes of Odd Future, Lil B, Danny Brown, etc, but I bet that in 2012 I won't be spinning anything from that 2011 repertoire as often as LiveLoveA$AP, Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky's breakthrough mixtape. Augmented by spacey, codeine-inflected beats from the likes of Clams Casino and Spaceghostpurrp, 24-year old A$AP spits like a emcee repping an extra decade's worth of self-assurance. The result is a rare mixtape with almost too many classic tracks to name offhand.
9. Mutemath, Odd Soul
Bands like New Orleans' Mutemath--solid, dependable and exciting purveyors of mainstream blues rock--are an undervalued commodity in America. Mining everything from classic NO jazz to Peter Green-style blues guitar freakouts, Odd Soul is first and foremost an album filled with remarkable performances, from musicians who have clearly spent years learning to play together aggressively and effectively. There's a soulful side to these heavy riffs that give this a more playful and funky edge than recent material from, say, the Black Keys or other blues rock revivalists.
10. Yuck, Yuck
Speaking of bands not made for these times--the London-based Yuck might have garnered more comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement than any other artist in 2011, but that doesn't take any value away from the explosive energy of this debut. In my opinion, Yuck isn't a perfect album (it does lose some energy towards the end), but as far as debuts go I cannot imagine a more youthful-sounding rejoinder to the pre-end times rhetoric of so much "2011 in music" think pieces.
Honorable Mention: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We're New Here
A year ago, I gave Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here the highest accolades on my list of 2010's best albums. Back then, it was his big comeback album, but now it has become his swan song--Scott-Heron died in May, ostensibly during the planning stages for a followup to I'm New Here. A few months before, however, XL Recordings put out a remixed version of the album, with new productions from Jamie Smith (the bassist/singer from the xx). Though Gil Scott-Heron's vocal contributions are the same as before, We're New Here is at least 60% its own beast, and at the very least, a more rattly, electronic type of experience than the original I'm New Here. It isn't exactly a different album, but I would be remiss if I did not mention it in some fashion--it, as well as its dead creator, one of the greatest poets and musicians of the last 50 years. RIP once more Gil--and Poly, Gary Moore, Teena Marie, etc. etc.
An icy melange--flutes, saxophones, synthesyzers, Sibel Thrasher--that travels from diaphanous to propulsive, from merely wry to really and truly devastating.
2. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
A band with a talent for outdoing itself, even when that no longer seems possible. Fucked Up's trio of guitars again concoct a sound as large as their vocalist, with melodies arriving from every angle. David has few roots in punk, but courses with the life-saving power that made punk special in the first place.
3. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Belong
Pains have emerged from the library stacks, with their bookish songcraft intact. Ecstasy may have been a catalyst, by the sounds of it, but their idea of the perfect rock LP suffers not a bit from being twenty years old.
4. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
Harvey's dense folk passes by in a violent rush, unsparing in its studies of war, death, and ideology. The most restless songwriter since Neil Young, PJ hasn't repeated herself once, here brandishing her autoharp as a weapon.
5. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
Annie Clark's guitar work is so texturally weird I often forget she's actually playing a guitar. Strange Mercy's buoyant art-rock is shot through with strange undercurrents--songs like "Cruel," "Suregon," and "Year Of The Tiger" dash in new directions each time I play them.
6. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
The sound of a man driven mad by the noise of the city, filtered through beats constructed on a glowing monitor in total darkness. Or so I imagine: what I know for sure is that Shabazz Palaces' debut marks the most stunning reinvention since Daniel Dumile first donned a mask.
7. Wye Oak, Civilian
On their third, Wassner and Stack cut back on the blasts of surging guitar, following a tenser, more post-punk path. Wye Oak are still the most mournful rock band on the planet.
8. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva
Big K.R.I.T. references OutKast on two of his album's first three songs, but he's not just recreating the funk and bounce of vintage Kast. K.R.I.T., who mans the boards as well as the mic, pays tribute to the South by crafting a new addition to its canon.
9. Low, C'mon
Low make American Music in the way Neil Young does: brilliantly, toying with convention according to their idiosyncrasies. The Sparhawks' vision is, of course, a terrifying one.
10. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For?
A record that seems to have exploded out of Paisley Park--Van Hunt's cacophony is soulful, punkish and dripping in day glo. He's the rare songwriter making music about the Great Recession that sounds and feels like our times. Maybe that's the mechanism...
2011 was André 3000's most active year since 2006--not that he ever disappeared completely. In this extra-stank Critical Beatdown, your hosts take you through 2011 in 3000. "Dedication To My Ex (Miss That)," Lloyd feat. Lil Wayne and André 3000
NS: I love the exuberant buoyancy of this jam in full, and Andre's verse is just the virtuosic icing on the cake. There are some rappers--Kurupt and Styles P come to mind--who are uniquely capable of going hard on an extended metaphor for bar after bar, and Dre demonstrates that same type of focused dynamism here, wedding Lloyd's basic thesis (hint--he says it in the chorus) to some amusingly lucid car metaphors. Favorite line: "What, why so quiet?/Hate that all our memories happen in a Hyatt?" I think that's what the kids today call an "epic burn." 5/5
AM: Lloyd's retro-soul joint features negligible ad-libs from Weezy, along with a lead vocal that you will likely regard has either humorously pained or horrifyingly sexist. The tune is colorful edging on chintzy. André's verse stands out, of course. But his rap, ostensibly about the same lady Lloyd's worked up over, is minor André--this ex isn't as vivid as Sasha Thumper or Ms. Jackson. 4/5
"I Do," Young Jeezy feat Jay-Z and André 3000
NS: How many rappers out there can follow Jay-Z with reliably superior wordplay? Whereas Jay's verbiage rarely ventures outside the confines of normative hip-hop posturing, Dre breaks into an almost expressionistic sing-rap, more a tangle of feelings and associations than straightahead storytelling, in the best imagistic tradition. Surreal stuff, and I am fascinated by how he keeps talking into the outro about his hypothetically "nerdy" future daughter. 4/5
AM: This one first made the rounds pre-2011 as an uncompleted André track. The subject matter--and soul-soaked beat--inspires comparisons to a certain earth-shatteringly good Dre guest verse, but so be it: 3000 is at that level here. Insane technical control, with the vocal and lyrical flights of fancy that make him so compelling. That he clearly did this all in one take--listen for his breathing--makes "I Do" even more amazing. 5/5
"The Real Her," Drake feat. Lil Wayne and André 3000
NS: Take Care put me to sleep, and the mottled non-beat of "The Real Her" is fairly indicative of that album's lugubrious tendencies. Even Lil Wayne fails to rise above the material, which makes the transition to the Andre verse at 4:14 all the more unexpected. The drab tonelessness of Drake's autotuned meanderings gives way to a 3000's day-glo nightmare of insomniac thrillseekers and backstabbing strippers, tinged with a David Lynch sense of creeping, formless dread. Odd modifiers like "quote-on-quote bad bitches" stick to the mind, emblematic of the throwaway rhetorical flourishes that make a 3000 verse so distinctive. For a closer lyrical analysis, I highly recommend this article. 5/5
AM: Rapping in stop-start bursts that mimic the beat's pitch bending, Dre runs laps around the competition. Wayne is lazy but engaging, but that's 2011 Model Weezy F for you. And Drake makes us suffer through not one but two of his verses. Though it ends on an uncharacteristically venomous note, 3000 is the reason I've made it through this overlong track so many times. 4.5/5
"Interlude," Lil Wayne feat. Tech N9ne and André 3000 NS: 3 Stacks and Tech N9Ne make a not-surprisingly good tag team. This highlight of Tha Carter IV doesn't even feature Lil Wayne, but with such regal musings from messrs. 3000 and N9ne, who even needs "the greatest rapper alive"? Beautiful bits of elevated wordplay worm their way through 3 Stacks' short verse--"Today I feel electric gray, I hope tomorrow neon black," he begins, like a fashion terrorist from the future, going on to condense everything from the stars in Cairo "like marbles" to another classic 3000 trope--philosophic musings in "wild party" settings. No one else in rap writes with such sensitivity to the depth and evocative flexibility of language than Andre 3000, and this is another verse that proves it. 5/5
AM: A Carter IV track that features no contribution from Lil Wayne, and a fierce verse from Tech N9ne. 3000 rarely raps on beats as abrasive as this one, but his brief contribution is ace--hard, but weird too. 4/5
"Party," Beyoncé feat. André 3000
NS: Though he doesn't always care to show it, Andre 3000 can be a blisteringly fast rapper, making him well-suited to the high-BPM party stylings of Beyonce's 4 (I assume--haven't actually heard the album in full). Note on this verse how Dre manages to pull the trick of sounding subdued and frenzied at the same time--I imagine it takes years for a rapper to develop such a careful modulation of pitch and tone. In this case the content is secondary to the rhythms, although "in the food court, eatin' our gyro" sticks out for some reason. 4/5
AM: This song pulses like an MJ/Quincy Jones track, albeit at a BPM that's far too slow. At least for Beyoncé, who sounds like she's holding back. André, on the other hand, spends half his verse in an effortless doubletime. In his minute, he tries on flows like he does garish outfits, each one fitting him impeccably. 5/5
"Sleazy Remix 2.0 (Get Sleazier)," Ke$ha feat. Wiz Khalifa, André 3000, T.I. and Lil Wayne
NS: The Andre verse here is identical to Ke$ha's last "Sleazy (Remix)" released in January (for those masochists at home keeping track of Dre/Ke$ha collabs). It doesn't have the rhapsodic emotional buildup of his other 2011 verses, particularly once Dre starts repping "this crazy lady named Kesha," but the first part of the verse is a vivid, if brief exploration of one of 3000's most senescent themes--childhood fascination with adult marital discontent. Fascinating stuff, but Ke$ha is still the worst. 2.5/5
AM: Dre's verse appears on a couple remixes of Ke$ha's song. His verse is alright--he imagines rolling around in his Benz with Ke$ha, after mining more heartfelt territory--but less inspired than most of this list. On the December remix, Lil Wayne crosses paths with André for the fourth time, upstaging him for the first. 3.5/5
"Play The Guitar," B.O.B. feat. André 3000
NS: The beat (produced by 3000 himself) lacks impact, and B.o.B. gets everything off to a slow start, but 3 Stacks' tribute to his own six-string travails is touching and relatable for anyone who has ever been a novice guitarist. Dre may have come to the six-string as an adult, but he clearly understands the instrument's elemental force with lines like "if you're mad at dad or mum/you can grab an instrum." 3.5/5
AM: Well, it’s no “Gasoline Dreams.” B.O.B., who is apparently
still a working musician, helms this cartoonish joint. He cedes much of the
track to Dré, who spits a goofy verse about playing guitar on top of a Church’s
Chicken, and respecting your parents (not the fist time he’s sounded that note
in 2011). Not a career highlight by any means, but even when 3000 isn’t great,
he’s never on autopilot. 3.5/5
Expect some more OutKast-related writing on this blog in the near future. Until then, savor this evidence, from 1994, of Dre's prodigious freestyling skills.
I’ve been thinking about the recently departed R.E.M. lately,
and listening to New Adventures In Hi-Fi
in particular. It’s not their best work, and my younger self didn’t even have
time for “E-Bow The Letter.” For me, it bore the mark of following Monster, a record I once despised.
But I like New Adventures, quite
a bit actually.
It’s not a record that’s played a part in the R.E.M. obits.
It was well-received at the time, though not the commercial success the past
three albums had been (all quadruple platinum). It’s been
overshadowed because it’s the best album of R.E.M.’s protracted decline—a good
album, but certainly a slip in quality from the amazing 1982-1992 period.
In puzzling over New Adventures, I think I’ve identified a new species of album: the
Quality Decline Record. I offer this concept to the world of rock writing, to
join the taxonomy of Difficult Second Albums, Stripped Down/Back To Basics Records, Sophomore
Slumps and so on. What defines a Quality Decline Record?
Obviously, the QDR comes amid a decline in an artists' output. It's better than what follows, but it's not what the group's reputation is staked on.
In other words, the album is less critically respected than a group's earlier work, or has been reappraised to this status. It might be fingered out--unfairly--but it's not as cred-sapping as other decline-era works.
The decline must be protracted. Albums like Speakerboxx/The Love Below or Brighten The Corners aren't followed by long enough declines.
The QDR is overshadowed by earlier, more respected albums, and by more commercially successful ones. It's probably not well known to non-fans.
It stands out from other, worse decline-period albums.
The QDR doesn't spark a rally, or second golden era.
A QDR gains extra points for manifesting the qualities that become the band's downfall.
These are general principles, many QDRs may deviate.
For example, I'd peg The Rolling Stones' Black And Blue as a QDR. It follows the 68-72 classic period, is the third consecutive record to fall below that standard, and sees the Stones lazily remaining in their comfort zone (except to chase a trend on the lead single). Yet it's complicated by 1978's Some Girls, a better record, on which the band's reputation is partly staked. Still, Black And Blue isn't critically beloved, is unknown to non-fans, is worse than the groups best, and manifests the qualities that would be the Stones' downfall (allow me to throw Ron Wood into the mix here). It's an overlooked, pretty awesome record. A Quality Decline Record has to be quality, after all.
New Adventures In Hi-Fi is a classic QDR. So are Sly and the Family Stone's Fresh and Michael Jackson's Bad, which in those cases inaugurates each artists' decline. Other QDRs might be more contentious. Does Public Enemy have a QDR? Does Jay-Z? What about Springsteen, New Order or Black Sabbath? I would personally point to Physical Grafitti as a Quality Decline Record, but I think I'm in the minority there. Any number of late eighties and early nineties Prince albums might be considered QDRs.
Artists who had short careers aren't really eligible for this honor. And artists who have had intermittent or near-constant successes frustrate this concept--Neil Young or PJ Harvey, say. Still, I think it's a mildly helpful way of considering certain albums and bodies of work. The albums themselves are also good listens--quality records, without the baggage of classic status. They often feel like discoveries. Favorite QDRs?
As with 
