Metal Lungies

Young British beatmaker Melo-Zed made a cool boom bap thing out of an obscure Meek Mill feature from 2012. The wonders of the SoundCloud generation.

Johnny Cinco has more soul than any of Atlanta’s weird trap house crooners (c) with the exception of Future and maybe Ca$h Out.

Here’s a video for the occasional lighting-in-a-bottle Statik Selektah track. They filmed it where I walk on my lunch break when I’m trying to digest Chipotle.

Mississippi rapper Korleon goes for an electro bent on “Stay High” but not the kind you’re expecting.

Black Milk is an old geezer in blog rap years — remember his album with Bishop Lamont? — but these days he sounds better than ever.

TeeFlii singing about the women he doesn’t love over a Rick Rock beat is just about perfect. Somewhere, Nate Dogg is smiling.

Ca$h Out and Shannell went and made “’14 Bonnie & Clyde” for the promethazine generation.

We saw Kanye West perform live twice this past weekend, and no, we didn’t hop on a PJ to do it. ML didn’t make it to ‘Made In America’ this year but we took the consolation prize of streaming Kanye West performing live on back-to-back nights from the comfort of our sofa (shout out to our MVP, our Chromecast (its name: ‘Lil Plug)). With Kanye headlining both the Philadelphia (Saturday) & Los Angeles (Sunday) editions of ‘Made In America’, it was irresistible not to compare how Kanye’s performance changed and to see which would ultimately be the better show. Being able to see Kanye on back-to-back nights on a stream in today’s major-festival-streaming-performances era is unique because: A) not all big headliners make it to a festival’s stream; B) you don’t see the same big act streaming on back to back nights ever.

While the setlist was pretty much identical in the two performances, Los Angeles was clearly the better performance (from the sofa vantage point) purely because the LA crowd’s energy was a notch above Philly. They sang along at the top of their lungs– louder than Kanye at times–which you could tell he was feeding off of. The crowd made way better “circles” (Kanye’s roundabout way of getting the crowd to mosh) for Blood On the Leaves. The lighting & camera guys were on point in LA as opposed to Philly where Kanye dedicated a ‘stream of consciousness’ to those gaffes. The closing at each respective performance showed which Kanye enjoyed more– in Philly the show ended with a mic drop and an exit from the stage, whereas LA  got an extended encore and an “I love you, LA” shout out with no mic drop when Kanye exited the stage.

If you watched both, what did you think?

It’s been transitional year for Future. In 2014 he released his sophomore album (a dud despite great singles), a younger, weirder version of him named Young Thug stole some of his thunder, and his engagement to Ciara just fell apart (or not?). A new mixtape due Fall will be called Evol according to Buzzfeed. So what were the highlights of this transition?

Besides a brazen pop ballad joyride with Justin Bieber, Future’s work included emotional fervor (“Good Morning” and separately his “Drunk in Love” cover), towering trap posse cuts (“Chanel Vintage,” “Disfunction”), and moody wilderness (“Coupe,” “Moscato”). The upheaval in his life might spell dramatic change in Future’s music, but it’s exciting to think what that means for someone who seems to transcend styles and eras with his loose tracks.

As a wise man once pondered, Lil Fame might be the new DJ Premier. No blasphemy.