150 Best Albums of 2012

So hey, were you aware all sorts of new sorts of music came out of nowhere in 2012? I sure wasn’t, but turns out that in The Wire that December a very helpful person named David Wilcox catalogued and explained and/or debunked a whole bunch of them for those of us happily out of the…

150 Best Albums of 2009

Depending on who you asked about music at the time, 2009 was apparently either a year that everything died, everything changed, everything went wrong, or nothing happened. Well okay, maybe you can say that for pretty much every year. And most people, who understandably never cared much about music in 2009 in the first place,…

Teena Marie mash note, 1991

Hadn’t intended to post this here (parts may or may not redundify my infamous top 10 writeup of Emerald City in Stairway to Hell), but Craig Seymour (self-identified “Black gay music critic, Writer/photographer/ archivist/activist, Author: Luther Vandross bio; All I Could Bare: My Life in Strip Clubs & more”) tweeted it yesterday, which makes posting…

Turning Hype Into Lemonade

So, let me get this straight…. Lemonade has a whole lot of bad indie rock samples and/or collaborations, plus “characters”? Honestly intrigued by the marital strife angle (though I have no real interest in Beyoncé’s personal life one way or the other), but the more I hear about it, the less I want to hear…

What’s an Album?

Just noticed Megan Thee Stallion is suing her label over the definition of an album, which I find fascinating since I’ve had arguments with people for decades over the definition of an album. I always stubbornly went with the old Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll rule (album = 3 or more songs adding up…

Two Salt-N-Pepa singles, 1988

Have been wanting to post this for quite a while now, but my hard copy is too blurry to be legible. Now that the Boston Phoenix archives are on line, though — problem solved! I hope. As for Salt-N-Pepa, one single I write about here became their first pop hit — and, let’s be honest,…

Collage Licks, 2004

18 years later, Department of Eagles is still easily the dullest of these three records (I checked, last week), though 18:51 of Mr. Dibbs’s “Porntablist” is quite the unbearable endurance test. (In immortal words of my friend Michael Hall when he was in Wild Seeds, “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Rock You All Night Long.”) As…

Eccentric Electronica and Backpack Rap Licks, 2003

Now think I underrated both rap albums. Still love the techno album. PIMP DADDY NASH The New Jazz Science Orlando oddball whose seventh-grade fave rave was “Pop Muzik” by M breaks New Year’s resolutions, bites “Tom Sawyer,” pays blatant homage three times to early-’80s Prince, quotes Götterdämmerung in a film-noir cadence recalling fellow Florida Wagner buff Bob…

3 Broklyn Beats 45s

From a column called “Singles Again” (explained here), obscure little vinyl records picked off my shelf and decoded, with years of hindsight. Broklyn Beast: “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (2002) Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W.…

DOR! The Wave of the Future!

Posted more for socio-historical interest, than because it’s any good: A confusing college-daily-paper trend piece, conflating at least two different kinds of music (am I talking about new wave or talking about funk? why can’t I make up my mind?) and tossing in a questionable anti-disco subtext to make things even more disingenuous. Rap and…