Context – blogging background tunes

This album is a much darker way to start 2017 than I meant to impression about, but man is it good as hell.  I’m a big fan of “Norf Norf” and a handful of other tracks I heard on YouTube, and thought his music would hang between the darker groove that is “Norf Norf” and the more uplifting (for lack of a better word) production on tracks like “Nate” (Shyne Coldchain Vol. 2), but instead it turns out “Norf Norf” is pretty much the brightest this album gets.

Staples is quickly becoming one of my favorite rappers–it’s really refreshing to have some more gangster rap out there in the world.  It’s probably me getting a bit “Old Man Yells at Cloud”, but man I have a hard time getting into a lot of the Lean Rap (is that even the term?  I’m talking like Lil’ Yachty, Future, Lil’ Uzi Vert type shit).  I mean it’s catchy, but I need some more bite for my bunch, as it were.  I came for the poetry and stay for the beats, and this swagger rap coming out these days doesn’t impress me much on either front.  Long live the Vince Staples and Kendrick Lamar’s of the world, for giving me something to enjoy in 2017.  Keep the magic happening.

Speaking of 2017, now seems as good a place as any to brainstorm albums I want to listen to in the coming year.  I want to learn some Jazz cats by name, instead of just thinking “I like this jazz” or “fuck this jazz”; I want to find more country in the vein of Margot Price (Midwest Farmer’s Daughter is unreal levels of good, y’all); I want to give this lean sub-genre a more fair chance, maybe see if there are some deep cuts I can get behind; I want to listen to at least one album not made in America, England, or their respective territories/sub-countries (this is a flexible goal and not an active promise); and finally maybe catch up on some bands I had previously written off for whatever stuck-up reasons I had for writing them off the last time I gave them a listen.  So look forward to that.  This isn’t going to be all hip-hop, metal, and instrumental music all the time always, but considering my preferences and the context in which I usually write these impressions I can’t promise how broad my spectrum of music will be on a day by day basis.

So yea.  Vince Staples, release more music in 2017 so I can keep my head bangin’, keepin’ my ears ringin’ (do kids still listen to Dre these days? Have we forgotten about Dre again already?).  Happy New Year and all that government work.