motomami

PEARLsong · FATHERS · Kenny Beats3.0 out of 5 stars · 4d ago

LA, Kenny's own room up on Putnam Hill, four guys and basically a weekend, and it comes out sounding like a Brazilian record from the seventies that nobody in Brazil made. I got here from the Louie side and not the jazz side so I was tracking Nate Smith the whole way through, but the thing that actually gets me is Kiefer playing in these tiny little phrases and then clearing out so Carr can run something underneath him, they keep handing it back and forth like that for the whole tune. Blue Note has it mixed clean and open, which is usually where I check out, except nothing here is hiding behin

Speedboatsong · ZUU · Denzel Curry5.0 out of 5 stars · 17d ago

Carol City record all the way down, and that's the point, he isn't performing Miami he's just from there. Rugah Rahj gives him this mournful little piano and drums that keep backfiring under it, I came to it through the video first, which is less a video than five minutes of the parts of that city nobody shoots. I've had ZUU since 2019 and RICKY is still the one I reach for, but if somebody asks what Zel was doing that year this is the one I put on.

Catastrophesong · Stoned Raiders · Cypress Hill5.0 out of 5 stars · 24d ago

South Gate 2001, the record everybody files under the guitar era and skips, and I understand why, but Catastrophe is Muggs still working the way he always worked, low end sitting heavy, hats keeping that nervous little shuffle going under the riff. Wolbers from Fear Factory has a writing credit on it and you can hear exactly where, but nobody sanded the beat down to make room for him, which is the complaint people have with this whole album and it does not land here. Heard it off a burned CD somebody made me, still go back to it, still take Bitter over it.

Black Stillsong · Deeply Rooted: The Lost Files · Scarface4.5 out of 5 stars · Aug 20

Houston is not my corner of the map but the Lost Files stuff has been in rotation since I first heard it off a youtube rip, and it holds up on a clean copy too. Face taking on Black Steel should be corny and somehow isn't, he leaves that Isaac Hayes piano figure sitting under him and just talks over it, never once reaching for Chuck D's cadence, which is the only way anybody gets away with this. The writing about the cops and about who is owed what is plain spoken and it hits harder for being plain. I still take I Seen a Man Die over anything here, different weight class entirely, but a bundle

Who You Are (Stripped)song · 22 · Craig David4.0 out of 5 stars · Aug 19

Southampton, 2000, that whole garage run is where I know this man from, Re-Rewind and then Born to Do It, so a piano and voice version of one of his songs was never going to be my lane, but I went and found the stripped upload anyway and sat with it a while. Taking the beat off a garage singer is a real decision, no shuffle, no hats doing the work underneath him, just him and MNEK trading lines, and the two of them end up carrying the rhythm themselves. Still think Rendezvous is the better song and still think the version with a drum track is the one, but I understand why they cut this.

MORNING DEW (DONK) REMIX PACKBeyoncé4.5 out of 5 stars · Aug 16

Four versions of one song and the one everybody argued about all week is the least interesting of them, Jay turns up with his first verse in about five years and it's fine, it's competent, he sounds like a man who read the room and decided not to embarrass anybody. The donk mix is where the real work went, that Mo Bamba overlay under the new bridge should not work and it does, and the Isley flip keeps the bottom warm instead of just loud. Acoustic 4:44 cut is the sleeper, I ran that one three times before I bothered with the rest. Way outside my usual, I live in Memphis tapes from thirty years