Tag: Kendrick Lamar

2024 in music

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

I bought eighty-six albums in 2024, a number that frankly I find surprising– I wouldn’t have guessed it was that many, and it’s probably upped a bit by the number of singles I purchased this year (See: Lamar, K.) but that’s still a hell of a lot of music. This, like last year, isn’t a Best Of list and the only order it’s going to be in is rough chronological, but here are some albums that I thought were notable from this year. And, yes, “this year” means “I heard it first this year,” not “It came out this year,” although most of these are 2024 releases.

T-Pain’s live album On Top of the Covers: Live from the Sun Rose has no right to be as good as it is. I didn’t realize I was a fan of T-Pain until hearing his cover of War Pigs, which made me spend money, and this album, recorded in front of a tiny crowd and featuring lots of T-Pain just sort of chatting and screwing around with the audience, is spectacular.

Be honest: did you know the Black Crowes were still recording? Did you know that Happiness Bastards was fucking awesome? I bought this one in a state of vague shock– their last release was in 2013, and I’d not heard anything about it prior to seeing it in Itunes’ pre-order list, but any child of the nineties has no right to pass this up. It’s great.

Speaking of bands from the nineties…

I talked about Pearl Jam’s latest release, Dark Matter, quite a lot when it came out, mostly because I didn’t listen to anything else for a month. It’s their best album since Vitalogy. That is the highest of high praise. You’ll notice a lot of live albums in the list later; it’s because I needed live versions of all of the songs on this album. Album of the year, no real competition.

If you had told me at any point prior to its release that one of my favorite hiphop albums of the year would be by LL Cool J I would have laughed at you, but The Force is the best thing he’s released in a long, long time. I used to be a big fan of his and then kinda fell away as he left the harder-edged persona of his earlier albums away (and focused on acting instead of rapping) but this reminds me of everything that he was capable of as a younger rapper, and his duet with Eminem on Murdergram Deux is one of the best songs he’s ever done, complete with the best single verse I’ve ever heard from him.

I found Kharii through TikTok, of all places, where she’s fond of freestyling straight into the camera, and her chill, slightly hippie rap vibe ended up right up my alley. Microdoses of Me is a full-length album and you’ll notice a couple of EPs in the list later as well.

This was Kendrick Lamar’s year in a lot of ways, and his unannounced drop of GNX toward the end of the year was one of the best surprises (possibly the only good surprise) of 2024. Kendrick has always been an artist who I respect more than I like, and his last full-length album kind of left me cold, but GNX is great even if it doesn’t piss on Drake enough. Mustaaaaaaaaaaaard!

Another “wait, they’re still recording?” release, and also another “not really a huge fan, just picked it up for the hell of it” release, The Cure’s new Songs of a Lost World is the most hypnotic, endlessly listenable thing I’ve heard this year. If I was trying to write a book I’d have this on constant repeat, because it just sort of worms its way into your brain and makes you focus. One thing: don’t listen to Endsong, the final track, while driving. It’ll put you in a trance and that’s a bad idea at 70 miles an hour.

They released a double album a couple of weeks ago, pairing this with a live version. Don’t bother; the live version sounds damn near exactly like the studio recording and it was really disappointing.

Okay, one more:

I don’t have the slightest recollection of what caused me to pick up Doechii’s latest album, Alligator Bites Never Heal, because previously I had only heard of her from a couple of clips on TikTok– not even any actual videos, because as far as I know she’s not on the platform, there have just been a couple of her audio clips that have gone viral. Well … thanks, whoever you are? She kind of reminds me of Kharii in that her rapping is really laid back and chill, but more slickly produced and a little bit more mainstream. They even both do the double-i thing. Either way the albums pair together really well.

Here’s the whole list. Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to talk about:

Okay FINE I won’t

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy6 Comments

Dan Ford may have slightly too much influence over my life decisions for someone I’ve never met, but those five words more or less talked me out of Adventures with Bitcoin, and realizing that this weekend is a Lego Insiders weekend and that they have a model of the HMS Endurance coming at the end of the month sealed the deal; I’m not destroying the environment and I get (sorta) free Legos? Yeah, fuck money get Legos.

I think that’s the phrase, at least.

MEANWHILE! Kendrick Lamar has a new album out! He didn’t tell anyone it was coming before he released it. I’m listening to it right now and it might be his best album yet. I never really vibed with Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, so it’s good to see a return to form.

Let’s see. What else? I feel like something happened at work today that I really want to talk about, but hell if I can remember what it is. I decided today that I have what I’m calling a Shitty White Boy problem with my sixth hour, but that’s not the story.

… Goddammit, it’s gone. I’m gonna go play Veilguard and if I remember what the hell I wanted to talk about I’ll come back.

Some bits and bobs

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, TeachingLeave a comment

My head’s all over the place right now, so let’s do a bullet list.

  • Indiana voted on Tuesday. The Previous Occupant managed 79% of the Republican primary vote against an opponent who dropped out two months ago. I remind you that I Know Nothing About Politics before saying this, but it’s amazing how the polls say one thing and literally every other thing about this election says another.
  • Meanwhile, I was assuming my choice for Senate would lose because Indiana would choose the white guy, and they didn’t! Not only did Valerie McCray win, she won solidly, getting about 2/3 of the vote.
  • The sex pest won his primary too, unfortunately. I am probably just going to leave State Senate blank in November. Surprisingly, there is no Republican candidate, but there is a Libertarian running, and not only is he a Libertarian, he’s an engineer, which means he’s a jackass. It is possible to be either and not be a jackass but it is not possible to be both.
  • Today was a better day at school, not least because all of my knuckleheads from yesterday were excluded from class today. Today was the Math NWEA test, too, and for all indications it looks like it … went well? Possibly quite well? I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning because it takes 24 hours for results to be fully available to teachers but damn near every kid I talked to showed growth.
  • Meanwhile, I’m definitely taking the high school Mathematics Praxis test this summer. My boss hinted that we might have enough 8th graders taking Geometry next year to be able to make a class section out of it, and I will fight anyone who tries to take that class away from me. That means I need to get licensed to teach it, though, so there’s a test to pass and some paperwork to get done. I can take the damn thing from my house, though, which is spectacularly good news.
  • I have chosen violence, and will be wearing a shirt that just says KENDRICK to work tomorrow. I’m expecting fireworks. It’ll be fun.
  • The final meeting of my little club of gay weirdos at school was today. We had a pizza party. I thought I had ordered far too much food. They each turned out to be a million locusts wearing skin suits, and everything I ordered was gone in seconds. I’m really going to miss these kids.
  • We had a fight in the hallway toward the end of the day, and I raised my voice to such a level clearing the hallway that I was hoarse for all of fifth and sixth hour. I’m hoping I can talk tomorrow.

Okay. That sounds good. I’m gonna go read now.

Monday miscellany

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Music, Television1 Comment

A whole lot of stuff today, most of which isn’t worth its own post and I don’t want to have 300 posts today anyway, so you get a bunch of bullet points.  Enjoy some commentary and a bit of open self-promotion:

  • The entire northern part of the state is on a travel warning again and school has already been called off for Tuesday.  Both my wife and my son are home; we’d have had to pick him up from day care (they closed at noon because of the travel ban) and I had to clear the driveway before getting anywhere was even possible.  I figure Wednesday is downgraded to “doubtful” at this point from “I’m sure we’ll be back” earlier today.
  • Despite the headline of the previous post, I’m actually not upset about the weather, nor am I angry with the various people posting “Awesome out here in California!” or “Hey, it’s 65 degrees here in Florida!” people.  I prefer cold weather to hot under all circumstances, period.  I admit if I still lived in Chicago, where there’s nowhere to put the damn snow, I’d be miserable, but clearing the driveway every once in a while isn’t actually that big of a hardship– I’d rather plow the driveway than mow the damn lawn any day of the week.  That said, I’m growing ill about the lost time before the ISTEP test.  I really am going to be writing a letter to the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent to advocate for pushing back the test at least a week.  It’ll be interesting to see how contractually bound we are to the dates we’re scheduled to.  Pearson doesn’t give a damn about the contract, mind you, but I suspect our state officials will.
  • The Internet is for porn; everyone knows that.  I finally figured out what Twitter is for last night; Twitter is for snark.  Watching the Grammys, for example, isn’t terribly exciting (exceptions in a moment).  Watching the Grammys and mocking it on the Internet along with half of the world is hilarious.  I know I talk about Saladin Ahmed a lot around here, but Christ the guy was on fire last night and it was hysterical.
  • What Twitter appears to be less good for: driving traffic to websites, at least as far as I can tell.  Nobody clicks on links in Twitter.  I’ve had blog links retweeted by celebrities three times– Cherie Priest RTed my “10 best books of 2013” post and both Lyrics Born and Lateef retweeted links to yesterday’s post about them (also: Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truthspeaker and Cherie Priest read something on my blog, squeeeeeee) and it led to maybe four hits from Twitter yesterday and maybe six when Priest did it.
  • That said, I have 93 followers right now and I want 100 today.  Follow my twitter feed!  There’s a button right over there on the right!  I’m funny sometimes, I promise!
  • Also, I should hit 1,337 blog followers today, which makes my inner Internet nerd happy.
  • Speaking of naked self-promotion, note the “Short Fiction” page that’s been added to the header up there.  If you’re a newer reader there’s a couple of stories up there that you may not have seen.  I’ll be beefing this up in the future, especially if the summer writing grant goes through– I find out about that in less than a month.
  • Back to the Grammys:  I don’t usually watch them; the Grammys actually are what people say the Academy Awards are and usually they are best ignored.  I’m glad I caught last night’s show, though, if only because it was so amazingly, unashamedly weird.  Steven Tyler’s weirdly inappropriate affection made Smokey Robinson want to put on the Ring of Doom and bamf off the stage.  Cyndi Lauper was painfully, obviously, amazingly drunk.  Pharrell’s hat was just obvious and amazing.  The Macklemore/Queen Latifah/Madonna thing was weird and creepy and somehow both massively inappropriate and inspiring at the same time– like, Latifah’s gay, right?  Everyone knows that?  She’s got a long-term partner.  So you have the straight white guy, and it’s not like the Grammys repeatedly recognizing white rappers over more talented black rappers (coughKendrickLamarcough) isn’t already a problem, and he’s rapping about how being gay is great, then you pull out the mostly-closeted gay lady to marry a whole bunch of people, both straight and gay couples and a couple of notably interracial ones as well, and CBS does their damnedest to only focus on the straight couples while it’s happening, and meanwhile Madonna is there for some reason and she’s leaning on a cane and looks older than Betty White.
  • Somebody– can’t find it right now– said that Macklemore’s unique talent was managing to come off as a douchebag even when he’s being perfectly sincere and saying things you agree with.  That’s not far off from the truth, near as I can tell.
  • The Awkward Taylor Swift Dancing tumblr.  You’re welcome.
  • Good stuff, though:  The Pharrell/Daft Punk/Stevie Wonder/Nile Rodgers collaboration was awesome, but holy shit were they overshadowed by the Imagine Dragons and Kendrick Lamar’s mashup of Radioactive and m.A.A.d city
    earlier in the show, a performance so outstanding that by rights it should have ended the entire ceremony on the spot.  Like, the Grammy people should have just sent everybody the fuck home and released the rest of the awards by email or something.  I wasn’t terribly familiar with Lamar before the show; I downloaded his (also Grammy-nominated, but it didn’t win, see above bit on Macklemore) album on the spot.  Sadly, I haven’t had time to listen to it yet; I’ll report back.  That shit blew me away.
  • Cutting to that poor little country girl right after the Lamar/Imagine Dragons performance was the cruelest decision of the evening and I can’t believe they did it.  They went from a showstopping performance straight to something that was deliberately staged to look like a show in a poorly-attended country bar, complete with lame Christmas lights sewn into clothes and fucking neon cacti, and meanwhile the audience was wiping sweat off their foreheads and going to the bathroom.  I may download her album too just out of pity, if she hasn’t retired from music out of sheer embarrassment by now.
  • My wife and I are both pretty digitally connected people, right?  So much so that we can’t really tell each other things that have happened anymore without beginning with the phrase “You’ve probably already heard this, but…”.  We had a particularly bad example of this this morning, one that may well be a sign that the two of us need to reevaluate our lives:  I cleared off the driveway and let her know that I was going to go take a shower, then as I was drying off afterward she knocked on the door to the bathroom and said “Hey, you probably already know this, but school’s cancelled tomorrow.”  Because apparently it is reasonable to my wife that I’m on my phone checking Facebook and Twitter while I’m showering, or that perhaps I check my phone before drying off.  Which entertains the crap out of me.
  • No, shut up, I didn’t know yet.

That’s enough for now.  I’m bound and determined to get The Benevolence Archives 5 done today, so you might see another post from that this evening sometime.