Tag: lyrics born

#ATOZCHALLENGE, Day 12: Lyrics Born

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

LArtist: Lyrics Born
Best Album: Everywhere At Once
Best Song: I’m Just Raw
This Letter Could Have Been About: LL Cool J, Lady Sovereign, Language Arts Crew, Latyrx

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: I’m kinda tempted to say “Because he’s half-Japanese” and leave it at that, but– while it’s true, and while his ethnic background definitely informs his work, the simple fact is that the guy is talented as all hell, and– true to his name– one of the more lyrically inventive MCs working today.  True fact: my go-to Pandora station is a mix of Lyrics Born and Atmosphere stations, and it pulls in so much good shit from other artists who I’d otherwise never have heard of that it makes my Pandora One subscription worth it all by itself.  He’s also got a live album out, which is not an achievement many rappers can boast of, and he’s the “yrx” part of Latyrx along with Lateef tha Chief.  Latryx is awesome as hell too.

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In which I am old and weird

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

So I wanted, for no good reason, to Tweet a particular line from a particular song, and I couldn’t quite piece together the words.  When one of the words in a song sounds like “mack-a-dang-dang,” and your ears are old and getting bad like mine are, you look them up.

So I tried to look them up.  Finding words to songs has never actually been difficult; this is among the easier Google searches in the world.  However, for some reason, when the artist’s name is Lyrics Born, finding the lyrics to his song suddenly gets real complicated, especially when the song is called Knock Knock and there are a bunch of songs by that name already.  Note that I still can’t actually find the lyrics anywhere– I have found a few videos and several places to stream the song, but not the actual lyrics.  Even my usual lyrics sites, usually on the top in the Google searches, have failed me.

(Resist the urge to be a smartass and find them; that’s not the point.)

Anyway, here’s what I thought I was hearing:

The name is Lyrics Born, AKA mackadangdang
Live from the 0-1-5 doing my thang thang

Silly, right?  Sure.  LB has some impressively complicated songs, “Knock Knock” isn’t one of them.  It was running through my head and I wanted to Tweet it.  But I could not make “mackadangdang” turn into a phrase I understood.  But it sounded pretty clear, right?

What the hell; I googled “mackadangdang.”  A few minutes and some spelling variations led me to this:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 7.41.36 PM

 

You would think this would end the story, with me sheepishly realizing I was officially and irrevocably an Old and that there were words that The Kidz were using that I knew nothing of.

No.

Instead of Tweeting the silly line from the silly song that was in my head and giving my followers an essentially meaningless Tweet to skip over and not read, I Tweeted this:

Because I wasn’t done being dumb yet.

And LB, because the world is a dumb place and it is endlessly fun to make fun of me, retweeted it.  To ten thousand people.

So now ten thousand people who have never heard of me know I’m old and dumb.

The end.

In which being old is bad until it isn’t anymore

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Parenting1 Comment

LatyrxIf you’ve been reading for a while you probably have an idea that my music tastes are pretty catholic; I listen to all sorts of shit, but my heart has always been with hiphop.  I enjoy flooring my students with this; I suspect fat old white dudes aren’t exactly the demographic they associate with rap music, although I do lose some cred as soon as they figure out that I don’t listen to a single artist any of them have heard of, although I’m fond of pointing them toward good shit whenever I can.

Those two gentlemen there are Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truthspeaker, and they are two of the greatest rappers alive at the moment.  They both do solo work but together they’re a duo called Latyrx.  (Easier to pronounce than you think; mix the first syllable of “Lateef” with the last syllable of “Lyrics.”)  Their appropriately-titled second album, The Second Album, came out not too long ago.  It’s fucking brilliant.  Go buy it.

They did a show in Chicago last night.  I didn’t go.  I didn’t even try.  Guys, it killed me to pass up a chance to see this show; I’ve not been a huge fan of some of the live hiphop shows I’ve seen/heard in the past (Tupac’s live album is an embarrassment to music itself, and I love Tupac) but LB has actually already released a live album and it’s magnificent.  There’s no way these two don’t put together an awesome show.  But… leave my lovely wife and the kid here, drive to Chicago in twenty below bullshit weather, stand in line outside for the show in– again– twenty below bullshit, see the show, then stay the night in Chicago somewhere and come home?  Ehh…

(And speaking of twenty below bullshit, these guys are both from the Bay area.  They took the stage in full winter coats and hats.  I find that hilarious.)

I did a bit of mourning, honestly.  Then I started seeing Tweets this morning from the two of them from just before midnight (my time) that were saying things like “about to go on stage!” and I did a little bit more, because I went to bed a bit after midnight last night (we had a couple of friends over for game night) and it nearly killed me.  No way I can survive a  show that doesn’t even really get started until that late; not anymore.  I’m too damn old.  Which is sad and moderately embarrassing.  Oh well.  Maybe they’ll release the show.

Guess what.  Livestream of the entire show.  Bam.  

And I can watch the entire damn thing from my comfy office chair or my TV tomorrow, since due to the aforementioned twenty below bullshit I’m off work again.  I love the Internet.  I get to see the show and I got to actually get some sleep and spend last night with my family.

Maybe being ancient isn’t so old after all.  🙂

I can’t see at all

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews, TeachingLeave a comment

1027-01I’m four tracks into the new Eminem CD and I have absolutely no goddamn idea what is going on.  The first track is seven minutes long with at least three or four distinct and separate movements.  It’s like Pink Floyd made a rap album.  I really wish I hadn’t used “What is this I don’t even” as yesterday’s post title; it would be more appropriate for how I’m feeling right now.   There will, I expect, be a fuller review once I’ve had the time to listen to this a few dozen times (it’s an hour and a half long!) and absorb it a bit.

Also released today:  a new Latyrx album, which I was expecting to be eating up most of my listen-to-music energy today until listening to the first track of Marshall Mathers 2.  I’ll… uh… get to it when I have time.

(About halfway through the album.  He’s gotta be back on drugs again.)

Today was actually a pretty good day at work; good enough that I’m struggling right now with coming up with anything terribly interesting to say about it.  The new BEST kid apparently walked into her classroom, saw a student she’d had issues with in a previous building, shouted “fuck this” and left the building.  So, uh, not so much with her coming to class?  And they’ve put her in my homeroom for some reason now, because the universe hates me and I’m losing another of my favorite kids on Friday so it’s clearly time to fill the gaps with assholes.

Then again, I haven’t met her yet– granted, because she started shrieking swear words and fled the building— but maybe I’ll like her, who the fuck knows.

I think I’m gonna make egg drop soup for dinner.   Need to go get some green onions.  Maybe I’ll post a picture later if it ends up looking neat.