This post is part of our Disco 101 program, an in-depth series that looks at the far-reaching, decades-long impact of disco. Curious about disco and want to learn more? Go here to sign up. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. They’ll thank you. We thank you.When disco emerged as a dominant cultural force in the mid-to-late ’70s, regressive cultural forces converged under the banner of rockism to decry its ascendance. Racists, homophobes, and garden-variety closed-minded reactionaries started stirring up impressionable music fans with apocalyptic visions of disco taking over the world and crushing good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll into the dirt beneath its platform heels. Mass record burnings, graffiti, and sloganeering were all part of the benighted Disco Sucks movement. But if anyone ever bothered to ask actual rockers about the issue at the time, they would have gotten a very different perspective.Between the late ‘70s (when disco was at its zenith) and the early ‘80s (when it began to peter out), a remarkable number of high-profile rockers decided to take the plunge and adapt their sound to a disco groove, even if only for a song or two. Granted, it may not have been too huge a shock when try-anything types like The Rolling Stones and David Bowie turned out discofied tracks like “Miss You” and “Fashion,” respectively, especially since the no-disco movement was less prevalent in their native U.K. than in the U.S. But even some American bands you’d never expect to hit the dance floor were having a go at it.Hippie heroes The Grateful Dead got down with the four-on-the-floor feel for “Shakedown Street.” America’s Band themselves, The Beach Boys, put on their polyester (at least figuratively) for “Here Comes the Night.” And hard-rock demons Kiss stepped up to the plate with the ooga-ooga bass lines of “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” ending up with one of the biggest hits of their career in the process.
Fortunately my generation has never had trouble accepting Sade as the origins of a well-wrought tuneful melancholy that for American fans translated as posh but fooled no one who listened to R&B radio before they joined the adult R&B lineup. Besides, it’s Sade whom we have to thank for Maxwell.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.
Gangsta rap is supposed to be all about bravado and bluster -- a fantastical playground of platinum-plated pistols, barely dressed women and John Woo worthy shootouts. Houston emcee Scarface provides a dose of realism to the genre with his finely detailed narratives of guilt-ridden murderers, sorrowful drug dealers and disposed "civilians." First as a member of the Geto Boys and then throughout a lengthy solo career, Scarface is one of the Souths most respected and enduring lyricist. For a 2013 Complex feature, he picked his favorite tracks from his extensive. Its a comprehensive playlist that covers hits such as "My Block" or "Mind Playin Tricks," but also dips into deep catalog picks such as the excellent "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die," a stand-out song from his debut that hinted at the narrative nimbleness and moral complexity that would become his calling card.
Whether on his own, or one half of the legendary 90s NYC rap crew Heltah Skeltah, recently deceased rapper Sean Price was always one of the grimiest, obscene and aggressive rappers in the game. But there was also a sense of humility and depreciation, especially durig the second half of his career. On "Hearing Aid" from his standout solo album Jesus Price Superstar , he quipped that hes a "broke rapper thatll spit for a G," and provides a quick auto-biography: "I started, out broke but then I made a little change/ And blew it all my money on a damn dice game." And, in terms of old-school rappers who were long written off before making an unexpected comeback, he resembles MF DOOM. But as where DOOM trades off an esoteric persona and dense, nearly inscrutable lyrics, Price is the approachable, nice-unless-your-not perennial underdog. I met him a couple of times during various Duck Down events. He was always very nice and quite twisted. Once at SXSW, when I was working for Rhapsody, we shooting an "On the Record" video series where we asked various musicians to discuss their favorite albums in 45 seconds, with a timer displaying on the side of the screen. Most musicians wanted to go over, and we had a buzzer that we would press, which would frequently startle them (I once almost got shot backstage at a Wu Tang concert when said buzzer accidentally went off during a tense moment at 3am). But Price picked Redmans Muddy Waters as his album, and he only talked about it for 25 seconds. I told him that he had about twenty more seconds to go. He added a couple of things and then just out on his mean mug and silently stared at the camera. You can watch it here.
It’s not very cool to like Spoon today, which is strange because they are an incredible band. Whenever I bring them up to friends, other music writers, or even members of my band, my comments are usually met with: “They’re OK,” “I don’t like them,” or something far more pejorative. The thing is, Spoon are one of the most strange and creative bands working in popular indie rock today and they consistently reinvent themselves.Their tracks meld rock ‘n’ roll and electronic elements and are tempered by production that occasionally borders on noise. Their studio work is remarkably meticulous, using ambience and timbre cleverly and makes brilliant use of the depth between foreground and background. Their song structures are clever and vigorous with many tracks violently shifting speed, tone, or texture on a dime. For these reasons, I’ve been telling people for years that Transference is one of the best rock albums of this generation. But I have yet to convert anyone.Songs like “The Ghost of You Lingers” and “I Saw The Light” engage musical space in an innovative way, using static motifs to explore the use of noise in songs and soloing. “WhisperI’lllistentohearit,” from 2017’s Hot Thoughts, features ethereal pulses overlayed with fastidiously situated guitar until the song blasts into a different tempo, fleshing itself out with distortion, synths, and critically placed tambourines and shakers. This is extremely cool music.Do a lot of people like Spoon? Sure. Do they appear on TV and at big festivals? Yeah. Can their music be heard in films and trailers? Yep. That’s because they are a great band. As you’re warming up to Hot Thoughts, enjoy this playlist of their outliers. Songs about death, sex, and loneliness shouldn’t be this fun to listen to.
Steven used the release of the film Straight Outta Compton to review the best album lead-off tracks ever. The actual song selection for this playlist is decent enough. Its hard to argue about the greatness of "Welcome to the Jungle," "Crazy in Love," "Bring Da Ruckus," etc. This list is the cannon -- its safe, there are very few left-field choices, and the only selection that gave me any pause is the Counting Crows selection.This is a conceptthathasbeendone a lot. And initially, I was a bit skeptical that it would make a good playlist. At least the Complex playlist linked to above picks from only hip-hop tracks, which makes it more stylistically consistent. The Grantland playlist uses tracks from all genres and eras. Its something thats easier to ponder than listen to. Still, the songs are connected aesthetically -- theyre generally the albums most hard-hitting, rambunctious tracks. This playlist is like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine only buys muffins for their tops.
Los Angeles native Miguel Jontel Pimental has been one of the most consistently excellent R&B artists of the 2010s, in part because he conjures the adventurous spirit and rock’n’roll edge of his hero, Prince. Now, Miguel (who started using the guitar as his primary songwriting tool while working on his 2012 sophomore effort, Kaleidoscope Dream) may not be a virtuoso soloist like Prince. But the driving riffs and soulful licks that populate Miguel’s later work have continued to reinforce the link between R&B and rock that few of his contemporaries explore.While “Sky Walker,” the lead single to his fourth album, War & Leisure, returns him to a clubby hip-hop sound alongside Travis Scott, Miguel embraced aggressive guitar riffs with another recent single, “Shockandawe.” And guitars have figured prominently in much of his recent work throughout 2017, including the DJ Premier collaboration “2 LOVIN U” and his contribution to the soundtrack for the animated film Coco.With his voracious appetite for different sounds, Miguel has collaborated in the studio with some very famous guitarists, appearing on Santana’s 2014 release, Corazón, and featured guitar work from Lenny Kravitz and Raphael Saadiq on his own 2015 album, Wildheart. And that album’s single “Waves” was remixed and re-recorded by several artists, including country singer Kacey Musgraves and indie kingpins Tame Impala.Session players like Paul Pesco have contributed brighter guitar sounds to songs like “Do You…” and Miguel’s longtime sideman Dru DeCaro has added intricate licks to album tracks as well as live performances of his hits “Adorn” and “Sure Thing.” Miguel’s taste in guitar tones tends towards the lo-fi, from the amp buzz of his Mariah Carey collaboration “#Beautiful” to the low muddy tone of “Coffee.” And it’s that idiosyncratic embrace of the instrument, and the many sounds it’s capable of, that have made Miguel an unlikely major figure in the future of both R&B and guitar music.
Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.A Tribe Called Quests fourth album Beats, Rhymes and Life debuted at No. 1 on Billboard in 1996, preceded on the charts by Nas It Was Written and proceeded by Alanis Morrissettes Jagged Little Pill. The second single, "Stressed Out," featured Faith Evans during the height of her estranged relationships with Biggie and 2pac and was a radio mainstay. But the album was largely considered a disappointment, partly due to the inclusion of two unannounced new members of Tribe: producer Jay Dee, a quiet beatmaking genius from Detroit, and rapper Consequence, Q-Tips cousin. Jay Dee, the new member of The Ummah, only caught a fraction of the wrath from Tribe purists for the shift in sound; production credits on Tribe albums were always hazy (Q-Tip didnt admit to producing the bulk of the first three album singlehandedly until the mid 2000s). Consequence, featured on seven of the albums sixteen cuts, was presumed to have broken up the group by usurping Phife Dawg. He was in the videos, he was on the albums biggest hit, and he was related to Q-Tip. He passed on a deal with Bad Boy to stay in Tribe. He was 18 years old. The plan was for Consequence to be the next Cappadonna, a new artist gradually pulled into the Tribe universe on a prominent album and single. But unlike the soft opening of Cappadonna as New Wu-Tang Clan Member on Raekwons Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Consequence ended up on seven songs, and then followed it up with a shelved album on Elektra. He had no appearances on the next Tribe album, The Love Movement, in 1998. This would be like Cappadonna ousting Ghostface on Cuban Linx and then never appearing on a Clan album again. Random white labels dripped out over the years from Consequence: "Queens Get the Money," produced by Havoc of Mobb Deep, "The Riot" featuring Busta Rhymes and produced by The Ummah, "The Consequences" produced by The Lone Ranger (Q-Tips alias). But Consequence didnt move the needle again until 2004 on the beloved album cut "Spaceship" from Kanye Wests The College Dropout. Ye and Cons met in New York randomly in the early 2000s; Kanye, a diehard Tribe fan, was starstruck. Cons was working a day job. Both were told by the industry in so many words that they didnt fit as rappers. They started a production company called KonMan, which later morphed into GOOD Music. Cons dropped one LP on GOOD Music, the uneven Dont Quit Your Day Job, pairing with The College Dropout and Rhymefests Bluecollar as the GOOD Music Working Man Trilogy. He passed the time by dropping singles, ghostwriting for Kanye, beefing with Pusha T and Joe Budden, and playing himself on Love & Hip Hop. Now that Cons is back with A Tribe Called Quest on the outstanding reunion album We Got it From Here...Thank You For Your Service, its worth combing through his archives to hear why people like Puffy, Q-Tip, and Kanye wanted him on their team. Hes energetic, confident, and topical. Hes a songwriter who can be braggadocios and conceptual. Hes a street dude from Queens who dropped mixtapes to get his buzz back (check the classic Take Em to the Cleaners to hear pre-College Dropout Kanye and Cons giggling and rapping like teens while trying to kick down the door for deals). Hes not as Abstract as Tip or as oddly charming as Ye on the mic. Hes a Professional Rapper with an understanding of his limits and a deep list of industry contacts after 20 years holding every title: Next Big Thing, Forgotten Footnote, Underdog Making a Comeback, Grammy Family Member, Tabloid Fodder, Reality TV Star, and now Beloved Tribe Member Who Came Back Home Again.
My first experience with Kate Bush was listening to “Don’t Give Up,” her duet with Peter Gabriel: a top ten in the UK and a lesser one in America. My second experience was the Utah Saints’ ebullient sample in 1992, adapting the best lyric of her career (“I just knowthat something good is gonna hap-PEN!”) for lubricious ends. 1993 was not a good time for English eccentrics who peaked with concepts and Fairlights six years earlier, which is why I overrateThe Red Shoes. A finalist in my top ten that year, 2005’s Aerial suffers from muddled execution on its song side; “Pi” and “Joanni” sound like B-sides in search of a home and context (I love’em anyway). The second disk — a depiction of aesthetic and sexual actualization set like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves to the chronology of the tides — dawdles for fifteen minutes before “Nocturne” and the title track demonstrate how much Bush has learned about dynamics; her mastery of pitch and song form find their correlative in compositions that churn with a palpable sense of relief and release. “I feel I want to be up on the roof,” accompanied by rhythm guitar chugging, is as weird a hook as the one in “Cloudbusting,” ranking just below the part in “Get Out of My House” in which she mimics a donkey. Too bad 50 Words For Snow lacked songs for a concept. No matter: Kate Bush is worth the wait.Here are my favorite Kate Bush tracks. I wish I owned The Kick Inside and Lionheart. Her induction into Stylus’ Hall of fame inspired a few excellent appreciations, not least of which is Thomas Inskeep’s of “Experiment IV,” one of the best songs recorded expressly for a compilation (The Whole Story). I also recommend Single Jukebox colleague Katherine St. Asaph’s One Week One Band omnibus.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.
As LCD Soundsystem release their fourth studio album American Dream, fans owe more than a little gratitude to David Bowie. Indeed, James Murphy has been quick to give the late rock icon credit for encouraging him to reactivate the band six years after their 2010 Madison Square Garden swansong, an action-packed evening that was documented both in the Shut Up and Play the Hits documentary and the live album The Long Goodbye. Murphy had gotten close to Bowie during the singer’s last years and even collaborated with him musically, doing a sterling remix of “Love Is Lost” from The Next Day and performing percussion on two songs on Blackstar. Unsurprisingly, LCD Soundsystem’s performance of “Heroes”—one of Murphy’s favorite songs from long before he had his own coffee brand—was the most poignant moment at their Coachella reboot in 2016.That deep connection between sadly missed master and studious acolyte may explain why American Dream—an alternately moody, anthemic, inspirational, cranky, and expansive masterwork if there ever was one—sounds like it could’ve fit into Bowie’s own back catalog. If you’re looking for a precise location, it’d be between Low and Lodger, the point in Bowie’s Berlin tenure when he shifted from Krautrock- and Kraftwerk-influenced experimentalism into a harder rock and dance sensibility. Yet the most Bowie-esque element of the new album is its adventurous spirit, something that’s continually been part of the LCD Soundsystem aesthetic as Murphy refined and extended the hallmarks first heard in the dance-punk moment of early-‘00s New York.Of course, a whole lot has changed since then, and American Dream reflects the shifts that have gone on not just in Murphy’s life and career, but those of his bandmates, too. Many of the album’s most exciting moments point to the influence of the other musical activities of the LCD membership, whether it’s the brooding electro-pop of drummer Pat Mahoney’s band Museum of Love, the continuing dancefloor adventures of Nancy Whang and John MacLean in The Juan MacLean, the edgy post-DFA tech-funk of artists on Tyler Pope’s Interference Pattern label, or the sprightly synth-pop Al Doyle makes with Hot Chip. Likewise, there are traces of the music that fills Murphy’s DJ sets on his own or with Soulwax as Despacio (e.g., Telex, Suicide, The Cars) or his scores for the films of his pal Noah Baumbach, along with hints of his other recent musical obsessions like The Roches, the art-pop sister act revered for their intricate and intertwined vocal harmonies.So all of this belongs alongside Murphy’s cherished Bowie/Eno-isms in our exploded view of American Dream, a work whose creative vision and generosity are as wide as such a title demands.