Unpacked

Unpacked is a playlist analysis of new and classic albums where we highlight key tracks alongside their influences, collaborators, and sample sources to encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of the record. After loading up 1989’s cult classic Paul’s Boutique with a dizzying array of samples, the Beastie Boys refocused on live instrumentation in the more litigious ‘90s, drafting keyboardist Money Mark as one of the group’s many honorary “fourth” Beastie Boys. But while Check Your Head, which turns 25 this week, contains fewer samples than Paul’s Boutique, it still features dozens of them, drawing on the crates full of punk, classic rock, funk, and comedy records that informed the bratty white rappers’ revolutionary fusion of styles. Check Your Head’s opening track “Jimmy James” sets the densely referential tone: It features no fewer than three Jimi Hendrix Experience samples from three different albums. (The title itself is a nod to Hendrix’s early stage name.) But first, you hear “this next one is the first song on our new album,” as spoken by Robin Zander on Cheap Trick’s 1978 live album At Budokan in his introduction to the future classic “Surrender.” And then, the beat that kicks in is taken primarily from The Turtles’ novelty track “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea.” More than perhaps any album in history, Check Your Head blurs the line between samples and original recordings. Some of the blasts of distorted guitar are played live by Ad-Rock, while others are taken from Thin Lizzy and Bad Brains. On “Finger Lickin’ Good,” MCA and Mike D begin a sentence in 1992 that is finished by Bob Dylan in 1965. One of the most straightforward punk songs on the album, “Time For Livin’,” is actually a revved up Sly & The Family Stone cover. And while “The Biz Vs. The Nuge” features Biz Markie riffing in the Beasties’ studio over a Ted Nugent sample, “So What’cha Want” samples Biz vocals from both his 1988 Big Daddy Kane collaboration “Just Rhymin’ With Biz” and the Check Your Head outtake “Drunken Praying Mantis Style.”

In 2009, a viral video made the YouTube rounds called “Beatles 3000,” a short mockumentary that imagined how The Beatles would be remembered in the next millennium. Its answer was: not very well. But more than just playfully prodding a sacred cow, the video serves as a cogent commentary on how significant historical details are compacted and distorted over time, and how much of what we consider fact today is likely the product of a prolonged game of broken telephone. In “Beatles 3000,” various talking heads from the future make the authoritative claims that Scottie Pippen was a member of the group, that their list of hits included “Don’t Stop Believin’” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and that they won the Super Bowl at Shea Stadium in 1965. But as absurd as that all sounds, we’re arguably witnessing the earliest stages of The Beatles’ legacy being slowly dismantled.

Sure, 50 years on from their breakup, The Beatles are arguably as popular as ever—they generate billions of streams, have their own dedicated satellite-radio station, and provide inspirational fodder for Netflix cartoon shows and Hollywood rom-coms. And their influence can still be heard in countless rock acts, from The Flaming Lips and Foo Fighters to Tame Impala and Ty Segall. However, when you look at the field they once dominated so thoroughly—the top of the pop charts—it can seem as if they never existed. Not only is the Billboard Hot 100 bereft of any bands that sound like The Beatles, it’s largely bereft of any bands, period. The dominant sounds of popular music today—trap, R&B, Latin pop—bear none of The Beatles’ DNA and speak to vastly different cultural experiences; in fact, the only time you really see The Beatles mentioned in relation to modern pop is when an artist like Drake eclipses their chart records (or gets a tattoo to celebrate such a feat), or in Migos memes. And lest we forget, the unanimously violent reaction to Gal Gadot’s recent quarantined-celebrity sing-along of John Lennon’s “Imagine” strongly suggested that the utopian peace-and-love platitudes of the Beatles generation provide little assurance to a more anxious younger generation that is worried more about how they’re going to pay for their next meal.

And yet: If you look and listen closely, you can still sense The Beatles’ lingering presence in contemporary pop. Beyond singers like Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus taking a crack at covers, there are myriad rap and R&B artists who have paid their respects through subtle melodic lifts (see: the echoes of “Here, There and Everywhere” on Frank Ocean’s “White Ferrari”), shout-outs (Kehlani’s “All You Need Is Love”-referencing “Honey”), and tributes both direct (Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles”) and indirect (Post Malone’s “Stay,” which he originally planned to name “George” in honor of its Harrison-esque guitar solo). What we’re hearing now is The Beatles being held up less as a direct musical influence than as a more abstract aspirational emblem of artistic freedom, pop-cultural ubiquity, and us-against-the-world camaraderie. In other words, the biggest pop stars of today may not sound like The Beatles, but they still want to be The Beatles.

If Reflections - Mojave Desert proves anything, it’s that Floating Points 2017 is essentially an ongoing conversation between two different musical beasts who may share DNA and musical influences, but who end up in very different places.Floating Points 1 is Sam Shepherd, the electronic-music producer and DJ responsible for early Floating Points classics like Nuits Sonores and Sparkling Controversy and who is still capable of going back to back-to-back with Caribou/Daphni and Four Tet on marathon DJ excursions.Floating Points 2 is a group of musicians that Shepherd put together to promote his excellent 2015 album Elaenia. It is this group that made Reflections - Mojave Desert, an album that has its origins in recordings made last year when Floating Points traveled to the Mojave Desert to rehearse in between U.S. tours. Struck by the desert’s unique ambience, the band recorded a soundtrack that would reflect their arid, alien surroundings and also accompany a short film made with director Anna Diaz Ortuño.Reflections, then, is very much a band record, based around the two lengthy central tracks on Silurian Blue and Kelso Dunes. The former is a sparse, atmospheric guitar and synth number that brings to mind emotionally charged, classically expansive Pink Floyd numbers like “The Great Gig in the Sky” or the soft-focus, sun-blushed ecstasy of Slowdive’s “Souvlaki Space Station”; the latter is 13 minutes of nervous guitar propulsion that rides the kind of militant Krautrock beat that NEU! or CAN made their own. Both, however, are burned through with a scorching ambience that suggests the desert-noir stylings of Calexico or John Phillips’ soundtrack for The Man Who Fell to Earth.Around these central poles lie three songs that set the album’s atmosphere. Opener “Mojave Desert” is pure ambience, a soundscape that combines the noise of the wind and the rustling of bushes with woozy synth chords, like Brian Eno hooking up with Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack to an apocalyptic Western. Album closer “Lucerne Valley,” meanwhile, is three and a half minutes of beat-free melodic noodling that gently guides the listener back to real life after their dreamy desert excursion.For all that it is a band record, Reflections isn’t entirely without electronics. The brilliant “Kites” sees Shepherd take a synth loop for a walk; as a swinging super-directional microphone captures the valley’s natural reverb, the loop gradually increases in speed, ending up as a wonderfully simple, atmospheric piece of electronics that recalls early Tangerine Dream.Reflections - Mojave Desert should not be confused for a formal follow up to Elaenia, an album that topped many end-of-year lists in 2015. It’s more jammy, less sculpted, more concerned with atmospherics and ambience than melodies, and you can feel the warm desert grit up your nostrils throughout. But as an example of what Floating Points the band can do with the bit between their teeth and an environment to inspire them, this album is hugely worthwhile.

Despite its reputation as the No. 1 music-industry disruptor of 2019, Lil Nas X’s honky-hop hybrid “Old Town Road” owes a great deal of its success to an age-old formula: the promotion of the chorus from cleanup hitter to leadoff batter. Although its usage has gained considerable traction in the streaming era (when shortened attention spans demand that artists engineer their tracks to elicit love-at-first-click), you can find examples of chorus-verse-chorus songwriting throughout pop history. This playlist provides a brief history of songs in which the first verse is secondary, chronologically charting how the practice has evolved over time. Back in the days of Elvis and The Beatles, it was an instant invitation to get up and dance to the devil’s music. For iconoclastic rockers like Neil Young and The Clash, it was a means of putting their social messaging front and center. At the height of hair metal, bands like Bon Jovi and Twisted Sister put their shout-along refrains up front in anticipation of engaging with their arena-size audiences. And as hip-hop and R&B have become the dominant forms of pop music in the 21st century, it’s becoming increasingly common for artists in the former camp to lure you in with hooks steeped in the latter.

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Controversy magnet Ronnie Radke and his bandmates in Falling In Reverse (who seem to change every few months) have made some of the densest, most outrageous, and devastatingly clever modern rock and art pop of the last decade—yet nobody outside of kids who attend the Warped Tour year in and year out pay them any mind.Some of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Radke. On top of boasting serious pop smarts, he’s cocky, moody, confrontational—let’s not forget he was fired from Escape the Fate in 2008—and at times misogynistic. As he sings in “Just Like You”: “I am aware that I am an asshole / I really dont care about all of that though / I got nothing to prove / But honestly Im just like you.” There’s also the fact that modern post-hardcore and metalcore bands aren’t given much space in outlets like Pitchfork,Rolling Stone, and Spin; it’s a black sheep subculture forever consigned to Alternative Press and Blabbermouth.Net.Falling In Reverse believe a rock album should be nothing less than an epic sonic experience, promoting a bigger-is-better philosophy preached by heroes like Queen, My Chemical Romance, and Andrew W.K. (Though, truth be told, Radke’s just as likely to name-check Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, or Lady Gaga.) Their latest album, Coming Home, is no exception. Where 2015’s Just like You was a manic fusion of blink-182-style snot, glam pomp, chart pop, metallic crunch, and Eminem-influenced attitude, the more carefully paced Home clears room for post-dubstep spaciness and chilly, atmospheric synthesizers. For instance, the title track sounds like a cosmic collision between Muse’s “Madness,” Daft Punk’s “Give Life Back to Music,” and the ZAYN/Taylor Swift collab “I Dont Wanna Live Forever.”Of course, Falling In Reverse aren’t the only Warped cats suffusing their jams with electronic ether. Issues and I See Stars—with whom Radke has feuded—incorporate flickering EDM programming, while The Word Alive drench their brooding anthems in ambient-like textures and acts like Pvris and Tonight Alive incorporate electro-pop touches. Yet none of them can quite match Falling In Reverse when it comes to packing songs full of hook-laden brilliance. Radke, for all his faults and failings, is a tunesmith operating on a whole ’nother level.

Whether working on her own recordings or with friends like Peaches, Chilly Gonzales, or Broken Social Scene, Leslie Feist has always been more of a serial collaborator than a solo artist who likes to keep it solo. That’s one reason why the stripped-down sound of her fifth album, Pleasure—the Canadian chanteuse’s first in six years—is so striking.Recorded in rooms in Paris, California, and upstate New York, her performances are as raw and unadorned as any she’s recorded, with her usual crew of helpers pruned down to producer Renaud Letang and longtime musical foil Mocky. That said, some friends did stop by to add a few touches, like the sprinkling of keys from Gonzales and horns from Arcade Fire collaborator Colin Stetson. She also enlisted Jarvis Cocker to deliver a cameo at the close of “Century”—reminiscent of Vincent Price’s voice-over in “Thriller”—one of the most unbridled songs on the new album, after the libidinous, PJ Harvey-channeling title track.So maybe Pleasure isn’t such a lonesome experience after all, though its starkness still marks a bold shift from the chic sheen of 2007’s The Reminder and the stormy swells of 2011’s Metals. More intimate recordings from her early days, both with and without pals, point the way to Pleasure, as do other pieces by singers she loves and by equally gifted peers who’ve left their traces on her work.And lest Pleasure seem like “one of those endless dark nights of the soul,” as Cocker quips in “Century,” the new album still contains many cheeky gestures, including her occasional dives into Pulp-worthy theatrics and her use of a Mastodon sample at the end of “A Man Is Not His Song” (after the release of Metals, she formed a mutual admiration with the Atlanta band and covered their “Black Tongue” on a split single for Record Store Day). Thanks to Feist’s ability to seamlessly integrate these many elements while maintaining a spare aesthetic, the pleasures of Pleasure are nothing if not the sophisticated kind we’ve come to expect.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

There’s no pain exactly like losing a musician you love. Partaking in good art can’t help but feel like a communion between oneself and the work’s author, so even if we never get the chance to meet our favorite creators in real life, the loss of one feels deeply personal. Not to mention the collected weight of all those songs that will never be written, and concerts never performed. Add to this the complicated nature of mourning a public figure — whose private life and struggles are often known only to their family and friends — and, well, it’s just brutal.That’s why posthumous songs, while so often a source of strife between labels and artists’ estates, can be so soothing to us fans. They give us a chance to remember the musicians as they were (consider Sublime’s “What I Got”) or as they might be right now (Avicii’s “Heaven”). They let us feel grateful for what we had (Bob Marley’s “Give Thanks & Praises”) or pissed off over what we lost (Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). Sometimes they play like a final missive from beyond (John Lennon’s “Woman”). Often they’re prophetic (Tupac’s “To Live and Die in L.A.”). And occasionally they’re just big, beatific shrugs (Mac Miller on “That’s Life”).Some of these songs were released within days of the artist’s passing, and most came within a year. But all of them feel imbued with some extra meaning, from the sad irony of the opener, Hank Williams’ “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but Time,” to the hard-fought optimism of the closer, Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Music heals, so grab a tissue box and hit play.

She was a tragic character from the very beginning—Lana Del Rey was Born to Die. And yet, half a decade later, her story continues; her myth still grows. The pouty princess who once served as Hipster Runoffs lifeline has made her way to the (literal) top of Hollywood with a renewed Lust for Life. "Were the masters of our own fate," she coos with confidence on the albums title track. Its a well-worn cliché that sounds downright profound coming from a woman who has meticulously created and refined a persona that is far more than meets the black-lined eye.Lana is not the tortured seductress we first assumed her to be. No, she is a true and shrewd 21st-century star. She glorifies outdated stereotypes, while challenging outdated perspectives on sex, race, youth, beauty, power, fame, and the American dream. She then neatly fits these ideas into classic archetypal figures that come alive in noir soundscapes as silky and sumptuous as her bed sheets surely must be. Here, we break down Lana Del Rey into her four most distinct roles and unpack the influences behind them.THE FEMME FATALE

Lana got plenty of heat back in 2014 for telling The Fader, "The issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept." The fact that she opens a song with a line like "my pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola" doesnt help her cause, but shes hardly proven to be a powerless woman. In fact, Lana is arguably at her best in her most infamous role: the femme fatale. Her idea of feminism is using and abusing the power of femininity, not unlike strong sex symbols before her, from the slithery slyness of Nancy Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot to the overt eroticism of Madonna. Of course, the femme fatale can be as lethal to herself as she is to the opposite sex. When her own dangerous games of sex, drugs, and intrigue turn against her, self-awareness becomes crucial. When Lana admits that she wants "Money Power Glory" and that "prison isnt nothing to me" (on "Florida Kilos"), she takes on the gall and grit of proud bad girls Rihanna and Amy Winehouse.

THE HOPELESS ROMANTIC

Lana will break an endless amount of hearts, but will forever find true love elusive. She can lure the boys in but never quite let them go. She is the hopeless romantic, much like "Lust for Life" collaborator The Weeknd, who once said, "she is the girl in my music, and I am the guy in her music." On her big, symphonic ballads, shell sweep you up in every intimate detail with the pained quiver of Antony Hegarty, the vivid imagery of Leonard Cohen (whose "Chelsea Hotel #2" Lana has covered), and the brooding intensity of Chris Isaaks sultriest unrequited-love song, "Wicked Game." All the while, she associates youth and beauty with romance ("Will you still love me/ When Im no longer young and beautiful"), believing that none of these things will ever last—but it doesnt mean shell stop falling in love.

THE SAD GIRL

Behind every calculated move and every shade of cool is a sad girl "crying tears of gold." This is the fate of a tough temptress with a soft soul. Lana wallows in her sorrow as much as she does in her drugs, booze, and boys. Her most indulgent torch songs are draped in infinite sadness, starting with the obvious "Sad Girl," with its dark, dusky swing in the style of Twin Peaks enchantress Julee Cruise, or "Million Dollar Man," in which she echoes the most "Sullen Girl" of all, Fiona Apple. She even finds a kindred spirit in Mr. Lonely himself with her stunning cover of Bobby Vinton’s "Blue Velvet." Still, through all that misery, at least she knows that shes pretty when she cries.

THE ALL-AMERICAN PROVOCATEUR

Lana embodies the American dream as every bit of the illusion that it is. The American flag is her most provocative symbol, whether shes standing proudly before it (mischievously winking) or suggestively wrapping herself in its stars and stripes. She finds money, fame, and all that dream promises—but never happiness. She sings of Springsteen in "American"; portrays herself as both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie O in the video for "National Anthem"; and even gets political on "Coachella – Woodstock in My Mind." Her vision of America starts and ends on the West Coast. She paints the Golden State as both scandal and savior with hints of EMA and Courtney Love; tells sordid tales of "Guns and Roses" like only Guns N Roses could; and finds her fellow California "Freak" in video co-star Father John Misty. All together, she is America the Beautiful, the Cunning, the Miserable.

From the warped breakbeats of drum n bass to the frenetic 808 attack of footwork, the last two decades of electronic music history have been marked by a fetishization of the drums, as technological advances have allowed producers to go ever deeper into rhythmic design.Black Origami, the remarkable second album from Gary, Indiana, producer Jlin is one of the most important recent developments in the history of electronic percussion, a brilliantly overblown yet mind-glowingly complex album of rhythmic possibility.Jlin emerged from the world of footwork in the early 2010s with the track “Erotic Heat,” which appeared on volume two of the iconic Bangs & Works compilation series on UK dance label Planet Mu. But if that track was an outlier in the footwork world of dance battles and frenetic DJ cuts, her 2015 debut album Dark Energy would see Jlin gravitate further into her own darkly elegant orbit, incorporating operatic arias (on “Black Ballet”) and Chinese erhu violin (on “Unknown Tongues”).Black Origami sees Jlin blow open the definition of what footwork can be. You can still feel the influence of footwork producers like DJ Rashad on a track like “1%” (featuring Holly Herndon), with its skittering hi-hats and coal-black synth lines, but elsewhere Jlin widens her global percussive net to take in everything from tabla drums (notably used in electronic music by London producer Talvin Singh) on “Kyanite” to the djembe on “Nyakinyua Rise,” all of which battles against Jlin’s drum-machine finesse in a global-percussion street fight. Jlin also takes on sounds that are closer to home: “Challenge (To Be Continued)” is a brilliant rhythmic tussle between US marching band and footwork hi-hats, while “Hatshepsut” throws a Joey Beltram hoover sound into the mix.Black Origami is also notable for its eye-opening array of collaborations, which veer several steps into the left field of electronic music. “Holy Child” sees Jlin work with minimalist composer William Basinski, the haunting “Calcination” features the gothic vocals of Fawkes, while the hip hop-ish “Never Created, Never Destroyed” includes vocal work from Cape Town rapper Dope Saint Jude that Jlin chops and splits to her own devices.Black Origami bears the influence of each of these collaborators and yet it sounds like none of them. It’s a footwork album but only in the very widest sense of what footwork can be. As such, Black Origami resembles—in spirit more than in sound—the work of 90s electronic-music producers like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Photek, and Remarc, who took the chopped up breakbeats of drum n bass and pushed them to ridiculous new levels of subatomic complexity, creating something quite revolutionary in its pointillist intensity. Black Origami is a worthy successor to these names, a jaw-dropping work of percussive complexity that marks out Jlin as a singularly brilliant talent.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

In 2007, Kanye didnt know he would effectively end the near-20-year reign of gangsta rap by outselling 50 Cents lackluster album Curtis on their shared September release day. Kanye didnt know his mother would pass away suddenly, or that his longtime fiance would leave him, or that hed marry into the most famous American television family by choice. Graduation is a victory lap, the third part of a scrapped four-album story that was supposed to culminate with Good Ass Job, which instead became 808s & Heartbreak.Graduation continues the plucky underdog narrative built on 2004s breakthrough debut The College Dropout and 2005s Late Registration, which heralded the emergence of an artiste/hitmaker. Kanye was beginning to be regarded as the biggest egomaniac in rap history while still not showing his face on the cover on his record, something he still hasnt done. Kanye’s album covers hint at the music within: College Dropout is warm soul music, with brown, yellow, and burgundy tones on the cover and Kanye dressed in his trademark cuddly bear mascot. Late Registration is orchestral, full of strings, keys, and languid arrangements from Jon Brion—tellingly, the cover depicts the bear mascot, purposefully small, entering a vast new doorway that looks academic and orderly. By contrast, Graduation is exploding with anime, while the color choices of blue, yellow, pink and purple symbolize its ambitious energy, extravagance, and solidified confidence. Designed by Takashi Murakami (who Kanye described as "the Japanese Andy Warhol"), it nails Graduations wider palette of sample choices: Michael Jackson on "The Good Life," Krautrock gods Can on "Drunk and Hot Girls," Young Jeezys famous gravely "ha ha" adlibs on "Cant Tell Me Nothing," Elton Johns crooning on "Good Morning".Graduation was Kanyes leanest album up until that point: zero skits, and eight tracks shorter than both Dropout and Registration. Instead of telling the listener about all of his plans, his failures, his dreams, and his mostly bad jokes on songs and on skits, Graduation shows us his improved flow, his vast tastes, his arena-inspired hooks, and his added weapons of samples, live instruments, Southern-rap synths, and 808s (thanks to the inclusion of DJ Toomp and Mike Dean). 50 Cents music career has never recovered from the sales showdown he lost to Kanye West, but the truth is that if 50 Cent could make hits like "Stronger," "Flashing Lights," and "Cant Tell Me Nothing," gangsta rap would possibly still dominate the charts. Instead, a fashion-loving backpacker who wore Marty McFly shades and a Roc-a-Fella chain has remade rap and pop culture in his image every year for the past decade.