@@@ Miyamoto is Black Enough: Revolver (National Sawdust Tracks, 2020) I saw this upper echelon mindspace hip hop outfit blurbed in the National Sawdust MLK day email. I think it’s a cool band name and thought I would peep. Though this release is slotted as hip hop it’s more closely aligned with Linton Kwesi Johnson spoken word dub. This tune opens up with a combination of steel dub, spoken word Jamaican flavored accent and reggae sounds with a little electronic addition. The star here is the spoken word poet though in the last third of the track there is a very very stylish spray type steel drum run/solo. I’m going to check out a coupla more tracks but I really liked this tune. The record sports very corporate production with super clean and manicured tracks. I’ve checked out other tracks and the one clipped below is my favorite by a decent length just due to the overwhelming flavor of that track vs. others.
@@@ Juice WRLD ft. Young Thug: Bad Boy (Interscope, 2021) The #1 track in the hot tracks section of Apple Music and it sits in complete opposition lyrically to the record above. This is a celebration of making money, street aggression all happening while Mr. Juice declares himself a sad boy etc. The most notable component of the arrangement is either a cranked guitar or a cranked synth with distortion plugs that make it sound very much like a guitar. I’m not watching the video as the song streams but there are repeated references to the Martin Lawrence movie Bad Boys so I wouldn’t be surprised if the video was a satire or spoof or takeoff of that movie which I haven’t seen and don’t give two fucks about. Generally the lyrics are not my cup of tea at all and I don’t like guitar or the guitar wannabe sound.
Deep In the Music 