[THE FALL TO POP] Regina Spektor

Imagine you’re an aspiring musician known for how you delicately balance art and talent. You’re fairly popular on the internet, mostly due to your thousands of profile views on Myspace. Unfortunately for you, being popular on the internet doesn’t necessarily translate to making money and as a result, you’re flat broke. You realize the only way to do this is to gain more exposure via promotion, music videos, radio single, etc but even that costs thousands of dollars. Record labels know your situation all too well and so they offer you a deal. They will finance your rise to stardom but in return they get to make all the financial decisions. And by financial decisions, they mean they need to cater your sound to a demographic that would yield maximum revenue, AKA they make all the artistic decisions. The record label tells you it will actually be easier for you since they will just outsource songwriters to write for you and ensure a team of specialists will make you sound “perfect”. Sure you will finally be making money off your songs but are they really your songs? Too many times I’ve seen an artist settle for the numbers, formulas and figures of the industry and essentially, settling for pop. What gets classified as pop? It’s a little hard to define and I’m not sure what the industry definition of it is but for all intents and purposes for this blog, I will refer to pop music as songs that you lose interest in with time, as opposed to songs that getter better with time. Songs that are made to sell, not last. Unfortunately, I know a lot of artists who have succumb to this fate, this derailing and have undergone the fall to pop.

When I first heard Regina’s music I never thought I her name and the word “pop” could exist in the same sentence. My first thought was “wow, this is a true artist”. A true artist in every sense of the word. One who, I believe, should be selfish with their motives. And by selfish I don’t mean monetary gain by any means. I mean they make music to solely satisfy their own need to release emotion. When you hear her music you’ll see what I mean. She does exactly what she wants and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I first heard a couple of her songs from a friend and did what I usually do with an artist I think I’ll like: download their discography and see if I can find any diamonds in the ruff (I usually find that the popular songs are my least favorite). This discography turned out to be a little unusual because I found every song to be thoroughly entertaining. Even if I didn’t like a song it would entertain enough to hear it all the way through. Perhaps it was her fantastic display of singing and piano talents, or maybe it was the dynamic array of genres she used throughout, but I think the main reason I found it so interesting was because it was so refreshing to hear someone singing so unconventionally. She is definitely the most unique singer I’ve ever heard, and it’s nice to see someone break the mold of what singing should be. Singing is an art, and an art is not about being perfect, it’s about being expressive, which is something Regina is very, very good at.

Her music ranges from the strange... 

to the beautiful... 

to the strange and beautiful...

Sometimes I can’t make out if she’s absolutely insane or incredibly brilliant

It’s quite apparent that she has a very eclectic taste in music. Almost her entire first album is comprised of jazzy and bluesy tracks while in her other albums, you can tell she got influenced by a wider variety of music. Only a couple of her songs have infiltrated the mainstream, by far the most popular being Fidelity. A lot of people noticed her with this song and of course, so did some record execs.

For her new album she gave the steering wheel to a superstar cast of producers (Jeff Lynne (ELO, The Traveling Wilburys), Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem), David Kahne (Paul McCartney, The Strokes) and Garret "Jacknife" Lee (Weezer, REM)) and made one of her least inspired albums by far called, actually, Far. Perhaps the title was alluding to the fact that she left her eclectic self behind and traveled to the far away world called Pop. I liked her album the first week, hated it the next, and never listened to it after that, which is exactly what the producers were excepting from this album. Give you a little bit so you’re eager for more. From a business point of view it’s much more profitable to make someone buy a new album every month than to provide a great album that will last years. A brilliant business model but it’s a damn shame that someone as talented as Regina Spektor was wasted on it.

[NOTES] The Difference Between Mainstream and Underground Hip Hop

Mainstream:

“F___ You, I have more money!”

Underground:

“F___ You, I rhyme better!”

Both are correct.

Hip hop may not be dead but creativity certainly is.

[SONG OF THE MOMENT] Best of Times - Sage Francis

I've seen this a bunch of times in Indie rock and other genres but I've never really heard an example of progression in a Hip Hop, at least to this extent, until now. There have been some that come close (see Be by Common) but there's something different about this track that makes it stand out. The album this came from, called Li(f)e, was slightly disappointing but the download was definitely worth it for this one song.

A Youtube link won’t do it any justice so I’ll just provide a link to this site where you can find the song and lyrics.

I only found out recently that the beat was actually produce by none other than Yann Tiersen, one of my favorite composers and the maker of this fine gem from the soundtrack of the movie Amélie. It’s always great to see a rapper reach out to different genres for beats.

[FAVORITES] Lupe Fiasco

Oddly enough, it was in an American Eagle where I had my first exposure to an artist who I now consider to be one of the best rappers alive. The music video for “Kick, Push” played on the small TV and I asked my brother who the artist was. He told me it was a guy named Lupe Fiasco, although now that I think of it, it seems rather strange that he would say that considering I introduced him to his now favorite rapper, Lupe, two years later. Anyways, I went home and downloaded his discography, found some songs with beats that I liked (and some others with incredibly familiar instrumentals), threw them on my ipod and went on with my life. It wasn’t until his second album “The Cool” came out that I realized that Lupe was not just any other rapper. And it wasn’t until I had a boring summer job in front of a computer, and I spent all day on Lupe Fiasco sites, forums and blogs that I discovered the real Lupe Fiasco: Lupe the Lyrical Mastermind. I eventually went back and re-listened to all those songs I abandoned on my first listen and realized that a Lupe song can only be truly appreciated after the 3^rd or even 4th listen. His entire discography that I once discarded now makes up 10% of Suge’s Playlist. You could say I’m a fan. There are a few things I’ve learned about Lupe over the years. One, he’s probably the most intelligent emcee to ever pick up a mic. Two, he’s a writer first and a rapper second (his first novel should be published soon). And three, he has never written a bad verse. Ever.

Lupe Fiasco, born Wasalu Jaco, grew up in the west side of Chicago where started listening to Hip-hop and got a record deal all during high school. Talk about natural talent! He later dropped this because he didn’t like the hold the label had over his content (you’ll find that a lot of his older stuff has gang related themes). He even declined a cosign from Jay-Z, to start his own label, 1^st and 15^th. From there he made about 5 or 6 mixtapes before he released his first two albums “Food & Liquor” and “The Cool”, both of which were nominated for best rap album at the Grammy’s. I am currently waiting patiently for his newest album “Lasers” to drop which should be in the next couple weeks.

If you’re new to him here’s a listening guide:

-          Straight Lyrical Punchline Massacre (what 95% of rap is now days)

o   Absolute freestyle

o   Lupe the killer

o   Failure (considered to be Lupe's most lyrically deep song)

-          Socially Conscious Rap

o   Conflict diamonds (came out before Kanye’s version and influenced Kanye to make his remix)

o   American terrorist

o   Little weapon

-          Story Telling Rap

o   Kick push 1, 2

o   Spray Paint and Ink Pens

o   And he gets the girl (another cool video)

 He also has some sort of hip hop opera with reoccurring characters in various songs. The characters are “The Cool”, “The Streets” and “The Game” who are personifications of their names.  Songs about “The Cool” include The Cool, The Coolest, and The Die. “The Streets” and “The Game” are both described in the song, Real Recognize Real and have individual songs, Streets On Fire and Put You On Game respectively.

His live shows are incredibly energetic and feature a full live band doing rock covers to his famous songs. He has very eclectic tastes in music citing The Chili Peppers and The Prodigy as some of his favorite artists and even has his own rock band, Japanese Cartoon.

His only flaw, if he has one, is that he lacks personal songs and emotional content (except for perhaps Hurt Me Soul). If the world was split into artists and scientists I would consider him to be a scientist. However, I think this might change with his newest album, Lasers, specifically with a song called “Beautiful Lasers” (or possibly called “Two Ways”). From the few leaks I’ve heard, it sounds like Lasers should be pretty good and Lupe might even finally get that Grammy he deserves.

Lasers should be coming out soon and I’ll post my review of it ASAP.

Introduction

      On my ipod there is a list of songs that make the ipod far more valuable than it's market price. Over the years, I have compiled many rare and beautiful songs ranging from indie rock to underground hip-hop. Some sent to me by friends, others discovered in the late hours of the night while scouring the net. I have just under a thousand songs in this list, of which about 10% are popular songs. I think I've just about given up on the top 40 list. All the songs on the radio sound the same to me. Same drums. Same lyrics. Same autotuned chorus. 

I used to like the radio. I used to listen to the music force-fed to me by the industry. It was a time before music blogs and file sharing was popular and my only source of new music was the countdown on Muchmusic. But it all changed one day when my friend lent me 4 albums. The albums were K-os's "Exit" and "Joyful Rebellion", Tonedeff's debut album "Archetype" and Eminem's first album, "Infinite" which was sent to me online (it's incredibly hard to find a physical copy of it). Listening to these albums started a snowball effect and got me searching far and wide for great music that had somehow slipped the grasp of popular culture like these albums had once done.

I'm starting this blog to share some of the discoveries I've made throughout the years. Eventually, I hope to write news and album updates of my favorite artists as well as album reviews. I understand that music is subjective and don't expect you to like all or most of the artists I like. But perhaps while reading, my enthusiasm for these artists would give new insight into why anybody would like them and maybe you'll even learn to like a genre you thought you never would. After all, I’ve always believed that there is no such thing as good or bad music. There is only music you understand and music you don't understand. The latter can always be changed.

First post coming up soon.

Enjoy Suge’s Playlist.