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- The Retrographer, Issue 47 (November, 2 0 1 8)
The Retrographer, Issue 47 (November, 2 0 1 8)
Curtis Mayfield, Ian Wayne, Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey, Ty Dolla $ign, Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dogg, The Last Artful Dodgr, Takeoff, Dayytona Fox, Earl Sweatshirt, JID, The 1975, Grimes, Phil Cook
The Retrographer 47 (November, 2 0 1 8)
Bulletins
Sorry for the slight delay – all the year-end lists are coming out and I’m still writing about November. That said: It was a great month for music and IMO maybe the strongest playlist of the year front-to-back
Ian Wayne put out his great debut full-length, listen to it on Spotify and YouTube.
“Eddie! EDDIE!!!” (Thanks to Ben.)
Next week, as you know is my big 100-song best-of playlist issue. Would you do me a solid and invite some friends to subscribe to the newsletter? I always feel like that’s the best issue each year to get people hooked.
“Girlfriend”, Ian Wayne (Spotify / YouTube) – “Me and my girlfriend can, at best, hope to be holograms of each other to forget ourselves in. Sailing through space in ships of skin.” Or this one: “We dream the same things all day, but not at night.”
“thank u, next”, Ariana Grande (Spotify / YouTube) – The most mature, poised pop song in a generation, and not by accident. Ariana has been through hell and faces it with gratitude. It stands far apart from the pride and reactivity we hear on a daily basis – and that’s not even mentioning music.
“The Distance”, Mariah Carey, Ty Dolla $ign (Spotify / YouTube) – A great, unexpected Mariah album, as angelic and untouchable as she’s ever been. It wouldn’t be 2018 without an assist from Ty, who plays his part, looming as he has over so much of the year’s best music.
“Anywhere”, Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dogg, The Last Artful Dodgr (Spotify / YouTube) – Oxnard is, like many anticipated follow-ups, fatty and overthought, but not without delights, like Snoop’s nostalgic and humanizing remembrance of his youth in the LBC. If you like this, listen to more Erykah.
“Infatuation”, Takeoff, Dayytona Fox (Spotify / YouTube) – Underrated as he is, Takeoff is a veritable superstar alongside the shockingly charming and mysterious Dayytona Fox, who Takeoff gracefully allows to own this glinting dancefloor love letter.
“Azucar”, Earl Sweatshirt (Spotify / YouTube) – A shoe-in for one of the year’s best albums, Some Rap Songs’ 15 songs smear past your ear like a cityscape through a rainy car window. This is Earl at his most Donuts, but putting words to the sentiment: “There’s not a black woman I can’t thank.”
“Off Da Zoinkys”, JID (Spotify / YouTube) – Underrated enough that it’s becoming properly rated, Dicaprio 2 shows Destin Route to be one of the ablest rappers of his generation, sailing over a smushed soul sample that sounds both pitched up and down at the same time. “We’re a long way from Decatur.”
“I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)”, The 1975 (Spotify / YouTube) – “Creep” to the toes, even to the pre-chorus “ka-chunk”. Matty Healy is 60% impersonation, and I mean that as a compliment; His best work makes you hear musical ideas you already know as if you’d never heard them before. And it’s never without profundity: “Your death, it won’t happen to you. It happens to your family and friends.”
“We Appreciate Power”, Grimes (Spotify / YouTube) – Grimes’ brilliance is exemplified each time she releases a new song that sounds like nothing she’s done before, yet still seems like it belongs in her musical world. This NIN / Matrix paean to a future omniscient AI is a sibling to “Go”, “Kill v. Maim”, even “Oblivion”. And she still has more to do.
“Life”, Phil Cook (Spotify / YouTube) – “Brother, brother,” is a daring way to start a song. You won’t face up to Marvin, so why try? Maybe embrace the absurdity of trying. “Look what they have done to your poor boy. It really ain’t that bad, it just looks like they’ve been having fun.”
One Album for November, 2018
Curtis Mayfield was a man of God who became the voice of pimps. His 1972 soundtrack Superfly defined the blaxploitation image of the black man in America; A man whose superhuman power bloomed in the fringes and black markets of a society and economy that had evacuated every plot black Americans set their foot on, and so found his power and potency in a shadow city of his own invention. Scraping for success and a sort of extrajudicial justice wherever he could find it, anti-heroes like Superfly’s Youngblood Priest, or Dolemite’s Dolemite clawed their way to respectability at the expense of racist cops and their prone, battered hoes. They are, in a sense, all tragedies; Even the wildest fantasies of the oppressed still relied, in a sense, on passing that oppression along.
This was not lost on Mayfield. “This cat of the slum had a mind, wasn't dumb / But a weakness was shown because his hustle was wrong.” He sang. “His mind was his own, but the man lived alone.” It was not lost on real black Americans, either. The Notorious B.I.G., born two months before the release of the Superfly soundtrack, began the sole album released during his lifetime with an introduction that acted as a sort of a musical autobiography. It begins with the tense sound of his mother giving birth to him with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. When he’s delivered, the sound breaks, and framing the jubilance of his parents is the Superfly theme. The listener hears the years pass in musical milestones; A neighbor screaming at Biggie’s mother against the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”; Biggie and a friend plotting to rob a train against the Audio Two’s “Top Billin’”; Then, finally, Biggie being released from prison against the dawn of the album’s present, to Snoop Dogg’s “Tha Shiznit”. Bidding farewell to a correctional officer who bets he’ll recidivize, Biggie sounds just like Youngblood Priest: “I’ve got big plans… Big plans.”
Superfly sang a fable of the devastated shadow economies of America’s post-white flight inner cities, powerfully implying Mayfield’s pain for the plight wrought by the blight. He told his true heart three years later on an uncelebrated work of genius, There’s No Place Like America Today. Its opener is a sort of rashomon Superfly, the tale of a man called Billy Jack. “Up in the city they called him Boss Jack, but down home he was an alley cat,” he eulogized. “Don't get me wrong, the man is gone, but it's a wonder he lived this long.”
There’s No Place Like America Today tells Curtis’ heart. It’s an album about love and the foibles that mar it, with the simplicity of a band rehearsing in a church basement. It isn’t as great as Superfly, nor as grand as Mayfield’s magisterial debut Curtis. It is, rather, his most good album, his most personal work. Only the Curtis of There’s No Place Like America Today could have made the brilliant work he had before and would after. It is the man he was.
Soon after “Billy Jack” is “So In Love”, is open-hearted devotion, and at its heart is a sort of thesis for the album: “Life is strange, believe me it is true. We don't always mean the things we sometimes do. Look at me, look at you, you know we're so in love.” Love is truth, even amid the ugliness of daily life. To Curtis, the only path to love is God, and, on “Jesus”, the obstacles were familiar: “Talk about Jesus: He never had a hustlin’ mind, doin’ crime, wastin’ time, drinkin’ that wine…”
The cover of There’s No Place Like America Today shows a mural in Washington, D.C. of a welfare line formed in front of a sort of image of the American Dream: A happy, white family adventuring in a luxury car. “Blue Monday People”, like other tracks “Hard Times” and “When Seasons Change”, expounds on this juxtaposition. “Truth is not the whole question, what is the answer you hide? The system needs us but it's trying to mislead us. They know this money don't feed us. Depression ain't just quite what you promised.” What to do with such a sordid state of affairs? “When cupboards are bare, our love we can share.”
The album crescendos with its closer, “Love to the People”, a synthesis of his hopes and sympathies for his people. In it, he sends “Love to the people, little bit of warning to the cold, little bit of brotherhood. Guaranteed it can be good for the soul.” It indubitably can. Curtis knew it was the system that put him where he is, what made Youngblood Priest who he was, what put those people on that welfare line on his cover. He wasn’t so idealistic to say that only love, or Jesus could fix it. Just that it’s good for the soul, and that’s good as it might be.
Best-Of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream. To see which tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."