By the way, I really wasn't trying to talk shit about Kurt when I made that comment about the "Drain You" interlude. I don't actually think Kurt was a poor or ungifted guitarist. The mere fact that he wrote "Come As You Are," and played that riff while singing over it should be evidence against the argument that he was "bad." Not that it's a difficult song for an intermediate guitarist to play and sing, but it's not the kind of thing someone who's just guessing can pull off.

What I was trying to say was that when I was younger, I used to listen to that break in Drain You and wonder why so little was going on with the guitar part. I may have previously thought, "This is smoke and mirrors, and he's trying to cover for a lack of ability" ... But just because Kurt wasn't a Moore/Ranaldo-level composer — just because he probably could have never in his life cleanly pulled off "The Sprawl," — doesn't mean he was a bad guitarist.

I do think his brain wanted to do more than his fingers would allow, and that he had to practice like a madman, even after they became successful, to nail some of the parts he'd written for himself. And I say that as a musician who's done plenty of brute-force muscle memory mastery in my time. BUT, looking at the parts he wrote, the sounds and feelings he managed to convey with his riffs and his melodies, and his weird chord choices, I think he was actually one of he most effective guitarists in the history of rock.

Kind of like John Lennon. Lennon couldn't touch Harrison or McCartney in actual skill. But man, he made up for it with a truly whacked out ability to riff, with serious muscle. I think Plastic Ono Band is, for what it's worth, one of the most Nirvana-analogous albums out there. Listening to Lennon's crunching two-string riffing on that album is almost like listening to Kurt playing the blues. I would never call Lennon a virtuoso guitarist. Nobody who knows anything about him or the instrument ever would. But it would be equally stupid and unreasonable to write him off as a bad player. Same goes for Kurt. In my opinion, anyway.

But Cobain didn't write Come as you are. The Damned did.

yes. this is what Nirvana was and indeed what made Kurt's voice so unique.

fixed.

I can tell you are in fact a guitarist. only a guitarist would know things like this. I remember when I learned that riff while beginning to play guitar. easy enough. singing while playing it is another thing in of itself. I finally nailed it one day. I lot of his songs are like this. I lot of songs in general are like this. I learnt having a riff and a vocal melody are two separate things most of time while composing. thank god for home portable recording devices.

Timeline. .

New Atmosphere album is good.

There's a new Atmosphere album?

(Sigh) ... I'm trying to be interested, but I just can't get there. It's just like the rock thing. New Atmosphere is just new Atmosphere. Remember when Atmosphere was actually new? That was pretty cool.

I also passed on the most recent Aesop Rocky. Actually, I did give it a couple quick listens, but not enough to let it sink in. It's just really hard to get genuinely psyched about something like that. That new Snoop album? Cool-Aid? His supposed "return to form" (which I've discovered is industry-speak for "out of ideas") was just... aack! Blech! Why?! At least the new Dino album has some moments that make my ears and brain feel nice, and take me back a bit.

Hip-hop is necessarily evolutionary. When rap artists stagnate, or become obsolete, it's even more pathetic than when it happens to rock-type acts, and that's because rap is and always has been about keeping one foot in the past, and kicking the other straight into the future. When rap gets stuck in the present, it's a fate worse than death. Hip-hop was supposed to be a solution, an answer to rock's slow demise. Now, most of it might as well be Tom Petty. More of the same.

Though maybe I should listen to this new Atmosphere before waxing pedantic about how irrelevant I think it is. But hey, this is the Internet with a capital "I." If you can't talk shit about things you know nothing about here, then what's the goddamn point?! ;)

I'll give it a spin.

the new Atmosphere is my favorite in at least a decade.

The new Aesop Rock is even better. It's one of my favorite hip hop releases of 2016. It's probably my favorite AR album since Labor Days. You should really give it another spin.

A couple of good examples:

Aesop Rock "Rings"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npcGql9Ir6Y

Aesop Rock "Kirby"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T_KKiQiolk

and

Atmosphere "No Biggie"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vigbCk1JkvE

New PARTYNEXTDOOR is very bad.. what happened?

New Rae Sremmurd is pretty good so far.

Comes out 8/26. Same day as "Birds in the Trap", apparently.

Prima Donna EP tracklist:

1. “War Ready”
2. “Smile”
3. “Loco” feat. Kilo Kish
4. “Prima Donna” feat. A$AP Rocky
5. “Pimp Hand”
6. “Big Time”

hip hop is over 30 now, it couldn't be a music revolution for ever.

I didn't even know Vince was working on a new project. I'm excited.

http://www.thefader.com/2016/06/20/v...tory-interview

"That evening, as we listen to songs from Staples’s forthcoming Prima Donna EP, the sturdy insulated walls at Hollywood’s Record Plant Studios shake so hard that you envision the platinum plaques falling to the ground. The eyes of the ultra-professional engineers give the “great googly moogly” bulge. Even though this isn’t their first time hearing the EP, they tell Staples they haven’t heard anything like this before. It’s the truth, not idle flattery. With production from NoID, James Blake, and DJ Dahi, the six-song set starts with a rap star killing himself and concludes with him first coming to fame. You’re meant to be able to play it front-to-back or back-to-front. Either way, it’s a chaotic fusion of warped soul, distorted hooks, and extraterrestrial demonic spirituals. The tentative release date is sometime this summer."

"If trap turned self-destruction into the contemporary party soundtrack, Staples’s music details that party getting shot up, the getaway of the killers, and the retaliatory search party that sets off in pursuit. It respects both the one who got shot and the shooter. Prima Donna represents his greatest artistic leap forward: it’s a hyper-musical fusillade of sounds that could be described as psychedelic gangsta rap blues that you could play at 2 a.m. at an underground rave."

Hip hop is 40. Has to be. Doing the math... Afrika, Kurtis Blow... gotta be at least 40, maybe 42. But hey, that's quite a bit younger than punk was when Nevermind hit. Maybe there's hope.

Even if there's no hope for the bigger artists, underground rappers like Open Mike Eagle, Milo, Shabazz Palaces, Homeboy Sandman, Black Milk, etc. are still making interesting hip-hop, even if it lacks a bit of the wow factor.

Sev plz check those aesop rock vids...

i placed it at 1985 and im comfortable with my decision. lets say anything before that is proto-rap

Enjoying SremmLife 2 a lot.

Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition



1. "Downward Spiral"
2. "Tell Me What I Don't Know"
3. "Rolling Stone" (featuring Petite Noir)
4. "Really Doe" (featuring Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul & Earl Sweatshirt)
5. "Lost"
6. "Ain't It Funny"
7. "Goldust"
8. "White Lines"
9. "Pneumonia"
10. "Dance In The Water"
11. "From The Ground" (featuring Kelela)
12. "When It Rain"
13. "Today"
14. "Get Hi" (featuring B-Real)
15. "Hell For It"

Sept. 30