This lane was dead. It was looked at like, 'We not listening to that s***. Don't play this s*** in my car.' Everybody dancing and having fun. The boom-bap hard s*** was not popular whatsoever... No Drake, no LeBron James was talking about us... Nobody. But they will today. So, my job is done. My job is done. | | | | Benny the Butcher and Conway the Machine in New York, Nov. 17, 2019.
(Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images) | | | | | |  | "This lane was dead. It was looked at like, 'We not listening to that s***. Don't play this s*** in my car.' Everybody dancing and having fun. The boom-bap hard s*** was not popular whatsoever... No Drake, no LeBron James was talking about us... Nobody. But they will today. So, my job is done. My job is done."
| | | | | | rantnrave:// The most astonishing lyric on a significant album in the year of the pandemic may be this from "NOTHIN LESS," the closing track on CONWAY THE MACHINE's FROM KING TO A GOD: "Two shooters by the door and they grippin' the thirty / That's why they both got fifty pointers like Mitchell and Murray." I should preface this by acknowledging that, while I assume the Buffalo rapper is describing two people with guns near the entrance of a local restaurant called DOCTOR BIRD (that detail is from an earlier line), I otherwise have no idea what's he's talking about. Conway's cadence and the music, produced by DJ PREMIER with a MOBB DEEP sample, sell it for me; the specifics of the lyrics go over my head, which is fine, I'm not the primary audience, except for the sports reference at the end of that imperfect rhyme, which I do get. On Aug. 23, DONOVAN MITCHELL of the UTAH JAZZ and JAMAL MURRAY of the DENVER NUGGETS became the first opponents in NBA playoff history to score 50 points in the same game. The album, one of a string of high-profile albums released this summer and fall by GRISELDA RECORDS, came out 19 days later, on Sept. 11. The Nuggets were still in the middle of their next playoff series. I get that pre-release promotion isn't what it used to be, especially in hip-hop, that album release dates are a lot more fluid than they once were, and that technology has changed the speed of production. But two and a half weeks between basketball game and full-length album with closing track that cites details from that game is still amazing. And quite possibly its own kind of first. Mind blown. Respect... Griselda is an underground label and crew from Buffalo whose core artists include Conway, his brother WESTSIDE GUNN—the label's mastermind—and cousin BENNY THE BUTCHER, all of whom have been at it for years and all of whom have released notable albums in the past five weeks as the label continues to edge its way into hip-hop's spotlight. There's a bit of a '90s throwback vibe to the stripped-down, hardcore musical vibe and the drug-fueled, often-violent storytelling, which is meant to reflect their lives. (Westside Gunn did two stints in prison between 2005 and 2011, and Conway was a shooting victim in 2012.) "People can say the words and make it rhyme and sound good," Conway told NPR last year. "But if you know, you know. It's easy to tell if somebody just put some words together well, or if they really, was out there, really was outside." Or, as he puts it in "Nothin Less," "I ain't never satisfied, so I have to go harder." The sound is anti-pop, almost defiantly. The Griselda philosophy is rap about what you know, sound like who you are, and let the world find you. "In a period in which regionalism in hip-hop has fallen to the wayside and the rattling percussives of the South reign supreme," LEX PRYOR wrote in the Ringer, "Gunn sticks out like a sore thumb." The underground found the crew first, and though it took some years, the world would follow, meaning, for starters, the hip-hop elite and the fashion elite. Griselda is now affiliated with EMINEM's SHADY RECORDS and managed by JAY-Z's ROC NATION. The sound hasn't changed but the times have. MusicSET: "Buffalo Soldiers: The Rise of Westside Gunn and Griselda Records"... The all-day all-night all-music-video service APPLE MUSIC TV launched Monday on both the APPLE MUSIC and APPLE TV apps. First-day programming was a repeating countdown of the 100 all-time most-streamed songs on Apple Music (minus, it appeared, a handful of songs that don't have videos). There was lots and lots of DRAKE, who showed up, symmetrically, at both #100 (as a guest on MIGOS' "WALK IT TALK IT") and #1 (his own "GOD'S PLAN"). As for the service: Should it? Can It? Does It? I'll have more to say later in the week... Following WARNER MUSIC GROUP's IPO in June, a "group of senior execs" shared $593 million in stock bonuses... BACKXWASH wins the POLARIS PRIZE... There are 1,463 official entries for Record of the Year at the 2021 GRAMMYS, 418 for Best Rock Song and 41 for Best Regional Roots Music Album. More numbers here... It's TUESDAY and this is the #1 single in both the US and the UK... RIP Ibiza legend JOSÉ PADILLA. | | | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | | | |  | Pitchfork | | Over the last decade, the language and aesthetics of social justice have become the social currency of the music industry (and pop culture at large), ultimately yielding the myth that representation solves everything. This is one story of how we got there, and where we carefully go from here. | | | |  | Mixmag | | Jaguar talks to the Black women who laid the foundations for the house music scene as we know it today. | | | |  | Los Angeles Times | | Most club owners say they will have to close their doors permanently in the coming months unless the Save Our Stages bill is passed. | | | |  | GEN | | From Lil Baby to Megan Thee Stallion, rap has defined the activism -- and uncertainty -- of the Trump era. | | | |  | REDEF | | Regional, underground rap for the unlikely win in 2020. After years unapologetically repping a city that wasn't on anyone's hip-hop map, the Griselda Records crew has risen above ground as the face of the genre's hardcore, boom-bap spirit. | | | |  | Variety | | While there'd been vague talk about an Apple music channel for years, it was still a surprise when Apple Music TV suddenly appeared at 9 a.m. ET on Monday morning. | | | |  | The Daily Beast | | The South Dakota governor resurrected a concert that was canceled after a Daily Beast report--with a controversial new headliner. | | | |  | The New York Times | | The trio featuring Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes returns with another blast of political music that crosses genres and boundaries. | | | |  | Bloomberg | | There is one issue that unites Kanye West and Taylor Swift: artists deserve more ownership. | | | |  | The Independent | | The nu-metallers became the scapegoats for Y2K frat-boy nastiness but, 20 years since their last giant album, Adam White asks whether it's possible to view their significance in musical history any differently? | | | |  | Vulture | | Including remembrances from Ziggy Marley, Shaggy, Bonnie Raitt, Debbie Harry, Ben Harper, and more. | | | |  | i-D Magazine | | Kendrick Lamar interviews his 20-year-old protégé, Baby Keem, one of the world's most exciting new artists, about making money, providing for family and the rise of pgLang. | | | | | Los Angeles Times | | The label behind 'The Harry Smith B-Sides,' the sequel to the famed 'Anthology of Folk Music,' chose to omit three songs with racist lyrics. Cue the debate. | | | |  | Trapital | | This week's memo covers the artists deciding to drop music now or wait till the pandemic is over, TDE's "weird" 2020, and the hip-hop's political drama. | | | |  | Detroit Free Press | | Valerie Bertinelli and her family lived in Michigan before she became a star and married rock legend, Eddie Van Halen. Her brother tells their story. | | | |  | WTF with Marc Maron | | Patti Smith has been at the vanguard of art, poetry, rock and roll, and other forms of self-expression since the 1960s. But this talk with Marc happens to be her very first one-on-one conversation done over Zoom. | | | |  | Clash Magazine | | Conviction Records is a label devoted to platforming the music of ex-offenders. It's a social enterprise with rehabilitation at its heart. | | | |  | Billboard | | Country artists have led the way on the road during the pandemic with fans supporting them every step of the way. | | | |  | Slate | | Alex Ross' new book makes plain there was never any way to erase him, though that hasn't stopped us from trying. | | | |  | The Washington Post | | Some believe the song, written by slaveholder Francis Scott Key, is racist. Its lyrics were controversial from the start. | | | |  | VICE | | Twenty years after making his name as a young MC in east London, the now MBE artist returns to where it all began on seventh album 'E3 AF'. | | | |  | CBS Sunday Morning | | In his first TV interview since contracting the coronavirus, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter talks about his diagnosis for Guillain-Barré Syndrome, and being paralyzed and near death in the ICU. | | | | |  | | YouTube | | | | | | | | Conway the Machine ft. Dej Loaf | | | | From "From King to a God." | | | | | | | | © Copyright 2020, The REDEF Group | | |
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