RIP Takeoff

 

That tune and these next two are among my favorites pieces of music from the 21st Century so far.

the widely accepted peaks

but let's hear more from the mystifyingly under-revered Culture II

fragments from an unfinished paean 

the Migos sound above all distinguishes itself with its flooding insistence of jouissance...

bliss is this music's subject, it is its subjectivity....  things incessantly flood or drip in these songs...  the self melts and brims and bubbles and overflows...

the lyrics speak of endless hustle, working hard, the grind...  but the feeling is imperial indolence,  imperturbable nonchalance, gliding serenity, basking in glory...

the words saying the opposite of the music - or rather, the music (and the fey vocal style -  closer to PM Dawn than DMX) contradicts the lyrics.... 

the lyrics are like a residual element, a hollowed-out signifier of rap-as-was...

but the truth of the music is the woozy gaseous vocal texture - that listless wistful bliss...

no matter how hard-hearted and cold-souled the lyrics appear, the fluttery fluidity of the vocal interplay and its ecstatic texturizing speaks to something else: a vulnerability to bliss...

Quavo, Offset, and Takeoff - seem entranced by themselves, lost in an auto-erotic swirl, draped in  jouissance that seems to seep out of their bodies as a mist of Auto-Tuned droplets, a self-swaddling canopy of shivers and moans

there are moments in "MotorSport" and "Top Down on Da NAWF" and "Bosses Don't Speak" - shudders, gurgles, dilated moans - that are cut from the same orgasmic-mystic cloth as Tim Buckley's "Starsailor"...

the next genre-ation takes over

In olden times, children carried on the family business - bakers beget bakers. Even today it's still quite common that a kid will go into the same or similar profession as the parents - hence multiple generations of actors, musicians, doctors, teachers - or soldiers, builders, farmers, whatever.  Still, it has taken me quite by surprise that my son has grown up to be a genre taxonomist - this is not stuff that we sat discussing around the dinner table, believe you me. He's yet to coin a genre name, but he's still only twenty and that dastardly streak of DNA - neologine - will doubtless manifest itself soon enough.

Here is Kieran Press-Reynolds's latest feature, for Pigeons & Planes / Complex - titled "Gorgeous Glitches and Nightcored Melodies: The New Generation of SoundCloud Music is Here".

Stop Press: !!!!! Kieran nominated for a Music Journalism award -  his "How Tik Tok Is Taking the Tunes Out of Pop"  piece makes the shortlist for "Best Work of Music Journalism (text - English)" at the Reeberbahn Festival !!!!!!

kevinhilfiger · dancing in the dark + popstarbills, chach *BONUS TRACK*

osquinn · i dont want that many friends in the first place (durao)