Downey's "Classics" Presents: Letter Ta Bin

Apparently, the best way for a writer to make a name for himself today is to do various writing jobs that doubles as an advertisement for his blog until he is ready to write a novel, which pays more than a job writing for a magazine. Sure, the writer could just skip a step and write the novel right away, but that shit is difficult, and without something resembling a cultivated audience, it would arrive in bookstores to general apathy. And that's even if it makes it into stores.

So, the writer of this now frequently updated blog is trying to stay in the swing of blogging. This requires putting up a post a day. Rather than write something off the top of his head, though, he is burning "back catalogue", or material he wrote for classes that would get underappreciated, because he is tired on this day. Below is an e-mail he made along with a mix CD for a friend. Enjoy.

"Letter Ta Bin"
by John Downey

(Tracklisting, without commentary, is at the bottom.)

1.) “They’re All Gonna Laugh @ You”, Atmosphere

Atmosphere is a hip-hop/emo-rap duo from Minnesota. Slug is the rapper, Ant does the production (i.e., the sounds that Slug raps over). At first, Slug was a great rapper with a crappy flow and Ant was a piece of shit producer. Then Slug’s cadence started to get better while his rhymes started to suffer, while Ant slowly became the greatest producer in emo-rap. This song is taken from the sweet spot in Atmosphere’s career: when Ant showed that he had something going for him, and when Slug hadn’t become totally populist*.

2.) “Drumsticks”, Doomtree

Doomtree is made up of, like, 9 members, 4 of which are producers. I won’t bother listing them all, since even I don’t care about all of them, and I like Doomtree. I’ll single out 2 of them for you, though, because I’m probably going to go apeshit over their work in the near-future, since they both have albums coming out in early 2009. The first is Dessa, who separates herself from the rest of the group by (a) being a female rapper and (b) being damn fucking good at rapping. (On another song off of Doomtree’s self-titled album, she spends 3 minutes ripping shit up in every possible way that an emcee can, including rapping in Spanish. The song’s called “Sadie Hawkins”, if you want to look it up. Or maybe I’ll just put it on the inevitable celebratory graduation mix CD.) The other one is P.O.S., whose previous album, “Audition”, I once referred to as one of the greatest punk albums of the past couple of years, despite being a rap album. He’s…good. He rhymes after Dessa, and he’s the only other member of the group I can be arsed to single out. It’s a problem that plagues the entire album; it’s good, but without being able to single out individual members for their contributions, it all feels so anonymous.

3.) “Paranoid Android”, Radiohead

Jarring transition in the mix, but file this one under “songs you need to own”. One website I read compared this song to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and then said that “Rhapsody” is an inferior song. I won’t go that far (hell, I will flat-out disagree with that conclusion), but I can see how somebody would make the mistake of saying that. Easily one of the best songs of the 90’s.

4.) “N.Y. State Of Mind”, Nas

Jarring transition in the mix, but file this one under “songs you need to own”. Easily one of the best songs of the 90’s. (Huh. I could have sworn I already said that.) Since I don’t have any relevant commentary on this song, I will now point out that “Drumsticks”, “Paranoid”, and “N.Y.” were all sequenced as the 2nd track on their respective albums. On top of that, 2 of these songs were actually the first proper song on those album (“Paranoid” being the only song that was actually preceded by a song). I don’t know what the significance of that is.

5.) “Inherited Scars (live version)”, Sage Francis

Sage Francis used to write all sorts of awesome songs. Then his cadence got better, but his songs started to suck*. That’s why I love his live album, “Road Tested”. It was recorded after Sage learned how to rap properly, but he is covering the best songs in his catalog, “Inherited Scars” being among them. Also, no samples (cuz I know how much you hate samples); this was recorded using actual instruments. My only complaint is that Sage does a little call-and-response throughout, but the crowd isn’t good enough to catch all of it. I mean, they’re pretty good, but when Sage goes, “What’s with the choice of words”, the crowd is supposed to respond with, “And the body parts you decided to tag them on?” I can’t hear them say that. Urgh.

6.) “Born To Run”, Bruce Springsteen

Another “song you must own”. Irrelevant commentary: Springsteen spent 6 months writing this song. Even more irrelevant commentary: when my mom was flipping through radio stations and came across this song, I ordered her to keep it on the station, then proceeded to sing along with all of the beauty of a dog asserting his authority to all other nearby mutts in the neighborhood. I have never heard my mom laugh that hard at my own shortcomings before.

7.) “Explosivo”, Tenacious D

Some people don’t like Springsteen. Some even call him “the Devil”. Well, how about a song WHERE THE DEVIL ACTUALLY SHOWS UP?! YEAH! ROCK’N’ROLL, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

8.) “Devil’s Pie”, D’Angelo

Yeah, uh, from Satan summoning to “Devil’s Pie”. I’m witty. It’s also the start of a 3 song set of J Dilla-influenced music. J Dilla was a hip-hop producer from Detroit who made soul music (not just hip-hop songs that sampled “soul music”, but shit that actually had SOUL. Like, James Brown type of shit). During the recording of “Voodoo”, the album on which “Devil’s Pie” appears (on the SECOND TRACK!), J Dilla would should up in D’Angelo’s studio and show off stuff that he was working with Erykah Badu on. The second J Dilla would leave the studio, D’Angelo’s producers said, “We need to do exactly what he did, but with live instruments.”

9.) “Give The Drummer Sum”, Black Milk

Actually, this song is not very Dilla-like at all. I mean, Dilla’s signature siren can faintly be heard before the drums come in, but after that…holy shit. Black Milk worked with Dilla in the rap group Slum Village, but this is so far beyond any Dillaness that…fuck it, this shit is so sick, it’s actually kind of disgusting. Black Milk is a shitty rapper (great cadence, but he ain’t got shit to say)*, but I could fart on this track and it would sound fantastic.

10.) “Love”, J Dilla featuring Pharaohe Monch

And here’s the man himself. This was actually released on his first posthumous album (he died of lupus in early 2006), but I’ve heard that 75% of that album was completed by the time he died, with this song being the most Dillatastic track on it. Here’s another story about Dilla: ?uestlove says in the liner notes of this album that people would actually call Dilla on the phone with a tape recorder ready to go, and when Dilla’s voicemail kicked in, they would hit “record”, since Dilla often left hints of what he was working on as his voicemail message. That’s fucking sweet.

11.) “Clint Eastwood”, Gorillaz

The sound of so many middle-school dances, right here. Another “song you must own”, though I will admit that this is probably the least-essential song that I’m giving that label to. Oh, and a new Gorillaz album is coming out soon, according to stuff I’ve read online. Remember, it’s been 4 years since the last Gorillaz album, which was released 4 years after the previous Gorillaz album. Gotta love bands that release new material on such a consistent timetable.

12.) “Dang”, Buck 65

I preferred Buck’s work when he sounded like Elmo (I heard from somewhere that he was actually employed by Sesame Workshop as the voice for “rapping Elmo”, but I haven’t been able to confirm that anywhere, though I can confirm that he performed a song called “Grocery Store Rap” on the show), and also when Buck stuck to making hip-hop stuck in the present day. This is one of the better tracks from his most recent album that is stuck in the 1950’s. The first proper song on the album is called “1957”, and it starts off by quoting Ginsberg’s “Howl” but then proceeds to list off a couple of things that didn’t happen in ’57 alongside a whole bunch of things that did happen in ’57. Also, “Dang” has a better beat.

13.) “Good Friday”, Why?

I’ve almost put this song on so many mix CD’s, but all it takes is for me to listen to the first line of the song to know that the person I plan on giving the mix to is not going to appreciate it. The rest wouldn’t understand the humor in this song. I’m not sure that you’ll understand it either, but I’m pretty sure that you’ll still laugh.

14.) “Pigeon”, Cannibal Ox

This is the dorkiest inclusion on this mix, for reasons that are so very obscure. Here goes: I was looking through a list of samples used throughout the album that this song appears on, “The Cold Vein”, to see just what kinds of jazz El-P, the producer of the album, used to create his vision of a cold world. (El-P is the son of a jazz musician, which is a fact that makes sense when you look at how some of his songs are structured, and also makes no sense, since El-P makes rap in the vein of Public Enemy.) There’s some clear irony in what he used as samples—“The F-Word” samples “All Night Long”, “Painkillers” samples “Love And Happiness” (okay that one doesn’t fit but it’s funny to me!)—but “Pigeon” contains a sample that actually made me start laughing out loud. See, “Pigeon” contains a sample from a song by jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius. This song, I’ve learned, is now a bass guitar standard, with covers existing by several other famous bass players. The name of this song? “Portrait of Tracy”**. Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of this song, so I figured a song that sampled it would suffice. Like I said, dorky.

15.) “B.O.B.”, Outkast

“Song you must own”. I just can’t think of any other 5-minute long, momentum generating rap songs with 2 emcees who complete their verses halfway through the song. And has a guitar solo.

16.) “Sing-Along”, David Cross

This is funny. ’Nuff said.

17.) “Wamp Wamp”, The Clipse featuring Slim Thug

This beat probably shouldn’t exist in this universe. It’s so dark. And cool. And, like, damn. I raved about this album when it came out 2 years ago, but it sold like shit. That happens with most music that I like.

18.) “(Nothing But) Flowers”, Talking Heads

I have completely forgotten why I put this song on the mix. It’s a great song; that’s all I can use to justify its place here. I might be starting to lose it.

19.) “Locusts”, Invincible featuring Finale

In the main event of the Ring Of Honor show, “Bedlam In Beantown”, Kevin Steen wrestled Necro Butcher in a Boston Massacre match. There was no real interest in this match (before it started, anyway); people were paying their $20 for this show mostly to see the American debut of a flashy Japanese wrestler, and to see an ROH World Heavyweight Title match, which is almost always a good time. In a press release before the show, though, ROH informed its fans that they would be putting the Boston Massacre match on last so that anyone who wouldn’t want to see it could leave before the match started without missing the rest of the show. That’s kind of what I’m doing here. This song is kind of depressing, so you can listen to the entire rest of this mix in a good mood and then not listen to this song (even though it would have fit in with the Dilla trilogy perfectly). Since it’s the best original song I’ve heard this year, though, I wouldn’t recommend it.

1.) “They’re All Gonna Laugh @ You”, Atmosphere
2.) “Drumsticks”, Doomtree
3.) “Paranoid Android”, Radiohead
4.) “N.Y. State Of Mind”, Nas
5.) “Inherited Scars (live version)”, Sage Francis
6.) “Born To Run”, Bruce Springsteen
7.) “Explosivo”, Tenacious D
8.) “Devil’s Pie”, D’Angelo
9.) “Give The Drummer Sum”, Black Milk
10.) “Love”, J Dilla featuring Pharaohe Monch
11.) “Clint Eastwood”, Gorillaz
12.) “Dang”, Buck 65
13.) “Good Friday”, Why?
14.) “Pigeon”, Cannibal Ox
15.) “B.O.B.”, Outkast
16.) “Sing-Along”, David Cross
17.) “Wamp Wamp”, The Clipse featuring Slim Thug
18.) “(Nothing But) Flowers”, Talking Heads
19.) “Locusts”, Invincible featuring Finale

*: In retrospect, that's a bit harsh.
**: The joke is that my friend's name is Tracey.