This might be the weekend...
Hello, darkness, FLY old friend. Is this truly the weekend? How do we even go about doing this, one may ask. Pretty sure that we wrote about "Bad Boy", but, in the spirit of NMF, we DO NOT go back and look at previous weeks. Want to do a quick recap of things that we have missed in quick hits? Guess so, though tbh I need to make a playlist now that songs are actually out. Get on that, big dog, but first, get on telling us what we might have missed the past few weeks.
So last week we had another Bandcamp release of a new Conway The Machine mixtape called
If It Bleeds It Can Be Killed that is another heater from Conway. If you like it, you're like it. If you don't, you ain't with it. Last week there was also the Vampire Weekend EP,
40:42, that I listed to once and will never touch again. I do like Vampy Weeks, but this sucker is a CINECAST!ing slog. They don't do a lot of singing on it and the two songs are disgustingly long.
Before we get in to this week's releases (and I skip over singles from the previous few weeks), we'll take a slightly extended look at
OK Human, the latest from Weezer. FLY, being a notable fan of 'new Weezer' along with 'old Weezer', was bummed out that last year's
Van Weezer got pushed back so much and still hasn't come out, despite only really liking (and REALLY liking) "Hero" in the lead up to it. But the Van Halen inspired sound is absent here, with Rivers focusing more on a fuller range of instruments that harkens back to older pop rock from like the Golden Era or whatever. Wikipedia is now telling me that it was recorded all on analogue equipment with a 38-piece orchestra. But, as with most of their best projects, it's the songwriting that Rivers brings which makes the album. Kicking off with "All My Favorite Songs" sets the mood for the record, and is a banger in the way that Weezer can make a banger that isn't just some power pop thing from their earlier albums, but looking over the tracklist it's hard to pick a favorite since so many are super strong. It's a reflective album, melancholic, and some would posit that it perhaps captures the current state of mundanity in quarantine. FLY would say that is a bit reductive, as the album covers much more, but whatever floats your boat, I guess. "Grapes of Wrath", "Playing My Piano", and "Bird With A Broken Wing" are my favorites aside from the lead track, but, again, this album is arguably the best one to release in 2021 up to this point.
Which brings us to the current week, and I suppose that we'll start with the singles that stood out to me. Guess we can start with the latest from Guapdad 4000 featuring !llmind called
"How Many". Great verse from Guapdad, great sample used, just top notch. Guapdad 4000 was on a heater the other week called "Anime Shawty 2" that I loved. Last week also gave us
"Gang Signs" from Freddie Gibbs and ScHoolboy Q that's a CINECAST!ing heater and shows some great chemistry between the two. Spotify also recommended
"Everything New" from DJ Pharris featuring Chance, Wiz Khalifa, and Rockie Fresh. Pretty strong Chance verse here, and FLY continues to be warmer on his recent output than a lot of people.
"Low Key" sees Doe Boy teaming up with Lil Uzi Vert (presumably recorded before he got his $24 million dollar gem embedded in his forehead), and it's a largely good song, but one I need to listen to more though haven't been compelled to go back to just yet. The other two that stood out are the latest from Death Grips. I knew it had been a while since their last release, but didn't exactly recall how long, but we're entering the third year, and listening to the latest single,
"More Than the Fairy" featuring Les Claypool reminded me just how much they have been missed. Standing at three and a half minutes it's standard length, but gives you Death Grips still functioning at top quality. Though seems like FLY missed the real release the other week, which was their
"GMail and the Restraining Orders", a single that clocks in just shy of thirty minutes and gives you bascially the full Death Grips experience. Which makes sense, considering that it's almost half an album's worth of music in one song. Need more Death Grips ASAP.
Albums were a bit scattershot this week. There were two strong ones slowthai's
TYRON, which probably shines completely in the featured songs, notably the one that features Denzel Curry and, ofc, "feel away" that has James Blake and Mount Kimbie on it, though even on his solo songs slowthai has a unique flow that mostly separates him from his UK contemporaries. Well work checking this sucker out, and I need to give it another full listen. Also very surprised by the latest from Smokepurpp,
PSYCHO (Legally Insane) EP, that's really quick, as the EP status implies, but sees Smokepurpp in more of a poprap sound that I found compelling in a way I haven't completely in what other work I've heard from him. On the other side of the coin we have
UnCINECAST!witable from Babyface Ray, that feels like one of the most derivative works I have heard in a long time. There's a cool song with Moneybagg Yo that they released the other week, and I liked it then, but that's mostly because of Yo. This album isn't actively bad, but it's painfully mediocre in the way it pulls all the trendy trap rap sounds without bringing much new or unique to the table, and maybe that's worse than being actively bad.
But FLY saved the last entry for the week's best release, and the only thing that'll come close to Weezer at this point:
EP2! from JPEGMAFIA. NMF missed the great "FIX URSELF!" on one of our off weeks, but that is definitely one of the best of this shorter project that has JPEGMAFIA building on that great collection of singles from 2020. He's just really operating in top form, and one has to be excited for what will come from a full project when that time arrives. We get the great line in this song as well, "I went from nothing' to sluttin, it wasn't easy babe / shoutout my babes and my husbands, I love yall equally" that encapsulates some of the best qualities of JPEGMAFIA's songs, but doesn't see him straying completely from the deeper qualities of his 'more serious' songs. But at this point he's found that balance, if it was ever in question (it wasn't), and you get this marvelous meeting point of all JPEGMAFIA's best qualities on what's probs FLY favorite song, "THIS ONES FOR US!" where you get meditation on hip-hop press coverage, how so much of it is covered by white people in positions of privilege, and can all exist alongside the great line, "Eating ass, feel like Pac Man". Not a long project, but nothing but heat top to bottom.
I also listed to the Rebecca Black remix of her hit meme single "Friday" that features a few different artists but is largely abysmal and the most blatant 100 gecs ripoff I've heard in a long time. Spotify also surfaced a song called "Love Story (Taylor's Version)" from Taylor Swift, so I figured this was her revisiting a song with a twist, but that's not the case. Being one of only two Taylor Swift songs I like, I was interested in this, but it turns out that it seems to basically just be her re-recording the song with maybe minor differences? I assume it has something to do with her being able to own the master of this version, but hell if I know. Been thinking about Taylor Swift yesterday and today as I saw some people posting celebratory things about her music on Twitter, and it continues to be ridiculous because her music is Bad, though it makes sense why she gets positioned as a contrast point to Kanye because, despite everything, Kanye always feels completely authentic and genuine, even when maybe he's not, while Swift also feels meticulously curated and intentional, even when maybe she's not.
Oh yeah, Demi Lovato was featured on a song the other week too with some guy I have never heard of, but Demi crushed her part as one would expect.