saul williams
recently discovered: the self-titled album by saul williams is really making me enjoy music in a way i haven't for a long time. i first checked out s.w. when trent reznor produced an album of his, which i dug at the time, but people were saying it sounded more like NIN than saul williams. the s/t is from a few years earlier, and it's got a much rougher and messier sound which is fucking great, and there seems to be a lot more emphasis on the words, and lyrical flow. saul is ostensibly hip-hop but he's all over the place and somewhat genre-defying and it's amazing.

my favorite track is "african student movement," driven by wonderfully sloppy off-beat drums and blasts. it's the glitchiest song on the album, but not the most experimental - "seaweed" is fucking weird. i'd upload these, but internet is slow and someone might sue me, but seriously, go pirate them right now. "black stacey" is a piano-driven hip-hop ballad that, 2 minutes in, suddenly adds super-tight, compressed electronic drums, and i love it. it's like, wait, you just can't do that. no way. you didn't. but he did. although i'm not too familiar with the hip-hop culture saul tends to reference, for my money his lyrics always seem erudite. the message in the spoken-word, orchestral-backed opener "talk to strangers" is haunting and has been running through my head right now as i'm trying, and failing, to talk a friend out of a bad decision, which i won't get into here. "grippo" and "list of demands (reparations)" are fucking killer. this whole album kicks ass.

now on a totally different musical note, i'm hanging out at soho tea & coffee in dupont circle a ton lately, mainly because i procrastinate and need late night wifi after the libraries close. i keep googling lyrics to find out what song they're playing, and it turns out some of the bands everyone loves to hate (the offspring, fall out boy, death cab for cutie) are surprisingly tolerable. i'm actually hearing some really good stuff here, if nowhere near as floor-smashing or profound as saul williams, and probably shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath. ahem. but, these songs are pretty fun and i've made a note to listen to them again sometime: muse - uprising, the white stripes - the denial twist, yeah yeah yeahs - heads will roll, snow patrol - take back the city. i think being musically open-minded means appreciating pop shit as well as out-there experiments. i mean, you have to listen to pop music; otherwise, what are you subverting?

i have many, many people i need to jam with, urgently. it'll happen.

love you all, even those of you who just skimmed this post because you think i'm a boring person (and you'd be right).