Sound Nuggets

The Nuggets are awesome. Except when they lose to teams they shouldn't lose to. Like they did twice over the past week. Well, ok, they're still awesome then.

One of my favorite espn columnists (Bill Simmons, a mixture of sports/humor/random pop culture references), said that lists where an easy cop out to writing a column. Although it might have been Matthew Berry, a fantasy football columnist, who once I stopped following him my grades went up and both of my fantasy teams got significantly better. Well, my fantasy teams got better because I grew out a disgustache. Berry had nothing to do with that.

But the cop out was that writing a column about a list is an easy cop out of actually figuring out something good to write about. So I'm going down that path. Not because I don't have any ideas, but because I am actually so excited about this idea that I might actually write something that could blow your mind. Or introduce you to a few of my recent most favorite artists. With no further ado:

My Current Top 5 Music Rankings

1. The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man, MF Grimm. I first heard of MF Grimm when I was going through my MF Doom (now DOOM) phase. MF stands for Master of Flow(s?), for the uninformed, and the Grimm is from Grim reaper. I think. But this guy's absolutely brilliant dropping gems like: "Met a sweetie at a Hershey Bar named Jujube, She hung with Jolly Ranchers, a real Hot Tamale, stomach rumbling glad the bar served food, payed for her dish, cause eating alone is damn rude, baked beans, Swedish fish, barrels of root beer, her freakist experience was 3 Musketeers." Oh, to top it off, the guy is partially disabled, as in, is stuck in a wheel chair. Mad props: a wheelchair bound rapper. No, I take that back: a brilliant wheelchair bound rapper. Who's better than MF Doom. My two favorites off the album: Half Baked, and, if you don't like all the brilliant candy references, check out My House. Don't get mad, it's just candy.
   
2. Beaty and the Beat, Edan. This guy's weird. Like the guy who you're not sure you should be friends with because you're afraid he might drag you into left field with him. I mean, you're not sure whether that's such a bad thing, but you're concerned you might not make it back….and you think you want to make it back. Well, after listening to Edan, I'm not sure I want to come back. Three songs on his album are that good (I see colors, Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme and the last 1:05 of Making Planets). The others….I see where he's coming from, but it's just not there yet for me. Although it's been growing on me slowly. Basically, Edan's a rapper whose beats of choice are psychedelic. Check it: Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme.
   
3. They Remince Over You (T. R. O. Y), Pete Rock & C. L. Smooth. Turn your hyperbole detectors down a notch, and if you listen to one song I've linked to, make it this one. I recommend you do it right now. I'll wait. Simply put, the horns, beats, everything about this song is "I just shat myself and don't even care" good. By not listening to this song, your basically depriving yourself of 4:47 minutes of what rap/hip-hop should sound like. As in, if you've ever turned to KS 107.5 and immediately turned to 93.3 because you'd rather listen to something that you've heard a million times, has meaning, and you still like it, over something that sounds repeated, overplayed, painful, and boring just plain bad, then listen to this song. It's from 1992 and it sounds fresh enough to have been made yesterday. I don't want to continue along this diatribe on why hip-hop sucks in 2009, so listen to it. And if you like it also check out In The Flesh and I Get Physical. You won't be sorry.
   
4. Deadlivers, Grayskul. I'm split about this album. It's going on the list today because it's an album I can't stop listening to once I start. But I'm also working on finding those last two items that fit perfectly into this list, and being unsuccessful. And for some reason, I study a million times better when I'm listening to something some dark/gloomy hip-hop….and I've been doing a lot of studying recently. My favorite song on the album is probably Vixen, an absolutely brilliant take on being a super hero and having women chase you. And after that…the entire album is a giant foray into what hip-hop would be like if it was a dark super-hero movie. Also check out Do They Exist, which has a great beat.
   
5. The Empire Strikes First, Bad Religion. It's nearly impossible to praise this album without running into clichéd accolades. It's that good. And that intelligent. And that Angry. And alive. And that repeatable: I could listen to it for three hours without hating myself. Although I might start a revolution. Check out Beyond Electric Dreams (with lyrics in the video…although you'll still need a dictionary).
   

That was fun. And I'm burnt out. 1 final, 2 papers to go!

*update* I just realized that I praised Beyond Electric Dreams about 5 blog posts ago. Oops. As a penance, check No Rest For The Weary instead: "Hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet, that's why we call it a struggle, you're supposed to sweat."