Quick Hits Vol. 38 (Wale, Ludacris, Courtney Barnett, Earthgang)

Wale - The Album About Nothing.  Really a strange move for a rapper, but this album pays homage to Seinfeld.  The cover art looks like the Seinfeld logo, Jerry and Costanza audio happen multiple times throughout the album, and the title tracks the theme of the show.  Weird, right?  Here is part of the taping of the album - apparently Seinfeld helped out with the vignettes.

So it is not just clips from the old show added to the album.  Huh.  But then I look back at his old albums because I'm trying to remember the song he had years ago that was cool, and I see that he did the same thing in 2010 with "More About Nothing" and "The Mixtape About Nothing" from 2008.  So he likes himself some Seinfeld.  Okay.  It actually works really well.  For example, "The Pessimist" opens with Constanza saying his dream is to be hopeless so that he can be attractive to women, and then the song kicks in with Wale hollering about being hopeless.  Here is "White Shoes," with an intro of Jerry saying that wearing white shoes made him feel good.

Then the track is all about feeling good and being alright.  This album is the same - good beats, good rhymes and lyrics.  Has grown on me over the multiple listens.  Oh, and the old song I remembered that he was good on?  Waka Flocka Flame's No Hands:

Yeeeeeaaaahhhh.  That song is awesome.

Ludacris - Ludaversal.  My immediate instinct is to think that Ludacris is a joke.  I don't know why that is, I guess the acting, because I thought 2001's Word of Mouf and 2003's Chicken and Beer were both pretty dang good.  His raps are funny at times, but still hard enough at other times to be more than just a joke.  He's a fan of the ridiculous skit in between songs (this album goes with a guy who took viagra and can't get his dong to relax, and so the 911 operator goes to his house to help him out), but he also gets strong beats and has a really good flow over the top of them.  The most popular songs on this album have Miguel and Usher, respectively, on them doing some R&B crooning, but I liked the track with Big KRIT, Come and See Me:

Oh, and "Beast Mode," which is straight braggadocio, with some really great one liners, and Marshawn Lynch bouncing around in his video, is also a damn solid track.

Good disc.

Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.  Well deserved mega-buzz songwriter from Down Under.  I ran through her old EPs a few weeks ago, and this one does more of the same to great ends.  If you stop and take the time to listen to the lyrics, these tracks are mostly amazing.  Well, they aren't curing cancer or anything, but they tell stories in wonderful ways, such as the wry and funny "Depreston," that talks about the unpleasantness of looking for a house and having to compromise.

You can hear the conversation about maybe looking a bit further out than where you were looking, but then you can see the blighted area with cops.  Love the line about a two car garage being good for storage.  And the ability to knock it down and start over if you just have half a million.  Its all so simple, but I can see it and love it for that great visualization.  And the music is also a fine chilled rock, kind of like the Real Estate album I liked so much last year.  She also gets more rockin' on other tunes.  "Illustration of Loneliness," "Dead Fox," and "Kim's Caravan" also all sound great and contain really cool visuals.  Excellent album to listen to with the lyrics scrolling.

EARTHGANG - Shallow Graves for Toys.  This is the real damn deal.  I had never heard of these dudes until a few weeks ago when I saw that they had gotten some SXSW buzz, but this 2014 album has some great tunes on it.  Check out "Machete."

Starts out with alien spaceships swiping back and forth, until some clicks break in, and then the bass hits.  If you don't feel the need to nod your head and puff up your chest a little while you bump this, then you need to try again.  Bang it.  His grandad kept a machete tucked off in his sofa!  Yeah!  These guys remind me of The Pharcyde and Outkast.  No song on this album has more than 20k plays on Spotify, and most have low 4 digits, but this is some salty sounding production with cool sounding vocals.  The song right after that on the album, "Bill Campbell's Soup," switches up the sound entirely, going with 70's guitar licks and a New Orleans gumbo funk brass stew.  Sounds very much like old school Outkast, laconic and woozy, with a pound of soul.  "The F Bomb" is the most listened to song on the album, and its good too, but those two tunes above are sooooo good.

Best rap album I've listened to in a while.  If rap is your kind of thing, go give it a spin.