Quick Hots, Vol. 130 (Big Sean, Future, Honeyblood, Drive-By Truckers)

Big Sean - I Decided.  I have a strange conundrum here with Big Sean, in that he does some of the same moves as Drake, with the sing-song delivery sprinkled among real rapping.  And yet I can't stand Drake but am really enjoying this Big Sean album.  What is up with that?  The big hit is "Bounce Back," and it is legitimately a deserving big hit.  Great beat, fun flow, good message.  It's up to over 176 million streams as of now.

Although, a tip for all of you dads out there, when this song is playing on the car radio and your kids are grooving and enjoying it and you get home and decide you should put that same song on the Sonos to jam in the house while everyone cleans up before bed, know that the real version of this song drops multiple f-bombs in the very first verse.  I was not paying close attention, but I can guarantee you the wife and middle daughter heard every word.  Big thumbs up.  But there is little as fun as waiting for it and then singing along to "I WOKE UP IN BEAST MODE!"  The other hit so far on the album is "Moves," which also depends on a well-crafted beat (apparently from 808 Mafia).  Both of these are the real deal rap.  I also like the sound of "Jump Out the Window."  "No Favors" was pretty dope (especially using a bit of the sample from Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By,") but I have to say that Eminem's verse on it is pretty mediocre (and the list of terrible things he wants to use on Ann Coulter's lady bits is typically disturbing for Em, but woah.  Come on man.)

Future - HNDRXX.  I don't know it annoys me for rappers to reference Jimi Hendrix, but I kind of want them to keep the master out of their mouth.  This was the album made famous because it was the first time that an artist replaced himself on the top of the charts with a new album.  What this means to me is that this doofus had 34 songs of mediocre rap and R&B crooning, felt like that would be too long and make it obvious how half of it was just bad, and so he split it into two albums to spread the garbage across two releases.  Of the two albums, this one is more of the R&B BS, less of the real deal rapping, so you don't even get a fun blast like "Mask Off" on this one to enjoy, you just slog through a massive pile of autotuned poo on the way to the end.  The two most popular tracks on here each feature megastars on them, with "Comin' Out Strong" (54 million) featuring the Weeknd and "Selfish" (27 million) featuring Rihanna.  So the one with the most listens that is not a collabo is "Incredible," with 10.2 million.

Usually, the thing that the Future tunes have going for them is at least a strong beat, but that little minimalist thing is kind of terrible.  Well, maybe not terrible, but pretty boring.  I'll say that, for Future, the lyrics are actually pretty good.  I like the story he pieces together with this lady friend who makes him feel like he can handle anything.  But when laid out there with an auto-tune rap/sing like that, I just can't do it.  I will not save any of this album.

Honeyblood - Babes Never Die.  I'm immediately confused in reading their bio on Spotify, as they are called a "Glaswegian noise pop duo."  Oh, look, Glaswegian just means they are from Glasgow.  Learn something new every day.  On top of that, the guitarist/vocalist is named Stina Marie Claire Tweeddale.  That is a hell of a name, right there.  The tunes are some crunchy 90's pop rock that reminds me of a lesser Wolf Alice or a better Luscious Jackson.  Their first album has two tracks that fired up over a million listens, with one topping out at 2.6 million, which is pretty legit.  But this disc falls well short of those numbers, with the top track ("Sea Hearts") scoring 432k streams.

Jam it out, ladies.  You'd never know from the sound that they were Glaswegian (my new word of choice).  But the scary sea monster lady in the video should be avoided, if you don't want someone rudely using up all of the dance floor in your house concert.  FYI.  This is a good disc.

Drive-By Truckers - American Band.  This band touches an old nerve inside of me, the one that used to love Wilco and still thinks that Whiskeytown's "16 Days" and Son Volt's "Tear Stained Eye" are two of the finest songs ever created by man. I saw these guys play ACL many years ago, and I remember thinking that they were outrageously loud, for their style of music.  They are more of a alt country slash rock kind of sound, which doesn't quite meet eye to eye with the blasting rock wall that I heard that afternoon.  But this album is great.  The music is fine, but I think tunes like "What It Means" are the best, just because I think it is important (God, that sounds pretentious, but I believe it) for a band that sounds like this (white, redneck) to sing about how jacked up America is right now.

Just over 622k streams on Spotify for that tune, it is their most popular from this album.  But there are others on here that tread the same (or similar ground).  You should go give this one a try, I think it is really good.