Quick Hits, Vol. 157 (YoungBoy Never Broke Again, White Reaper, Natalie Hemby, Chuck Berry)

YoungBoy Never Broke Again - AI YoungBoy.  I read an article about this dude, comparing him to Kevin Gates (very apt comparison) and saying that he had taken up the mantle of the old school storytelling rappers.  Some of these tracks are pretty good, but in my opinion he does too much of the sing-song thing and generic trope stuff that doesn't remind me of the classics from Tupac so much as Kevin Gates and some of the jenky mumble guys.  I like "No Smoke."  "Untouchable" is more popular, but is more commercial-sounding and generic.  I thought I was going to like "Left Hand Right Hand" because of the tough beat, but lyrically its pretty lackluster.  You know, talking about Ferragamo holding up his pants and using a Dell even though he owns (!?!) a Mac and a Compaq.  Who the hell still owns a Compaq?  Maybe a Baton Rouge guy who just got out of jail.  Nevermind, Compaqs are cool as hell.  Please don't hurt me.  Here is the most streamed on Spotify, "Untouchable," with 12.3 million streams.

I'm all for him getting out of jail and making good for his mom and little brother and coming up like a bad ass and all of that.  But I can't say that the beat is great, and I can't say that the rhymes are very interesting, just nothing is really top notch here.  Its fine.  But then again, 82.3 million views of that freaking video, so maybe he's already the best rapper alive and I'm just missing the boat.  I'll wait for the next album.

White Reaper - The World's Best American Band.  Like the title of this album, these dudes are fully tongue in cheek at all times.  I saw them play at ACL this year, and the show was one of the best things I saw at the second weekend, as they just blasted through a fun show with abandon, rocking out and being ridiculous.  Very fun.  The album isn't quite as raw as the show, but it still sounds like punk rockers trying to play classic rock, like they're trying to cover T. Rex ("The World's Best American Band") or Thin Lizzy ("Judy French") but came up playing only raw punk tunes.  I like the mix.  "The Stack" really sounds familiar too - I know it has the same kind of chord progression as "Rock and Roll Never Forgets," but I almost feel like it is a cover song that I've heard before from someone else.  But it appears to be an original.  Weird.  That Thin Lizzy-esque song is the top track on this album (746k), and I think it kind of rules.

Oh, and Alexandra Daddario, who was in the kind-of-funny-but-pretty-solidly-dumb Baywatch (as well as other flicks) tears it up in that video.  I have no clue why it makes any sense for her to appear in the video as though she is every member of the band, but whatever...  Their live show is even better than this album, but I think this album is highly fun stuff too.  I'm gonna keep it around and blare it from my car tonight while I drive home.  FYI, I did do that on my drive home and it was excellent.  I also kept it going this morning when the girls got in to the car for the drive to school and they didn't tell me to change the station, so that's a plus.

Natalie Hemby - Puxico.  Hemby is a Nashville gal, with a handful of big hits for the traditional country stars like Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town.  No clue how this album came to reside in my new music queue, I'm guessing Rolling Stone must have said she was good or something.  Her voice is really lovely, and lyrically these songs are great.  The top track on the album is, of course, my least favorite one.  Here is the drum machine-assisted, kind of snoozy "This Town Still Talks About You," which has just over a million streams.

I much prefer the stronger sounding tunes like "Return," "Time Honored Tradition," or the beautifully picked "Cairo, IL."  "Return" is more of a soft rock song but it sounds very good, yearning for the return of a loved one.  These tunes are nice sounding country tunes.  Kind of in the Sheryl Crow neighborhood, but none of them ever really fire up any big energy, it is a very chilled album.  Going to add a few tracks to a mix playlist and let the rest of the album go.

Chuck Berry - Berry is on Top / St. Louis to Liverpool.  When Berry died earlier this year, Rolling Stone did a great retrospective of the dude that explained some of the troubled history of his life, but also detailed some of the musical high notes that he had enjoyed over time.  The dude was truly one of the originators of rock and roll.  The rebellious lyrics and the crazy use of the guitar.  By now, of course, thousands of other folks have come along and copied his guitar style or modified it or improved on it, so you have to go into these tracks with a historical perspective to think about what this must have been like back then.

They listed these two albums as some of the classic stuff you had to hear to get an idea of exactly who Berry was, so I've been checking them out.  The first one, Berry Is on Top, complete with a cover showing a bunch of strawberries stuck to the top of a bowl of ice cream, is one where you'll remember the songs, boasting both "Johnny B. Goode" and "Maybellene," as well as several other classics like "Roll Over Beethoven."  I know "Johnny B. Goode" has been overplayed to death, but it truly is a fantastic song.  And then you get a little dose of good old fashioned 50's era racism, with the intro to "Hey Pedro."  Good times. 

By the time St. Louis to Liverpool came out (1964, five years after Berry is on Top), you can tell that his voice has gotten stronger and he's a much better singer, or maybe the production is just better and so you can hear his voice better.  But it definitely sounds better.  And this one also has some classic tunes - "No Particular Place to Go" (love it) and the Pulp Fiction-famous "You Never Can Tell."  One cool thing that Berry does, and I don't know if this was particular to him, is that guitar lick intro to songs - the iconic one for "Johnny B. Goode" is reprised almost exactly for "Promised Land," but several other songs have that same structure - firing out some hot guitar licks to introduce the song.  Anyway, happy to have run through these a few times, I'm going to spice up some playlists with some of these tunes to keep Berry around.