Quick Hits Vol. 121 (Noname, Goon, Crying, Snoop Dogg)

Noname - Telefone.  This gal was getting a lot of press and discussion last year for being in with Chance the Rapper, a fellow Chicagoan.  Like Chance, she has a kind of contemplative flow.  I've kept this album going now for a few days and I really like it.  This is not going to be overwhelming rap, full of rumbling, tough beats or brags about cars or drugs.  Instead, you get a softer touch, smartly running through solid rhymes in an almost shy way.  The most popular track (by about 4x) is "Diddy Bop," which features Raury and something called Cam O'bi, and has about 4.2 million streams.

It starts off sounding like an Erika Badu track or something, with that almost un-tuned music shimmering out over a spare beat, and lyrics about good times (well, and some hard bits) of growing up in the neighborhood.  The chorus: "Run, run, run, mama say come home before the streetlights do, Ice cream on my front porch in my new FUBU and my A1’s too, Watching my happy block my whole neighborhood hit the diddy bop."  Its not like any of the other rappers I'm listening to right now, and that makes me happy.  I think she's talented at turning a phrase and coming up with rhymes, and the music itself is contemplative and interesting.  I'll keep it.

Goon - Dusk of Punk.  Grimy, jangly, dreamy, punkish alt rock.  Only six songs on here, so its one of those albums that has disappeared by the time you even really start to get your head around it.  Literally 17 damn minutes long.  Wish it was longer.  The album opener ("Dizzy") or the closer ("Scab") are my favorites, and one track in the middle ("Merchant Hall") goes into full Pixies scream-o-rama-thon mode, which I could do without.  Here's that album opener, which is the most popular track by a mile (58k listens vs. 6k for the next most heard, meaning that most people probably just listen to the first track and then bail out).

I like the sound.  I think I would go with more of the music from these guys, so I'll just have to wait until they get a full-sized LP together.

Crying - Beyond the Fleeting Gates.  This reminds me of the Breeders, if they had been into adding synths to their rock.  I think my favorite part of any of it is in "Premonitory Dream" when the guitars remind me of the old Hum song "Counting Stars."  That song ruled.

 Alt-rock crunch, solid voices lead singer, they're hitting the right notes for me.  But this is just the album opener.  After this piece, the notes and feel sound the same, but something about it hollows out and I don't care as much anymore.  I also think that sometimes the cheese factor fires up (looking at you, synths on "The Curve") and is too much for me. I've listened to the album about ten times by now, and I like it well enough, but not so much that I think I'd suggest it or keep listening to it.  Seems like a weird thing to say, but true...

Snoop - Coolaid.  Awwwww man.  I just want him to still be 18 and hungry and real.  Before the fall out with Dre and terrible albums as a No Limit Soldier and the reggae years.  The same dude that made "Who Am I?" one of the coolest songs I remember of my high school driving days.  The album opener on this is pretty much distilled as this: Snoop considers himself to be a muthafuckin legend. Over a plodding beat.  And it just keeps going from there, except for a "legend," I sure do feel like he bites a lot of other people's sounds and beats.  But then "Super Crip" comes in and I'm bobbin' my head preparing to creep through the fog with my homie Doggy Dogg.

Aw yeah.  Good one.  Tough shit!  But then the album (at 20 freaking songs and 87 minutes) has some real stinkers like "Double Tap" (a terrible song equating smart phone finger tapping with sex) or "Kush Ups."  Overall, this is not a good album.