Public Library Commute

One Liner: Alternative R&B dude making beats in his dorm room.

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but alterative R&B, alternative hip hop
Home: North Jersey

Poster Position: Later Addition
Weekend One Only.

Sunday at 1:45 on the BMI Stage.

Thoughts:  Goes back and forth between a bedroom pop sort of thing, some R&B flavors, and a Post Malone ripoff.  Their top track sounded familiar, but it is because the track is actually a Surfaces song, that I already listened to when reviewing that band.  Stop mixing me up, bro.

The top streamer is the Post Malone copy, and it makes me cringe.  "Slalom" has 5.8 million streams.

I'm probably too harsh on this, but when he does the wavering tenor singing about midway through the track, it's just much for me.  Feels like he needs to stick to his own sound instead of trying to copy.

His real name is Conrad Hsiang, and according to one article I read about him he found some minor fame making beats for alternative hip hop artists I've never heard of like Healy and Felly.  Originally from New Jersey, he was in New York at a place called Hamilton College (but I assume he has graduated by now).  He called himself PLC at first, which he claims was intended to be like GZA and RZA as just a three initial, cool-sounding name.  His brother told him that he should then name each album a different acronym for PLC, so his first one ended up being Public Library Commute, because he used to work at the public library in his town.  And he just stuck with that weird ass name.

Two albums, 2018's Sienna 1999 and 2019's Over Grey Skies, and then a lot of singles.  Nothing from those albums is among his most popular tracks, so it looks like the newer stuff is making more of a mark.  His second-most streamed is "Summertime," a 2020 single, with 1.5 million streams.

Yeah, I'm just not the guy for a cutesy little R&B track like that.  His voice is nice, the music is perfectly inoffensive, but I don't need it at all.

In one crazy story, he ended up volunteering at a prison on the island of Nevis to teach young inmates how to use Abelton and other beat-making software, to try to give them something to do with themselves other than going back to crime.  Fascinating.

Don't want to see this one, but his stories are kind of endearing anyway.