Five Obsessions (October 2024)
Five Obsessions covers five of my favorite songs each month. Some new, some old. Some new to me, some revisited. Published in the middle of every month (typically on the second Saturday).
You can listen to the running list of Applied Science favorites in the Spotify playlist below and read about this week’s specific picks below that.
Before any normal proceedings, I have to acknowledge the untimely passing of Brownsville, Brooklyn rapper Ka. I wrote about Ka at great length last year. I have long admired his music, his commitment to a kind of pure artistry that treats commerce as a welcome byproduct but rarely an end in itself. A former firefighter by day, Ka spent the last two decades crafting on of rap’s singular catalogs, a labyrinth of poetic crime narratives and personal reflections imbued with the entire weight of the history. Great literature, religion, folklore, mythology, mysticism—all the world’s intellectual rivers seemed to flow through Ka at different times. Of his art, I wrote:
“Ka’s creative lineage takes root in the sort of music that inspired me as a teenager, sparking misguided designs on glory in this business: Hip-hop that didn’t need the validation of a Grammy stage. A devout student of the great rappers that preceded and surrounded him, Ka cuts the figure of an esoteric Chester Himes type, a grizzled griot conjuring criminals and antiheroes through shadows of myth and memory. On each of his albums, he plays the steely, sorrowful narrator, stitching together haunted details and jagged landscapes. He carries the spirit of Wu Tang that mingled the symbolic and literal, colliding street tales with imaginative iconography, coded language, Eastern philosophy, and an unmistakable sense of New York noir. In his confrontation with death’s ripples, Ka often recalls MF DOOM on Operation Doomsday; the weight of loss transformed both rappers, spurring them to write their respective ways through mourning. Invisible grief architecture underscores Ka’s catalog. His albums embody acts of processing, seeking the best ways to live life compromised by tragic conditions beyond one’s control. He sifts grand traditions to grapple eternal questions, plumbing Greek mythology (Orpheus and The Sirens), Japanese history and philosophy (Honor Killed the Samurai), and the Bible (Descendants of Cain) for language to resolve ageless pain. Every couplet coils as smoke, heavy and hardly there at all.”
His entire catalog takes on new weight in light of his passing, particularly “Borrowed Time,” a standout from his exceptional recent album The Thief Next to Jesus. RIP to one of the great rap talents.
Future - “Surfing A Tsunami”
Future’s finest moments are about as close as the hip-hop generation will ever get to watching one of the great jazz inventors at their peak. An artist endlessly exploring specific territory, constantly searching for new pockets in the same sprawling ocean, mining the trappings success for their darkest ore. At its best, Future’s music is as visceral, hypnotic, devastating, and exhilarating as anything in American canon, often at once. I can feel my wife rolling her eyes at this sentiment, but she too has seen the power of “March Madness” and “Thought It Was A Drought” to reduce grown men to rubble.
While his recent projects have rarely been as electrifying as the run that constituted his 2014-2016 pinnacle, Future still has the ability to reach thrilling heights and delve into casually avant garde (in that way, he is reminiscent of another Atlanta great, Gucci Mane, whose output was so prolific in the late aughts and early 2010s that its sheer volume often hid some of the most interesting rap music ever made).
“SURFING A TSUNAMI” from Future’s new album MIXTAPE PLUTO feels like the answer to the question “what would it sound like if Future remixed Brian Eno’s Music for Airports?” To most, it might just sound like another in a sea of same-y sounding Future songs, but it is, in its way, a new exploration of the languid bragging that makes material accumulation sound like a mournful flow state. Built around a hypnotic, constantly rising ambient lead and submerged, fluttering synhesizers, it is one of Future’s subtly oddest choices in the past half decade of releases. Yet it fits this album perfectly, a worthy entry alongside his most enduring performances and creative choices.
Bounty Killer - “Suicide or Murder”
It is easy to think of sampling primarily in its literal forms. Excising a piece of music from one place. Looping it or chopping it up using software or hardware. Reconstituting it in a new song. Sampling has been a key to the popular music landscape since the early ‘80s, an art as versatile as it is oft-abused.
Sampling is so much more than the literal movement of sounds from an existing sound recording to a new one. Sampling is time travel. Sampling is anthropology. Sampling is a conversation between artists, producers, and technologies. One could explore the metaphysics of sampling and get totally lost, thinking through all the collisions and allusions generated in the teleportation of sound from source to destination.
Early in October, I encountered dancehall legend Bounty Killer’s “Suicide or Murder.” I pressed play on it while perusing his catalog on Spotify, halting when I saw that the song featured Jeru The Damaja, a favorite rapper of my teenage years. A giddily disorienting discovery: “Suicide or Murder” bounces across a mash-up of the beats from Blahzay Blahzay’s “Danger” and Jeru’s classic “Come Clean,” alternating with instrumentals from Raekwon’s “Ice Cream” and KRS One’s “Rappers R N Danja.” In its construction, “Suicide or Murder” roughly resembles Ice Cube’s classic “Jackin For Beats,” making a patchwork of hot records of the era, prefiguring the mixtape culture that would make superstars of artists like 50 Cent and Lil Wayne as they snatched other artists’ beats and imagined them anew.
“Suicide or Murder” is like a mini soundclash, a loose echo of the Jamaican musical tradition of riddims that sees multiple artists recording new lyrics to the same backing track, a kind of indirect competition to see who can record the most enduring version. It is also a reminder of the proximity of hip-hop and dancehall culture in a period of time (1996) when the east coast of America still dominated hip-hop (Jeru the Damaja is from New York, a city with a considerable Jamaican and Caribbean population and musical lineage).
Mutant Academy - “Rock, Paper, Scissors”
I’ve been writing about sprawling Virginia rap collective Mutant Academy since I was getting paid to write (2016, if anyone from the IRS is reading). Comprising rappers Fly Anakin, Henny L.O., and Big Kahuna OG, and producers Foisey, Ewonee, Unlucky Bastards, Sycho Sid, Graymatter, Ohbliv, Mutant Academy and its constituent members have been churning out high quality rap music for a decade, revisiting classicist territory without delving into nostalgia with sickly sweetness. Their best music remains modern, urgent, listenable even if you don’t know the referents. Songs like “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” a standout from Mutant Academy’s new album Keep Holly Alive, highlight the groups’ knack for tightly wound, clever rapping over warm production, bookended by a sense of humor and buoyancy that resists the sort of crustiness so often typifying “underground” rap.
The Bug - “Brutalized (Headwrecked)”
Admittedly, I have a bit of a bemusing relationship with heavy music.
I don’t dress like the sort of person you typically associate with “heavy” anything. I prefer to exercise to podcasts, so I don’t use heavy music for an aural adrenaline rush. I have been in precisely one mosh pit. I left it after a matter of seconds, unscathed if sweatier.
Since high school, I’ve loved a wide variety of heavy music. My college discovery of The Bug (aka Kevin Martin) led me down a path previously unimagined—the rhythms of dub reggae and dancehall run ragged across brutal 808s and jagged synths. Martin’s seminal “Poison Dart” and “Skeng” were as hypnotic as they were pummeling, prefiguring the prevalence of dubstep as a sonic assault someone might want to dance to.
“Brutalized (Headwrecked)” from the Martin’s Machines I-V (a collection of instrumental pieces he produced specifically for his lives shows) embodies this ethos of groovy brutality, sounding like a bit of cutting room floor score for a night club scene where things turn violent in a John Wick or Blade film.
Elmiene - “Light Work”
I’m not going to tap dance around reasons here. I just like this song a lot. Elmiene has a great voice. The production sets the perfect groove for his particular brand of soulful longing. I listened to it four times straight when I first heard it.
Bonus: The Beatles - “Got To Get You Into My Life”
Recently, my two year old son has become obsessed with The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.” We’re not just talking “listen once or twice a day” obsessed. We’re talking “the only song played in the car for a full hour” obsessed. We’re talking “sing it to him every night before bed” obsessed. We’re talking “don’t even think about putting on another song” obsessed.
One morning, driving back from a doctor’s appointment, I thought I’d tempt fate. Revolver has been my favorite Beatles album since I first discovered it in 9th grade. “Yellow Submarine” has been my least favorite song on it for equal time. At the risk of setting off a temper tantrum only Ringo’s aquatic adventure could quell, I attempted to find another song that could equally hold my son’s attention.
Enter “Got To Get You Into My Life,” long a favorite for its hat tip-to Motown production and peak Paul McCartney songwriting, an anthem of puppy dog desire he’d already perfected by the age of 24.
“Got To Get You Into My Life” has it all. Persistent rhythm. Exciting horn arrangement. Perfectly placed “oooo” in the pre-chorus that has become the way my son identifies the song (he’ll either say “play ‘oooo’ song” or just sing “oooo” to me, expecting me to sing it back, which, of course, I pretty much always do). Along with Revolver-opener “Taxman,” “Got To Get You Into My Life” has the power to temporarily lift the tyranny of “Yellow Submarine.”
…but the submarine always finds a way to ride again. Hopefully he discovers Future soon.