I hate college.

(you probably shouldn't watch this video if you enjoy: the absence of misogyny, not feeling icky)

Okay. I don't really hate college. It's pretty okay. But I definitely hate "college." "College" as in: inventing ludicrous new ways to drink shitty beer. As in: constant displays of anxious masculinity. As in: "The best four years of your life." As in - well, see above.

I pretty much avoid the whole idea as much as possible, but now I have to hear it on hip-hop radio? Are you serious?

It seems incredibly fucked up that anyone would celebrate paying thousands and thousands of dollars to do as little as possible, while getting as drunk as possible, for FOUR FREAKIN' YEARS. Especially now.

Incidentally, Asher Roth sucks, and I don't get why anyone thinks he doesn't.

The wickedest slam

If you follow Jamaican music at all you'll know this whole thing by now. But in case not: The Jamaica Broadcasting Commission has banned songs about sex and violence from Jamaican radio, even if they're censored. Imagine listening to US radio if those were the rules here. "Adult contemporary" stations would probably be ok, but hip-hop/r&b stations' playlists would be decimated. Which is pretty much what's happening to dancehall stations in JA. Mavado and Vybz Kartel are firing back (and on the same side of something, for once - could this have a silver lining?)

The conflict between what adults think young people should be listening to and what young people actually want to listen to is of course pretty old, in Jamaica as elsewhere. Most recently though in Jamaica people have been talking about this one song as the epitome of nastiness:



Vybz Kartel & Spice - Ramping Shop (in my first productive use of Ableton ever, I edited out the anti-gay parts but left the enjoyable dirty parts. I'm pretty sure I made it way more difficult than it had to be, but whatever, I figured it out. Producers, watch your backs)

Because I am an appreciator of autotune, the Miss Independent riddim (best instrumental '08), and above all of nastiness, naturally this has been my favorite song for months.

The best thing about it is that the use of the sweet-sounding instrumental makes obvious what might otherwise be obscured, which is that this is actually a pretty beautiful love song. I can't really think of a better expression of sexual love than:

And when you ah come whisper something like this:
"I can't stop fucking you"

I know, right? Give it a few hundred listens, you'll see what I mean.

(Thanks to this Observer editorial for the title of this post: "Media watchdog group, the Broad-casting Commission, has made an effort to slap 'daggering' with what can perhaps be termed the 'wickedest slam'.)

You should have seen this

youshouldhaveseenthis.com (thanks to Kevin via twitter)

This is internet nostalgia central. It was especially awesome looking at it with my boyfriend, who because he is a loser and/or old hadn't seen hardly any of it. Watching someone see "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" for the first time was like time travel.

Ne-Yo - Single (a few months late)

As has already been mentioned, I'm wicked slow when it comes to becoming interested in popular songs. Usually 3-4 years late, although in this case not quite so much; I got on board right after it fell out of heavy rotation on the radio.

What I like about this song is the seriously weird premise, which I didn't catch for a while. Ne-Yo isn't singing to some girl he is dancing with in the club whose boyfriend he is going to be for the duration of one song, he is singing as Ne-Yo, and he is going to be your boyfriend through the MEDIUM of the song. Like, that while you're listening to the song, Ne-Yo's willing to be your boyfriend, wherever he may be. By this logic Ne-Yo is my boyfriend for a few minutes three or four times a day. (Sorry, Jon, it's a really good song.)

He also gave this song to the New Kids on the Block, apparently. This video creeps me out though. They're all like, almost 40 now, but the girl in the video is probably my age. It feels like meeting your friend's dad, and he all kisses your hand and is like "enchanté" and you feel really gross.

Polow's killing it lately, incidentally.

Soca-ish dancehall/dancehall-ish soca

Okay, I'm not really going to Trinidad. I'm missing Carnival 2kWine. I'm definitely going at some point though, maybe 2kWineteen.

Machel Montano ft. Busy Signal - Push Bumper (Remix) (divshare)
Demarco - She Cah Wait (Stress Out Riddim) (divshare)
Busy Signal - Send It On (divshare)

Seriously, try listening to soca on headphones when you're walking around (if you're walking around somewhere cold), it feels warmer.

Fly Away

Machel Montano ft. Collie Buddz - Fly Away

One of the things that I love about soca (along with the fact that it gets really good in January and February, right when winter in New England is getting really tiresome) is that there are some really beautiful love songs that are about dancing. Or dancing songs that are about love. I'm not sure which.

Just now I was at Honey Farms, and a drunk lady was telling the clerk that she was leaving, she had had enough of winter, she was going to the Cayman Islands, and did he want to come with her? (He didn't.)

I am feeling like that drunk lady (except less drunk, presumably). I have definitely had enough, I think I'm going to Trinidad though.

I'm 'N Luv (Wit a Stripper) - 3 years late

(trust me, this song is better if you don't have to look at T-Pain while you're listening to it)

I love everything about this song. I love that guitar, and I love that it was made in GarageBand. I love how T-Pain sounds with minimal auto-tune. I love that he refers to sex as "the night thang" even when he doesn't have to for the rhyme. I love that Mike Jones always sounds like he's shouting, and I even love his dubious assertion that strippers love him, despite the fact that he never pays. I mean, the causality there is supposed to be that he never pays because strippers love him, but I'm skeptical.

I do this thing sometimes where I listen to a song so much it starts to represent all music to me, and therefore it is necessarily the best song ever written. This might have been what happened here. I'm pretty sure it's at least a very good song though.

The only thing I can think of that I don't like about this song is that for a while afterwards, every song on the radio that was about a woman was about a stripper. Now they're all about women who keep up with their credit card payments, not that anything's really changed.