Joey Bada$$ - Summer Knights (7.25.13 - 8.1.13)

 “Summer Knights” is the second mixtape coming from 18-year old Brooklyn native Joey Bada$$. His moniker and age won’t inspire thoughts of anything beyond easy rap, but just give him a chance and you will recognize him for what he is: a kid with enormous amounts of potential who’s lyrical maturity and wordplay reach far beyond the image that he projects.

My Youth – A fun reggae beat, and while Joey’s flow at time seems to wrestle more than work with the beat it’s never bad enough to distract from the song. Because I’m a sucker for wordplay: “I don’t drink too much, I know the Budweiser”

Death of YOLO - Inspired by death of rapper Ervin McKinness who tweeted “Drunk af going 120 drifting corners #FuckIt YOLO” minutes before his car crashed killing himself and the four passengers, Death of YOLO is the standout song off the mixtape.  The title sets the tone for the death of the YOLO mentality, which is reinforced by the hook and Joey’s first verse. Ironic given he’s among the demographic that affixes #YOLO#SWAG to everything.  “Little did they know I was about to meet my maker / till an angel came down and told me my time was later” a simple, yet effective line given context.

Unorthodox – Closing track, “cause money ain’t no thing if I got it I won’t spend, all I got is my Pros I don’t need to friends” the wordplay with Pros is too good to pass up – meaning both his prose, and his rap crew, Pro Era.

All in all a very solid summer mixtape from a young artist set to do big things in hip hop.

-Marc

#TGIF #chchcheckit #aChordOtW #TechnologyOfTheFuture

Those pink nails clash with the red phone. #colorblind

Ahoy all!

Good news everyone! A Chord of the Week has moved beyond the boring late 1990s world of websites and have added a Twitter account.

Some say that Twitter is what robots yell when they have an orgasm. Some say that M.Night Shyamalan is making the best movie you will ever see, ever, in 150 characters and six seconds because wasting any more of your time would be criminal. All we know is that we're going to use the tag/handle/whathaveyou to more easily share posts and to hopefully get some more discussions going.

Since Twitter already has a few users, we were unable to get the name we really wanted - @BClintonPlayMySax, but we settled on the next best one, @aChordOtW. Please follow us, we'd like to feel your red onion and coffee breath pulsing in our virtual ear to the beat of whatever album in on the blog. We'll try to follow you back, or whatever people do these days on Twitter, but we are awful, just awful, with directions, so we might get lost. All in the name of adventure!

Keep your blinkers, knickers and headphones on.

Josh Ritter - The Beast in Its Tracks (7.10.13 - 7.24.13)

 

We’ve only been waiting since the dawn of human expression, but the perfect “getting over a heartbreak” album has finally arrived, courtesy of one Josh Ritter.  Written in the hangover of his divorce, The Beast In Its Tracks (his first full length album in three years) offers the words of wisdom and empathy that a crushed soul wants and needs to hear.  The melodies are light and the lyrics are heavy, which more or less epitomizes how one feels in the wake of an unwanted break up; thoughts heavy, in need of something uplifting.  Well, this is it.

Ritter’s bruises and scabs haven’t quite healed, as this album riddled with bitterness and signs of lingering pain.  However, he still cannot hide his joy and optimism towards moving on, which writing and recording this album helped him do.  It seems that Ritter’s words, although wide-reaching, are not intended for the listener, but intended to comfort and convince himself that he is over it and in a better place having found someone new to love.  The tracks “Hopeful”, “New Lover”, and “Appleblossom Rag” are excellent examples of this manifestation of emotions.  Each begin with an obvious focus on the former lover, but it is equally obvious where thoughts of “stop thinking about her, man!” entered his mind, the lyrics shifting towards a more positive outlook.  He sings, “I’ve got a new lover now, I hope you’ve got a lover too…” praising the next love and immediate effects it has on the enduring sting of a broken heart.  He continues, presumably with a wide grin, “but if you’re sad and you are lonesome, and you’ve got nobody true, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me happy too”, addressing  that difficult and sometimes shameful range of thoughts in a refreshingly blunt manner.

I don’t think there is anything more that I could say that you couldn’t figure out after hearing it for yourself.   Ritter’s writing is exceptional and, as one Amazon reviewer put it, “if his lyrics were prose, you’d underline them.”

- Matthew Blaine