hip hop

Record #1009: Cold Gawd – I’ll Drown on This Earth (2024)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If it accomplished nothing else, God, Get Me the F*** Out of Here proved that shoegaze and hip hop aren’t entirely without overlap. Cold Gawd plugged their reverb pedals into their fuzz boxes and played with the spirit of hip hop. Only two years later, the SoCal outfit is back with a record that turns that concept up to eleven.

But I’ll Drown on This Earth borrows more than just aesthetic and mood. The vocals are often run through the same sort of autotune as Rihanna or T-Pain. Grooves are beefier and boomier. The skits are even more pronounced. And all this while also becoming more experimental and ambient.

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Record #846: Eli Kahn – How Are You? No Really…How Are You? (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you’ve gone anywhere in South Bend over the last ten years, there’s a non-zero chance that you’ve happened upon a performance by Eli Kahn. You might find him providing mood music at a winery or playing with his jazz duo After Hours at a party or headlining a music festival with the hip hop project The B.E.A.T. or providing a soundtrack for an experimental dance show or creating ambience for an art opening.

He’s practically a local cryptid at this point, playing anywhere and everywhere live music can be found with an impressive array of effects pedals and a custom fanned-fret seven-string (with two bass strings on the bottom).

His first solo record, How Are You? No Really…How Are You? is as comprehensive and delightful CV anyone could ask for from Kahn, tying together diverse influences like lo-fi hip hop, jazz, and post rock.

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Record #823: Beastie Boys – Ill Communication (1994)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

First impressions are a powerful thing. Like many people, my first introduction to the Beastie Boys was “Fight For Your Right,” an irreverent and ubiquitous track that struck many as a novelty. And at the time of that track, the Beastie Boys were a novelty: the three Jewish kids from New York had transitioned to hip hop after their hardcore band found a burst of attention with the jokey rap song “Cookie Puss” (after which they hired an aspiring DJ named Rick Rubin).

But after riding the novelty act thing to notoriety, the Beastie Boys decided to get serious—a memo I had largely missed until my wife picked up a CD copy of Ill Communication on my regular detour at Vertigo Records in Grand Rapids. Listening to it on the drive home, I realized what an idiot I was for not just buying the vinyl at the same time, because this is truly one of the greatest records of all time.

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Record #815: Eugenius – Midlife (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I am by no means a connoisseur of hip hop. The hip hop section of my collection is very meager, and I feel ill-equipped to talk about hip hop in any sort of meaningful way.

That said, my metric for good hip hop is much the same as Justice Potter Stewart’s metric for pornography: I know it when I see it. And Midlife, the sprawling, mercurial debut from Cincinnati’s Eugenius, passes that test with ease.

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Record #810: Childish Gambino – Because the Internet (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2013 to 2014 was a frustrating period for Community fans. Despite a number of behind the scenes changes, there was a notable absence of Troy Barnes, the lovable idiot played by Donald Glover. He only appeared in five of the season’s thirteen episodes, then announced that he was leaving the show to focus on his music career.

At the time, it felt ill-conceived. He had already released some music under the name Childish Gambino at the time, and while it was fine for an actor’s side gig, it definitely didn’t seem like the sort of thing that had strong enough legs to build a career on.

Then Because the Internet dropped, and we realized what fools we had been.

Read more at ayearofvinyl.com #childishgambino #hiphop #r&b #rap #vinyl

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Record #746: Jay-Z – The Black Album (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a white Christian kid growing up in the suburbs, I was raised without much appreciation for mainstream hip hop. Sure, I would karaoke “Rapper’s Delight” as a joke and would stan some other old-school hip hop, but by and large, any time someone like Jay-Z came on MTV, I would flip the channel, turned off by the prevalence of profanity and barely-dressed backup dancers.

In the years that followed the release of The Black Album, though, it was impossible to avoid the plethora of mashups that flooded the internet. I was drawn in by the novelty of mixing these tracks with The Beatles, Weezer, or Radiohead—I even tried my hand at a Fugazi mashup.

But something happened that I didn’t expect: after putting these mashups on heavy rotation, I actually fell in love with the album in its original form, like some sort of musical Trojan Horse. Even my white-washed, purity culture background couldn’t ignore the fact that this was one of the most important and impressive hip hop albums of all time.

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Record #740: Gorillaz – Gorillaz (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It was supposed to be a joke, right?

No one would start a band fronted by cartoon characters who fight robots and ghosts and expect to be taken seriously, right? Especially not when that person already has an incredibly successful band that blurs the lines between Britrock and punk?

They were just supposed to bring in a couple underground rappers for some fun features, write some jokey tracks, and call it a day. They certainly weren’t supposed to eventually bring together legendary artists like Lou Reed, The Clash, Bobby Womack, Grace Jones, and Snoop Dogg to create multiple masterpieces. 

That seemed to be the plan when Gorillaz released their debut record on the world. Have some laughs, release a couple novelty singles, and call it a day. No one expected them to become one of the most impressive projects in the landscape of modern pop music.

But looking back at Gorillaz from the other side of their now legendary catalogue, it’s clear that this understated LP was hiding a bit more than they let on.

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Record #691: Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Like many a white suburban kid, I’ve had a passing fascination with hip hop. I was a pretty big fan of Kanye West until he went off the rails. I know every word of “Rapper’s Delight.” I have a huge appreciation for old school acts like Public Enemy and Naughty By Nature. I’ve even got my own unfinished Jay-Z mashup album.

But when Kendrick Lamar came on the scene, I completely lost track of what was going on in the world of hip hop.

A lot of that disorientation came from this record, an eighty-minute monster filled with the densest verses around. But a few weeks ago, I decided to dive into it, and I can’t escape its grasp.

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Record #673: Herbie Hancock – Sound-System (1984)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Herbie Hancock is one of the more convincing chameleons (pun intended) in jazz history.

After writing indelible standards like “Maiden Voyage” and “Watermelon Man,” pioneering fusion alongside Miles Davis, and leading the far-out, futuro-Afro fusion band Mwandishi, Herbie easily could have rested on his laurels and still been heralded as a legend.

But resting isn’t exactly one of Herbie’s strong suits. And in the mid-eighties, he continued to look forward. Sound-System, his second album with the Rockit band, finds him setting aside horns, pianos, and tune itself in favor of drum machines, turntables, and samplers and exploring hip hop, funk, and electro.

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