MoM NEWSLETTER - OCT 21

Lil Baby x Gunna - Drip Harder  

Oprah Winfrey once said, “What I know for sure is this: you either drip or get dripped.” I’m no Oprah, but what I know for sure is that the first time I listened to “Drip Too Hard” I almost snapped and bought a $500 Hermes scarf.  Lil Baby and Gunna, the decadent duo, the palatial pair, arrive fully iced out on the sumptuously rich mixtape Drip Harder.  

In true YSL fashion, Lil Baby and Gunna approach each track like a beautiful ballad, as their melody-driven bars are held together by piano-laced instrumentals.  The whole album is so drenched with piano riffs that I almost mistook Turbo for none other than Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach. Each track boasts and exudes self-confidence, as these unconcerned drip gods truly could not care less about anything except for 15-carat pieces and VLONE sweatsuits.  

As the album title suggests, the two brothers compete with each other in the purest sense as they try to out-drip and out-stunt each other, pushing each other to create refined rhymes and crystal-clear deliveries.  Of course, no brotherhood is complete without a father, and that’s exactly where Young Thug comes in on “My Jeans.” The saccharine song is a polished three minutes of Thugger giving his sons proper life advice, it’s no wonder that Jeffery is the literal father of six children.  

The one stain on an otherwise flawless album is the miserably inadequate Drake feature on “Never Recover.” Drippy, more like droopy.  Honest to god, Drake has no place on this record.

- Natasha Doshi

Fatima - And Yet It's All Love 

To be frank: Fatima's sophomore album And Yet Its All Love does not disappoint. It is a beautiful piece of R&B that you can blast with the top down. 

I don’t why my measure of good music so often rests on its car playability. I think it’s a few factors. For one, when you’re driving, you can’t be switching tracks left and right. You can’t be as picky. When I start driving, I like to know what I’ll be hearing for the next solid half an hour. If I can just start an album from the top and hit the road, I know it’s a good one. 

Opener “Dang" sets the tone with a lush groove that switches up quite nicely in the last minute.  I can hear Swarvy’s influence on this one. 

Fatima’s voice is hypnotic, and can really put a hold on you. On “I See Faces in Everything” she chants, “don’t wanna be the flavor of the month.” This fear of being discarded as merely a passing phase is significant, and equally applicable to music and love. Will this last? 

On the production side of things, there is a variety of sounds and influences that come together quite nicely. Love the subtle euphonium/tuba on “Waltz.” The list of collaborators on this one says it all, as per a Boomkat product review: “Stones Throw’s MNDSGN, J.D Reid (Mabel, D Double E), Purist (Daupe), Taz Arnold (Kendrick Lamar), Swarvy and regular collaborator, Natureboy Flako.” The smooth guitar intro to “So Rite" sounds straight out of a Tim Maia album. I think it’s my favorite track from the album. “Attention Span of a Cookie” has this really dope yet unnerving bass synth that makes you think the song is about to veer into straight up dub(step) territory.

It’s so cool to see how the L.A. beat scene has left this indelible imprint on contemporary music. Far from gone, changing as always and growing in scope. In general, this album booms, and sometimes baps. Test it out. 

- Aida Rogers

PHYSICAL ADDS

Sun Ra - Jazz In Silhouette / Sun Sound Pleasure!!

Recorded in 1958, this is some of the most straight-forward sounding jazz I've heard from the titan of Afrofuturism. You can see where he was going, and where he was coming from. Delectable.  

- Aida Rogers

The Internet - Hive Mind 

The Internet delivers a little something you can ride to. Also? Quit the disrespect toward Syd. Seriously. It's embarrassing (for you) to be so loud and so wrong. 

- Aida Rogers

Tohru Aizawa Quartet - Tachibana Vol. 1 

Rare deep jazz from Japan that had all the collectors drooling (right now there is a copy on Discogs going for $1,500). A reissue came along and voilá - dank spiritual jazz for the masses. 

- Aida Rogers

Crystal Waters - Storyteller

I picked this up at a record store in Little Five Points, Atlanta, Georgia. This is Crystal Waters' second album, following Surprise,which had the smash hit and club sensation "Gypsy Woman." The bops keep bopping, is all. 

- Aida Rogers

Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club

Speaks for itself. Boogie down. 

- Aida Rogers

Manu Dibango - Bande originale du film Ceddo

Cameroonian jazz saxophonist Manu Dibangu composed the original soundtrack to the film Ceddo, a film about the Islamic conquest of West Africa written and directed by Ousmane Sembéne. That's the short of it, but it shreds. 

- Aida Rogers

Zap Mama - Adventure in Afropea 1

Syncretic fusion of African and Euro-American musical traditions. Need I say more? Hopefully not, because I won't.

- Aida Rogers

Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygéne

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uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Oh yeah. 

- Aida Rogers

Kamal Keila - Muslims and Christian 

Political Sudanese jazz with tinges of Afrobeat and funk. Mmmmmmm.  

- Aida Rogers

Muslimgauze, Systemwide, Sound Secretion -Classics Selection 

Prime selects from three pioneers of experimental electronic music and dub. Rest In Power Muslimgauze. 

- Aida Rogers