ICED OAT MATCHA #017
It's some shit on me.
For the week of March 14, we had a mini-series where every day, I wrote short blurbs about the music that has been the most important to me in my life. That is, this is the music that has in one way or another altered or helped shape my music listening habits. Those could be songs I heard at a pivotal time in my life, albums that helped make my listening habits more open-minded, whatever one might deem important. Though taste and preference change over time, this is, of current mind and body, the most important music in my life so far. This is the last of that series.
You can find the first post of this series, from Monday the 14th, here.
You can find the second post of this series, from Tuesday the 15th, here.
You can find the third post of this series, from Wednesday the 16th, here.
You can find the fourth post of this series, from Thursday the 17th, here.
Drakeo the Ruler, So Cold I Do Em
Drakeo the Ruler was a shining light, hope in a hopeless world. His syrup-soaked lingo which ranged from calling money “big banc uchies” or “bald head Caillous” or referring to extended mags as “Pippy long stockins” felt like the creation of new universes, new worlds created by Drakeo himself. He and much of the Stinc Team also, somewhat problematically but also comically, refer to their various Asian love interests as Mei Ling, Ling Ling, and Kim Jong; to this day, I’m not sure if these are his side hoes or women who kick him a few bucks. Could be both, couldn’t tell you. Drakeo is, for all intensive purposes, the rapper who said things that make you go, “What does that even mean?” To which I would say, no one knows what it means, but it’s provocative, and it gets the people going.
So Cold I Do Em isn’t Drakeo’s opus but it captures his spirit. It is a metaphorical kicking in the door for a man who paid his dues, not to the rap game or to anybody else, but to the harsh realities of life. It is an artist arriving at their peak. As with fellow LA rap legend 03 Greedo, there wasn’t a time of artistic development where you wondered where they might go. I mean, there is some musical soul searching for Drakeo, mostly done on I Am Mr. Mosely, but from the opening bars of “Impatient Freestyle,” it is clear that Drakeo is (sadly now, was) destined to be one of the greatest rappers to ever live, and even in his tragically short life, he was. As long as I live, I will rap “The Stinc Team, they gettin’ real dollars, bitch you tellin’ me!” with a full heart. RIP Drakeo the Ruler and Ketchy the Great. Free 03 Greedo.
Japanese Breakfast, Psychopomp
I have a tendency to rationalize music as an artist’s way of communicating with us. They may not necessarily be able to translate their raw emotions to us, outsiders, through interviews with strangers or cryptic Instagram posts, but music is a musician’s great equalizer. On Psychopomp, Michelle Zauner, more commonly and affectionately referred to as Japanese Breakfast, is ruthlessly, maybe even viciously, honest. Her music is not a ground for the musician and the listener to meet in the middle, it is a photograph of deep grief, processing trauma, and the at-times casual nature with which we must confront those pains.
In 25 minutes, Zauner reflects on losing her mother to cancer, compounding two decades of a mother-daughter relationship into one bar (“Oh, do you believe in heaven like you believed in me? / Oh it could it be such heaven if you believed it was real”) and also tackling the fragility of love that can turn from one night stands (“When we wake up in the morning, will you give me lots of head?”) to marriage (“Will you make me breakfast in bed? / Ask me to get married, and then make me breakfast again?”). It is one of the most musically and lyrically exciting pieces of music of the 2010s, ranging from hallmark shoegaze (“In Heaven”) to pop-rock that feels like a clear summer day (“Everybody Wants to Love You”). The transition from “Everybody Wants to Love You” to “Psychopomp” is super jarring and to this day, one of the funniest, if not the funniest, transitions (or lack thereof) I can think of.
Frank Ocean, ENDLESS / Blonde
We’re a decade removed from Odd Future and the legacies they have passed onto us are a gay Black man who is one of the most famous R&B artists today, a queer-led alternative R&B band, and Earl Sweatshirt. Frank Ocean had his fair share of stans between dropping nostalgia ULTRA and channel ORANGE, but he solidified himself as a cool guy on the timeline with his “Oldie” verse. I always considered myself a fan of his but even as OF the collective effectively disbanded and its many parts moved on, some continued to think of Ocean as “one of those guys from that group.” With ENDLESS and blond, Frank solidified himself not just as a voice, but one of the great people of the 2010s.
In ENDLESS exists one of the last great time capsules of musical consumption of yesteryear: a musical work that made itself an event, a descendant of sorts of 2010’s GOOD Fridays, of exclusive music video premieres on 106 & Park or TRL during the early 2000s. It also helps that it’s one of the more interesting R&B-adjacent works of the decade, containing some of the best songwriting in Frank’s career (“Comme des Garçons”), the kind of emotionally devastating work that echoes through blond (“Wither”), and the signature Frank Ocean raps emblematic of “Chanel” and “Provider” that are kind of bad but also fire (“U-N-I-T-Y”).
I hope I don’t have to explain blond to you. All I’ll say about it is some time last year, I purchased a bootleg vinyl pressing of it and “Seigfried” and “Futura Free” go crazy.
Kanye West, The Life of Pablo
I don’t like to go long with words when talking about Kanye. I mean, everyone knows who he is to the point that I don’t have to use his last name. The reason The Life of Pablo resonates with me in particular is that it’s the first time in his musical career that he created an album for the present rather than the future. Every album he made up to that point, especially coming off the critical acclaim thrown at My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus, felt like highly polished concepts even if lyrically, it was very specific anger (e.g. Amber Rose and MBDTF). With TLOP, Kanye lets go and has fun, in a weird and mildly demented way that only he can have fun. Also spawned one of the best memes to this day.
SALES, Sales LP
Sales LP feels like a relic of the 2010s. It feels like doom scrolling Tumblr late at night when you should be doing homework or getting a good night’s sleep before school; it feels like the hollow or unfamiliar feeling of being holed up in the car while your parents drag you to the seemingly faraway home of an extended family member you’ve never met; it feels like, well, a drag. It’s not a drag in itself, but it manages to synthesize that feeling of numbness that also feels like white noise into a singular sound, a sound that feels like one long song. Oh, also it came out in 2016. It is one of those records that feels like it has been around forever but also makes you go, “Damn, how long ago did this come out? [friend goes on google] No way, really? Damn.”
It makes sense, SALES came after the emotional and musical highs of indietronica, after cool kids fucked around with chillwave, and after everyone was put on to lo-fi hip-hop beats to study to. There is a dreariness (“pope is a rockstar”), but also a bounciness (“checkin out”), and also an airiness (“sorry bro”), yet also a dread (“trapped in a club”) to it all. Lauren Morgan’s lyrics and delivery manage to feel reserved yet also bold, like, frankly, a woman who has had enough. Sales LP is the manifesto of indie’s version of quiet storm, a kind of coloring book that writers like Faye Webster would later run away with and color in with their own experiences and musical inspirations.
Solange, A Seat at the Table
The politics and cultural relevance that go into media consumption can have long lasting effects on the habits you take into adulthood. I find that there is a healthy cynicism that comes the deeper down the rabbit hole you get on Twitter, Discord, forums, etc. In the households I grew up in and the circles of friends I kept in high school, most of my media consumption habits tended to stick to the familiar. These are the unconscious cogs in the brain that (used to) categorize Solange as the younger sister of Beyonce rather than a musical artist. With True, Solange stepped out of the shadow and it became clear that she struck a very different and still very resonant tone contrasted to the uber popular pop royalty of Beyonce. I would add though that thoughts like these that come to the mind with ease now did not come so easy back then. A Seat at the Table is something of a cultural reset.
A Seat at the Table is Solange’s third studio album, a fact that is generally lost on newer listeners, but it is for all intensive purposes, a debut of sorts. It is the arrival of a woman who in her youth was surrounded by music royalty — Timbaland, The Neptunes & Jermaine Dupri on Solo Star and Bama Boyz & Mark Ronson on Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams — in what felt like an attempt to shoehorn her into the same popstar mold that so naturally fit Beyonce. The work is good, but in a rather predictable way. True is the first step in independent artistic growth, trading Mark Ronson for 2010s stalwart Dev Hynes with assists from the likes of quiet industry giants Ariel Rechtshaid and Joe LaPorta, and A Seat at the Table is the final step.
I won’t speak much about the music because everyone’s heard it at this point — “Don’t Touch My Hair” is probably my first, at worst second, favorite Sampha feature and “Mad” is the best deep cut on this album — but I will say that albums like A Seat at the Table and, in the same fashion, Blood Orange’s Negro Swan, are perfect examples of what I talk about when I talk about music being for the artist. With albums like, say, Japanese Breakfast’s Psychopomp, there are emotions steeped in very personal writing (e.g. Michelle Zauner processing the trauma of her mother’s passing on “In Heaven”) that even as outside observers, people might see as pretty, beautiful, et al. Much of the criticism that both A Seat at the Table and Negro Swan got is their perceived lack of accessibility or how they are not relatable, to which I would say: who… cares? Yes, I don’t necessarily listen to either album all that much in terms of replayability and their pontifications on Blackness are quite literally not for me, but to disparage art “not being for me/you” is to imply that all art should be made for everyone, which is just horribly wrong and perhaps even unintentionally self-absorbed. There is a fine line in the empathy we can (and should) practice but as observers, the best thing we can do is to let artists perform and more importantly, let humans feel.
Rico Nasty, Sugar Trap 2
Sugar Trap 2 came at a crossroads of sorts for rap music during the 2010s. Migos’ coming out party Culture wouldn’t release for another few months but it was clear that we were departed from the stardom of the early part of the decade that brought us Flockaveli, Watch the Throne, Take Care, good kid, M.A.A.D city, etc. On her fourth mixtape in only two years and fifth overall, Rico Nasty cemented herself as not just a novelty (i.e. “she’s one of the best female rappers out right now”) but as one of music’s most unique voices, both literally and as a songwriter.
On Sugar Trap 2, Rico takes the kinetic energy of Atlanta trap music and makes it her own. On “Poppin,” the synths that barrage in and out are bold, brash, and colorful versus the more conventional sound exemplified by early Migos — think Young Rich N****s, Rich N**** Timeline, Streets on Lock, etc. Her rapping is, in ways, also conventional but made more memorable by a feminine touch that never strays into cliches (“I was wearing wigs / Think I’m moving on to braids now”). Rico at her best elevates trap music (“Key Lime OG”) and blurs the line between dreamy pop and hard east coast rap (“Spaceships”). While the mainstream bubble has accepted the easily digestible music of, say, Megan thee Stallion, City Girls, or Saweetie, Rico still has yet to get her fair shake and she may never get it, but in Sugar Trap 2 and Nasty exists one of the century’s greatest rappers.
Caroline Polachek, Pang
With SOPHIE’s tragic passing, music lost one of its best and most important innovators. From the deepest corners of Soundcloud to mid-decade Vince Staple albums, her wild, geometric takes on pop music are as fresh and exciting today as they were when they were littered throughout the decade. In Pang and Caroline Polachek exists one of the great bastions of pop music in the wake of SOPHIE’s work.
Pang is one of the great and potentially the great pop album of the 2010s. Years of minor acclaim with Aaron Pfenning under the Chairlift moniker molded Polachek’s songwriting into a very functional device. Not bad, just conventional and at times impersonal, in the same way that even the most notable songs of the early decade written by bands like Two Door Cinema Club or Phoenix were. On the album’s title track, the album’s second, Polachek sheds her skin, taking the bull by the horns and feeling her emotions in full, “There’s a look in your eyes when you’re hungry for me / It’s a beautiful knife cutting right where the fear should be.”
I’m self-aware to admit that a pitfall of Polachek’s writing is, I don’t know how else to say this, the musings of a grown adult bemoaning heartbreak. Alas, both things can be true in this case that perhaps great albums can come from weak cliches and also contain visceral, exciting songwriting (“Ocean of Tears”). Pang is exemplary in not only its songwriting, but also its album structuring; the album contains two top tier runs in “Hit Me Where It Hurts” to “Look At Me Now” and “Ocean of Tears” to “Go As a Dream.”
Mustard, Perfect Ten
DJ Mustard, or I guess now simply Mustard, does not generally get the recognition or plaudits that celebrities behind the board such as DJ Khaled or Metro Boomin (respectively, to be clear) but his sound has been a constant in rap since he exploded out of the West Coast mixtape scene early in the last decade. Perfect Ten is an close to an opus as Mustard could possibly get: a man whose work was often derided as being strip club music (as if that’s a bad thing) and was once the subject of memes containing pictures of a three key piano flexing his muscle and making hits like it was second nature to him (it is).
“Pure Water” is top tier bottle service music, the kind of music you hear at Vegas day clubs or in the club scene in The Social Network; Mustard and Migos are in the same club, just out of frame. “Baguettes in the Face” is NAV at his auto-tuned, disinterested best. Ultimately, Perfect Ten makes it on this long list of music because it contains “Ballin,” which is the greatest LA rap record since “Sweet Lady” and generally one of the greatest West Coast rap songs to ever exist.