vain, selfish & lazy.

Friday, March 09, 2001

TIMBALAND & MAGOO FT. FATMAN SCOOP - "DROP"
overheard somewhere...

> i think the reason n-- likes timbaland more is because he doesn't
> dance. timbaland makes music that you think about...

i have to agree with the speaker. compared to contemporaries like the neptunes and swizz beats, timbaland doesn't get played in the clubs. he makes music that pop music theorists like myself get hard-ons over: "is that an oud?" "i believe i can hear a 303!" in his oeuvre, there is no "i just wanna love u" or "party up." his is music that is largely to be considered, to be dissected and deconstructed. so, as if to dispute all of this, timbaland's new single "drop" is a dance floor burner: "da bomb," if you will.

the next paragraph will make gratuitous use of the word "urban." it's only right, then, that i explain what i mean when i say that. urban, in italicized form, refers to radio stations like hot 97 -- where hip-hop lives, where even the r&b is thugged-out. playlist includes: dmx, mary j. blige, noreaga, jagged edge, etc. urban, san italics, is used to indicate stations that play mostly r&b and inoffensive rap, e.g. kiss-fm and wbls. they'll play mary j. blige, but they'll also put on the new luther vandross or anita baker and when they play rap, it's most likely "ms. jackson" by outkast. that said...

timbaland has a singular conundrum: when he produces other artists -- jay-z, aaliyah, ginuwine -- he is an urban artist, he will get massive play on those stations. when timbaland does his own thing, he is NOT an urban artist; he is also not an urban artist as he's a little too outre, too left-of-center, cf. outkast: "ms. jackson" gets multi-format play, whereas "bombs over baghdad," to be kind, didn't. which leaves tim on the outs, essentially, because there's no format for an edgy brother like himself and, as a result, his solo albums never really sell well even though he is now a "name" artist.

with his upcoming record, indecent proposal, he appears to want to change that, as first single drop is urban, incredibly so, with his most successful attempt to date at club-bangin'. he's even recruited hot 97 jock/nyc gad-about fatman scoop to belt out the crude and effective chorus chant: "if you got the fattest ass on the block, now drop, let a nigga see the coochie pop, now drop, do the snake, do the freak, do the wop, now drop, yo, don't stop, don't stop."

and while, yeah, it should do well in clubs, it's also got enough to tide over those fans who don't get out much anymore. the strongest part of the song is the horn part that kicks off the song and reappears prior to the choruses, a vaguely latin-tinged arrangement, subtly hidden in which is an off-kilter synth, something so undetectable that it strikes the listener as a nod to timbaland's headphone fans. it goes without saying that the drum programming is great, but let's say it anyway: the kick drum is as hard as it's 'sposed to be but the insistent hi-hat makes it for me and, in one of those classic tim touches, percussion that sounds like, and probably is, someone clucking their tongue is added in the second verse.

after about four minutes, in another timbaland patented move, the song changes abruptly into a bass-heavy groove, homage to the time's "get it up." the time, you may recall, were a prince side project, a group he used to get himself into the clubs and onto r&b radio when he himself was engaging in abstruse projects like around the world in the day and making urban radio programmers nationwide scratch their heads. fitting then that timbaland,an admitted prince fan, who took the rhythmic invention of "the ballad of dorothy parker" and ran with it, that he ends his urban radio offering with a tip of the hat to both the time and to prince.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Thursday, March 08, 2001

dumb sh!t:
- isn't it about time someone made a sequel to seminal 80s martial-arts-meets-gymnastics film, gymkata?
- did you ever think you'd live to see a film in which steven seagal and dmx share top billing?
- today, at the mall, i attempted to have lunch at wings to go. an unforseen hitch in the plan: they had no wings. "what do you mean you ain't got no wings?" that's like the time when we went to boston chicken -- as it was known then -- and they didn't have no chicken.
- i am unhealthily addicted to wendy's frosty. what is it? is it a milkshake? is it ice cream? both? neither? after much deliberation, i've decided that it is: good.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss

Monday, March 05, 2001

again: and once you get rid of marilyn manson and then ban violence in film and in television series and finally tighten the gun laws as much as possible, there will still be parents with a legal right to own guns. and there will be children, children who laugh a lot, who no one would expect anything from, who'd joke about that sort of thing with friends but, nah, he couldn't mean it, right? and there will be broken relationships between parent and child, lack of communication, interest, love. and there will always be the ghost of columbine, with its spectral call to those who feel alienated, who have demons, who live empty lives.

and there will be the media.
-fred solinger | steal this link! | discuss