Future & Zaytoven: Just Like Bruddas
February 11, 2018

Future & Zaytoven: Just Like Bruddas

Producer Xavier “Zaytoven” Dotson has been instrumental in shaping the sound of Atlanta trap music as an early ally of Gucci Mane and Migos. But perhaps his most revered work is Future’s 2015 mixtape Beast Mode. At the time, Future’s friend DJ Esco was locked up abroad with the hard drive containing all of the rapper’s unreleased music. So Future entered the studio with Zaytoven, and in three days recorded what became Beast Mode, one of a trio of acclaimed mixtapes the MC released in the space of a few months. And in 2018, it’s rumored that Future and Zaytoven will reunite for the long-promised sequel, Beast Mode 2.Future and Zaytoven first crossed paths on Free Bricks, the 2011 collaborative mixtape by Gucci Mane and Future. And the chemistry between Future’s throaty melodies and Zay’s lush piano and flute loops was cemented on 2012’s Astronaut Status, one of the mixtapes that built Future’s buzz before he began releasing major-label albums. Since then, Zaytoven has been a frequent presence on Future records, contributing a warmly melodic and relaxed sound that contrasts with the more aggressive textures of producers like Metro Boomin on chart-topping albums like 2015’s DS2 and 2017’s FUTURE.Future and Zaytoven’s biggest hits together include the tawdry Beast Mode highlight “Real Sisters,” the celebratory Drake collaboration “Used To This,” and “Too Much Sauce,” the Lil Uzi Vert-featuring single from DJ Esco’s 2016 mixtape Project E.T. The familiar sound of Future over a Zaytoven beat even opened “3500,” the epic lead single from Travis Scott’s debut album, Rodeo. But the duo’s dozens of collaborations include mixtape favorites of any Future aficionado, including “Just Like Bruddas,” “Space Cadets,” and the ominous, paranoid masterpiece “Feds Did A Sweep.”

Beastie Boys Check Your Head: Unpacked
April 21, 2017

Beastie Boys Check Your Head: Unpacked

Unpacked is a playlist analysis of new and classic albums where we highlight key tracks alongside their influences, collaborators, and sample sources to encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of the record. After loading up 1989’s cult classic Paul’s Boutique with a dizzying array of samples, the Beastie Boys refocused on live instrumentation in the more litigious ‘90s, drafting keyboardist Money Mark as one of the group’s many honorary “fourth” Beastie Boys. But while Check Your Head, which turns 25 this week, contains fewer samples than Paul’s Boutique, it still features dozens of them, drawing on the crates full of punk, classic rock, funk, and comedy records that informed the bratty white rappers’ revolutionary fusion of styles. Check Your Head’s opening track “Jimmy James” sets the densely referential tone: It features no fewer than three Jimi Hendrix Experience samples from three different albums. (The title itself is a nod to Hendrix’s early stage name.) But first, you hear “this next one is the first song on our new album,” as spoken by Robin Zander on Cheap Trick’s 1978 live album At Budokan in his introduction to the future classic “Surrender.” And then, the beat that kicks in is taken primarily from The Turtles’ novelty track “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea.” More than perhaps any album in history, Check Your Head blurs the line between samples and original recordings. Some of the blasts of distorted guitar are played live by Ad-Rock, while others are taken from Thin Lizzy and Bad Brains. On “Finger Lickin’ Good,” MCA and Mike D begin a sentence in 1992 that is finished by Bob Dylan in 1965. One of the most straightforward punk songs on the album, “Time For Livin’,” is actually a revved up Sly & The Family Stone cover. And while “The Biz Vs. The Nuge” features Biz Markie riffing in the Beasties’ studio over a Ted Nugent sample, “So What’cha Want” samples Biz vocals from both his 1988 Big Daddy Kane collaboration “Just Rhymin’ With Biz” and the Check Your Head outtake “Drunken Praying Mantis Style.”

Styles Upon Styles: Harry’s Best One Direction Songs
May 2, 2017

Styles Upon Styles: Harry’s Best One Direction Songs

As Harry Styles embarks on a solo career with an eagerly anticipated self-titled debut out May 12, we’ll see a new side of One Direction’s most famous member. As is usually the case when a boy-band member goes solo, his new music is more personal and idiosyncratic than the pop anthems the group cranked out over five albums in five years. But where Zayn left One Direction altogether and took a sharp left turn toward R&B, Harry’s solo work is more of an organic continuation of the One Direction sound, with influences from classic rock, power pop, and folk music.One Direction thrive on big choruses that bring everyone’s voice together in unison, while giving each member a turn at singing verses, but it’s undeniable that Styles is the most prominent voice in the mix. As far back as the band’s peppy debut hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” his deep, relaxed voice has always stood out among the other members’ more boyish vocals. As they ventured into bombastic arena rock on tracks like “Clouds” and “Diana,” his voice took on a gentle soaring quality.Over the course of One Direction’s run, the members of the band gradually took on a more active role in songwriting, with Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson taking the lead. But Harry Styles notched over a dozen songwriting credits in the group’s catalog, the best of which are included in the second half of this playlist. Styles occasionally put a personal stamp on their material—most famously with his thinly veiled lyrics aimed at Taylor Swift on “Perfect”—but he was also involved in some of the band’s most buoyant melodies, including the Tears For Fears homage “Stockholm Syndrome.”Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Featuring Hayley Williams
May 12, 2017

Featuring Hayley Williams

Although Paramore’s new album, After Laughter, marks the return of founding drummer Zac Farro, frontwoman Hayley Williams remains the only permanent member of the Tennessee pop-punk group since the band began, five albums ago. But even as Paramore have diversified their sound, Williams’ side work as a guest vocalist has cast an even wider net, as she’s played with acts who are heavier or more poppy than anything in Paramore’s catalog.Williams has experienced some of her greatest chart success as a hook singer, crooning the gentle melodies on Atlanta rapper B.o.B’s blockbuster single “Airplanes” and German producer Zedd’s EDM crossover hit “Stay The Night.” Her affection for indie and electronic music came out in a collaboration with Scottish synth-pop band CHVRCHES, and she’s embraced family-friendly pop stardom with high-profile collaborations, as on the cover of “Rainbow Connection” with Weezer for a Muppets tribute album.But most of Hayley Williams’ guest work has been with the kinds of punk and emo bands that Paramore came up with in their Warped Tour days. She’s added a much needed feminine perspective to songs by Say Anything and has dueted on multiple occasions with husband Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory. But most impressively, Williams has been able to hang with metalcore bands like The Chariot and Set Your Goals on blistering uptempo collaborations, and Zac Farro’s recent return to Paramore was foreshadowed by her appearance on “As U Wave” by Farro’s long running solo project HalfNoise.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Stargate: Norway’s Pop Wizards
June 2, 2017

Stargate: Norway’s Pop Wizards

Scandinavian pop sensibilities have sporadically found a home on the American charts since the days of ABBA. Like Sweden’s Max Martin, the Norwegian duo Stargate have joined the transatlantic crossover in the 21st century. Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen formed Stargate in the late ‘90s, producing a string of hits for British groups like S Club 7 and Atomic Kitten that charted almost everywhere in the English-speaking world except America.Stargate finally broke into the U.S. by helping another behind-the-scenes player step into the spotlight—the young R&B singer Ne-Yo, who had also written hits for other artists. Their first collaboration, 2006’s “So Sick,” brought together Stargate’s slick European dance-pop sonics with Ne-Yo’s soulful midtempo songwriting to great effect. They came together many times over the next few years, with Ne-Yo penning Stargate-produced hits like Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” and Rihanna’s “Take A Bow,” broadening that signature sound with lush instrumentation and witty lyrics.Stargate soon began to use their foothold in R&B to nudge American radio toward four-on-the-floor dance beats with tracks like Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop The Music” and Ne-Yo’s “Closer” years before uptempo EDM grooves began to saturate U.S. airwaves. In Rihanna, they’ve perhaps found their greatest muse, producing six of her 14 chart-topping singles and putting their own unique spin on Caribbean sounds in “What’s My Name?” and “Rude Boy.”In recent years, Hermansen and Eriksen have shown their versatility, hopping from rock (Coldplay) to hip-hop (Wiz Khalifa) to pure pop (Katy Perry). They even scored a viral hit in 2013, providing the killer dance track that made Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis’ “The Fox” a YouTube phenomenon. But it hasn’t been until this year that Stargate put their considerable music-industry clout behind a record of their own, releasing the single “Waterfall,” featuring P!nk and Sia.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

The Richard Shipley Memorial Playlist
June 13, 2017

The Richard Shipley Memorial Playlist

My father passed away on May 4, 2017, in Milwaukee, where he’d been living with my older brother Zac. I got out of work late that night, and after I returned my brother’s call and heard the news, I felt a little numb, too far physically removed from the personal significance of what had just happened 800 miles away. Driving home, I put on Little Feat’s “Easy to Slip,” a song I’d heard in Dad’s car a thousand times, and it helped me feel something that night when it was all almost too slippery and abstract to grasp.Three weeks later, Zac and his family flew out to Baltimore, with our father in an urn, to hold a memorial in his hometown. Richard David Shipley was born in Baltimore and lived most of his life there, selling his house of 25 years a month before his death. He wasn’t a religious man, so we celebrated his life in a secular fashion that seemed fitting, enjoying the earthly pleasures of music, food, and good company. We took over the upstairs of his favorite Fells Point bar, Kisling’s, for a few hours, and enjoyed some beer and the best bar food in Baltimore while a playlist I assembled of his favorite music blared in the background. “I can’t believe I’m listening to Michael McDonald,” my brother told me after I sent him a link to the playlist.Dad, like many other baby boomers, loved rock’n’roll ever since he saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as a teenager, and he sang in a band in college. One night when his group was performing in Baltimore County, Dad met a musician who was in town recording an album. Lowell George invited my dad to come by the studio, where he saw the eccentric California band Little Feat run through songs for their fourth album, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, a chance meeting with one of the great cult bands of the ‘70s.I grew up with my mom and saw Dad on weekends, when we’d spend hours in the backseat of his car listening to him sing along with the radio and tapes of The Eagles and Tori Amos. He loved Tears For Fears’ ‘80s records, but it was their last U.S. hit, 1993’s “Break It Down,” that uniquely stuck with both him and me as a masterpiece. As a teenager, I got my first turntable and started to pore through the boxes of vinyl that Dad hadn’t touched since he got a CD player—all his Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac records. (I always thought it was unusual that he seemed to prefer Tusk to Rumours.)Dad and I continued to bond over music in his later years, and we’d go together to see Little Feat, Michael McDonald, and Jackson Browne. (He met my mother at a Jackson Browne concert in 1978.) But he remained open-minded to all sorts of music in ways that sometimes surprised me. When I was 17, I needed a ride to go see Boredoms and Scarnella at the 9:30 Club, and in retrospect it’s pretty remarkable that a 50-year-old dad actually really enjoyed Vision Creation Newsun-era Boredoms. I invited the Baltimore post-rock duo The Water to perform at my 30th birthday party, and Dad became a fan, buying their album and returning to see them live again.So much of the music here is “dad rock” in every sense of the word, but it’s never felt like a pejorative to me. I never loved everything Dad loved, and certainly I didn’t agree with him that Sting was as good solo as with The Police. But I learned how to love music partly through him, and I’ll never hear any of these songs, or a hundred other songs, without thinking of him.

How Michael McDonald Got Cool
July 6, 2017

How Michael McDonald Got Cool

September 2017 will see the release of Michael McDonald’s Wide Open, his first solo album of original material since 2000’s Blue Obsession. Following that record, McDonald reoriented his solo career around a series of albums in which he recorded tasteful tributes to Motown Records, cementing his position as one of the most respected “blue-eyed soul” singers of all time. But that career path, however lucrative it may have been, only served to make a fairly uncool pop star of the ’70s and ‘80s seem even less cool.McDonald’s status as a pop-culture punchline is perhaps best epitomized by the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, wherein an electronics-store employee played by Paul Rudd squirms with annoyance as a Michael McDonald live DVD plays on a loop at work. In 2007, I saw McDonald in concert and filed a review for my local paper, and the next day my editor sidled up to me with a smirk and said, “So...Michael McDonald, huh?”But in 2017, Michael McDonald is about as cool as he’s ever been. The “yacht rock” sound with which he’s associated (thanks to his work with the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and Christopher Cross) has become a renewable source of inspiration for dance and hip-hop producers. And over the past decade, McDonald has collaborated with a number of hip younger artists that appreciate the distinctively smoky grain of his voice, including Brooklyn indie bands Holy Ghost! and Grizzly Bear. L.A. future-funk bassist Thundercat even reunited McDonald with longtime collaborator Kenny Loggins on his acclaimed 2017 single “Show You The Way.”This newfound appreciation of McDonald didn’t happen overnight, and in fact there’s no one particular tipping point that turned him from camp to cool in the way that The Sopranos helped rehabilitate Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” But the seeds were laid by hip-hop, particularly when McDonald’s 1982 solo hit “I Keep Forgettin’” became the bedrock of Warren G. and Nate Dogg’s G-funk smash “Regulate.” De La Soul sampled Steely Dan’s “Peg” and Meek Mill sampled the Doobies’ “Minute By Minute” on hit singles, and dance producers like Grant Nelson have remixed tracks like “Yah Mo B There,” McDonald’s 1983 duet with James Ingram. But McDonald himself has also demonstrated himself capable of surprising displays of good taste, like his killer cover of Neil Young’s “Down By The River.” And the sheer range of artists he collaborated with in his heyday, from Van Halen to Patti LaBelle, has placed him at the intersection of rock and soul, and continues to inspire a wide swathe of music both popular and underground.

In Defense of Takeoff
August 4, 2017

In Defense of Takeoff

Every group has its breakout star, and for Atlanta rap trio Migos, Quavo has long been their Beyoncé. But as they rose to new commercial heights in 2017 with the chart-topping single “Bad and Boujee,” the spotlight shifted to another member, Offset. And that left Takeoff—who doesn’t appear on “Bad and Boujee” or the group’s hit Calvin Harris collaboration, “Slide”—looking like the odd man out. Takeoff even had to defend himself to an interviewer at the BET Awards, motioning to his impressive jewelry and asking, “Does it look like I was left off ‘Bad and Boujee’?”But Takeoff (a.k.a. Kirshnik Khari Ball) is nobody’s weakest link. In fact, he’s arguably the best MC in Migos, with a flair for vivid word choices and a distinctively raspy voice that contrasts with his uncle Quavo’s buoyantly melodic delivery. And he’s held down the chorus and first verse on some of the group’s hits, including the recent “T-Shirt” and 2014’s “Fight Night,” which was the highest charting Migos single before “Bad and Boujee.”Takeoff’s hoarse bark often recalls Rick Ross on the group’s most ominous trap anthems like “WOA” and “Cross the Country.” But the way he bites down on consonants with a percussive flow reminds me of Memphis legend MJG, another skilled rapper who was sometimes overshadowed by his partner 8Ball. And he’s displayed a facility for more light-hearted tracks like “Playa Playa,” and even made up for his absence from “Slide” with an appearance on Calvin Harris’ equally smooth “Holiday.” Takeoff released his first official solo track “Intruder” in 2017, and it’s an encouraging glimpse at how capable he is at holding down a song without the help of Quavo and Offset.

Jeezy’s 40 Greatest Tracks
September 28, 2017

Jeezy’s 40 Greatest Tracks

Jay Jenkins burst into national consciousness in 2005 as Young Jeezy, but a few years later the Atlanta rapper shortened his official handle to simply Jeezy. And he’s certainly not “young” anymore, as he turns 40 on September 28. For over a decade, Jeezy has stood with his friend T.I. and his collaborator-turned-foe Gucci Mane as one of the titans of trap music, the street-hustler variation on southern rap that has become one of modern Atlanta’s biggest cultural exports.With a hoarse but gregarious voice, Jeezy was at first more known for his ad libs than his rhymes, cackling “ha haaaa” and “yeahhhh” on his multiplatinum Def Jam debut Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, and his group Boyz N Da Hood’s self-titled album, both in 2005. But there was also an unflinching darkness to his music that he retained even in crossover hits like the Akon collaboration “Soul Survivor.” And an unlikely political bent emerged in his music with the 2008 album The Recession, which contained hip-hop’s biggest unofficial Barack Obama anthem, “My President.”Jeezy The Snowman’s career has cooled off in the years since his rapid ascent to stardom, but he’s remained one of Atlanta trap’s most consistent hitmakers. He was early to adapt to new sounds like DJ Mustard’s west coast groove on “R.I.P.” and traded introspective bars with JAY Z on “Seen It All.” More recently, in 2016 he returned to the top of the charts with Trap Or Die 3 (a sequel to his 2005 breakthrough mixtape), which featured “All There,” a posthumous hit for the late Bankroll Fresh. And it’s hard to imagine Jeezy retiring anytime soon even as he marks another decade of life.

Six-String Soul: Miguel’s Guitar Music
November 27, 2017

Six-String Soul: Miguel’s Guitar Music

Los Angeles native Miguel Jontel Pimental has been one of the most consistently excellent R&B artists of the 2010s, in part because he conjures the adventurous spirit and rock’n’roll edge of his hero, Prince. Now, Miguel (who started using the guitar as his primary songwriting tool while working on his 2012 sophomore effort, Kaleidoscope Dream) may not be a virtuoso soloist like Prince. But the driving riffs and soulful licks that populate Miguel’s later work have continued to reinforce the link between R&B and rock that few of his contemporaries explore.While “Sky Walker,” the lead single to his fourth album, War & Leisure, returns him to a clubby hip-hop sound alongside Travis Scott, Miguel embraced aggressive guitar riffs with another recent single, “Shockandawe.” And guitars have figured prominently in much of his recent work throughout 2017, including the DJ Premier collaboration “2 LOVIN U” and his contribution to the soundtrack for the animated film Coco.With his voracious appetite for different sounds, Miguel has collaborated in the studio with some very famous guitarists, appearing on Santana’s 2014 release, Corazón, and featured guitar work from Lenny Kravitz and Raphael Saadiq on his own 2015 album, Wildheart. And that album’s single “Waves” was remixed and re-recorded by several artists, including country singer Kacey Musgraves and indie kingpins Tame Impala.Session players like Paul Pesco have contributed brighter guitar sounds to songs like “Do You…” and Miguel’s longtime sideman Dru DeCaro has added intricate licks to album tracks as well as live performances of his hits “Adorn” and “Sure Thing.” Miguel’s taste in guitar tones tends towards the lo-fi, from the amp buzz of his Mariah Carey collaboration “#Beautiful” to the low muddy tone of “Coffee.” And it’s that idiosyncratic embrace of the instrument, and the many sounds it’s capable of, that have made Miguel an unlikely major figure in the future of both R&B and guitar music.

'90S THROWBACKS
Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.

The Year in ’90s Metal

It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.

Out of the Stacks: ’90s College Radio Staples Still At It

Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.