Scenes

Some think that Young Thugs elastic, start-stop flow and roaming, stream-of-conscious lyrics make him future of rap, while others question hes merely a Lil Wayne clone given way too much hype. Make up your mind via this excellent overview from Beats Neil Martinez-Belkin, which features early hits and guest appearances.

Id strongly suggest reading Nat Thomsons brief but interesting oral history of Baltimore club music. It has some interesting tidbits on that citys great scene. As a note, this playlist does contain both tracks from Baltimore, as well as some of the music that inspired the scene, according to Thomson.

Barry Walters delivers this great overview of the 70s soul scene in Philadelphia. With its funk intonations and more polished arrangements, Philly Soul is sometimes overlooked by R&B neophytes, but, as Barry proves here, the scene produced some of the sweetest and most memorable music from that decade. Much of the credit belongs to Gamble and Huff and their Philadelphia International Records, but the scene was bursting with talent. Check out this great retrospective of one of our favorite scenes.

This playlist from Beatport imagines the perfect 10 tracks for a sunrise set at Berlins legendary Panorama bar. As you can imagine, these tracks are bright, anthematic excursions into deep house, nu-disco and funky house, and include Omar S, Pépé Bradock and Todd Terje.

As part of his excellent System Focus monthly column, Adam Harper looks at how global dance culture is using the tresillo rhythm, the fundamental triplet rhythm where two beats fit in the place of two. It becomes easy to spot once you look for it, and you can hear in much of Cuban and Latin music. Harper looks at how many underground producers have been using this in more non-traditional ways. He looks at its applications in grime, UK funky, experimental/collage, and reggaeton. The entire post is worth a read, and the playlist is really great, but the money quote:

A simple rhythm bounces back and forth over the once vast Atlantic ocean, ever faster. It begins in Sub-Saharan Africa, but Europeans brutally pull it up by the roots—slaves bring it with them on a long journey to the Caribbean. By the nineteenth century it has become the defining element in the Afro-Cuban dance habanera, which finds its way to New Orleans where it helps form ragtime, then to South America, where it contributes to tango, and to Europe, where it becomes the most famous section of one of the eras most popular operas, Carmen. It also spreads across the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa and back again, and its descendents meet and collaborate, now using recordings and drum machines. Soon it doesnt even need to touch the water. Ricocheting off satellites and barreling down cables, it permeates the information sphere, with space and place just an interesting footnote on a Soundcloud profile.

Critic Andy Beta provides an overview of Italo Disco (which he calls, "the most amazingly uncool genre ever created") in this Pitchfork feature. To be a bit snobby, including Paul Lekakis as Italo Disco is a bit questionable, but Andy is trying to take a wide swipe. Regardless, the genre is limitlessly influential and helped spawn everything from Chicago House to DFA-era New York electro. This playlist demonstrates why with a collection of the kitschy, endlessly addictive cuts. The Gary Cat Park song is a gem, among many others.

You could pretty easily make the case that Chicago is the musical center of the United States. Blues, juke and house all originated (at least in part) from the city. Two-Step (or just Steppin) never achieved the national name recognition as house music, but it was a pretty potent strain of R&B that peaked in the middle half of the last decade. Like a lot of music to emerge in the past thirty years, it was a dance first. The music was bright, romantic and highly syncopated. Its great, summery R&B music. It was popularized nationally by R. Kelly in his "Step in the Name of Love" single, but that was really just the tip of the iceberg, as this excellent playlist demonstrates. Rizoh over at Beats did a great job capturing some of the highlights from the scene. Listening now, it definitely feels of a certain time and place, and it seems very out-of-step with the more dour and minimal sounds the genre would adopt in subsequent years, which makes two step even more powerful.

Any list that limits the most important rap capital of the past decade to just 50 songs is bound to be an argument starter. But Maurice Garland is well-equipped for such a task, having covered the scene since the early 2000s as a writer, tastemaker and current radio talk host (often with political firebrand Killer Mike). While theres one too many Kilo Ali songs, and a few curious choices (Gucci Manes "Pillz" over "Freaky Gurl" and "Lemonade"?), this is a solid reflection of the vaunted rap history of the ATL. -- Mosi ReevesNote: Not all of these songs are on Spotify, hence the playlist having less than 50 tracks.

Source: Vulture, Piotr OrlovPiotr, a former colleague from Rhapsody, recently surveyed various purveyors of New York cool (Tim Sweeney, Star Eyes, Rich Medina, etc) for the quintessential list of New York party starters. Note that these arent songs by New Yorkers, per se, but rather tracks that the selected tastemakers felt were the key bangers. The results arent terribly surprising -- lots of DFA, Jay-Z, and Dip Set -- but its a really fun list with a lot of very enjoyable music. The Escort track "Cocaine Blues" is a satisfying mix of electro pop and nu-disco, with appropriately vaguely ironic lyrics about everyones favorite boogie powder, and the samba/afrobeat hybrid "Revolution Poem" is taken from a cool afro-beat compilation by Rich Medina and Bobbito that I wasnt familiar with. This article originally came out in June, but has gotten a second life thanks in part due to The Rub kicking off a new night at Williamsburg club Verboten with a mix inspired by Piotrs list. You can listen to the mix here.

Growing up in the South during the 90s, Factory Records was always the music of older cousins and cooler friends. Dont get me wrong, I have had hard musical crushes on acts like Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Joy Division, and New Order, but it never seemed entirely mine either. It was the soundtrack for lives that I made guest appearances in, humming in the background as a bit of anglophile ennui.This playlist is from Spotify user Coco Baker. (S)he isnt a professional curator (as far as I know), and the playlist does have some factual slights (that Cabaret Voltaire track was released on Rough Trade and not Factory Records), but its still a pretty good overview of the scene. Too often, user generated playlist have no sense of rhythm. People will line up multiple tracks by the same artists, and there will be giant stylistic leaps from track to track, but this does seem to have a perspective and flow, so well excuse the factual lapses.