Let's talk about the new Streets album A GRAND DON'T COME FOR FREE.

http://www.jasperfforde.com/phorum/read.php?f=4&i=37974&t=37974

this is what i'm still up in the air about. is there a difference between grooveless beats that only reinforce a story and folk guitar strumming? without any "danceable sounding" beats, this album feels a lot more "singer/songwriter" to me than the debut, where he seemed in between poet and emcee. here it's a lot more of the former and i can't tell whether that compels me more or less.

Most obviously, the entire construction of "Empty Cans" musically is designed to best facilitate and frame the split-ending (you could go into a lot of detail on this: the use of the same beat isn't just a fancy trick but a very deliberate statement - to come on all Pink-like, I suspect Mike is using that pounding beat as a metaphor for the relentless struggle inherent to life, while all the differing arrangement flourishes are a product of yer point of view; the contrast b/w the two versions highlights the huge difference in quality-of-life that Skinner's positive outlook can effect, despite working from the same base conditions).

Yes, the album employs a strategy of constructing the groove to service the narrative that is markedly distinct from most hip hop (cf. the versatile ubiquity of "In The Club"), but if anything this approach necessitates thinking *more* about the groove, not less.

(to the Batcave!!)

Listening to the album all the way through now -- unsurprisingly I'm not as interested in narrative as I am in sound. The hollowness is both appealing and a bit stifling -- this is hardly an original comparison, but sometimes it makes me think of early Specials songs squashed completely flat.

in any case, i got excited because it's cool to suddenly like a record a lot more, not because it was an earthshaking revelation. maybe this is why cautiously detached sarcasm rules the day on ILM -_-

(alternatively, i need to get some sleep.) (or write an undie-hop song.)

An interesting line of investigation might be: what precedents *are* there for this sort of thing? I sort of wonder if there's a general trend towards this at the moment because something like "Slow Jamz" (and indeed a lot of the sped-up soul stuff) fits this mould quite well in the sense of the groove and subject matter playing off against eachother. But I wonder - and something like Missy's "Back in the Day" is relevant here too - is at a tendency that has largely been confined to music which expressly talks about other music, hence making sample-based intertextuality somewhat more openly purposeful.?

And is it a practice that is (for reasons of practicality if nothing else) largely confined to producers who also rap/sing and vice versa?

not to throw a negative connotation on that; at the very least the blueprint tells us that a successful album can be created by running down hot producers, handing over cash and rocking the results.

but this is at work in the rock realm too- see the tradition of the band jamming out a tune before the vocalist shows up, having worked out the entire sound. concept albums or even songs- where what's happening musically relates to and comments on directly what's happening in the lyrics- are extremely difficult to construct. and usually sacrifice pure musical thrill along the way.

Ha ha yes I was just thinking that the best example of a beat working in the same way in hip hop that I could think of was "Hovi Baby", which performs a similar feat of rejecting the dictates of an ordinary groove entirely. Perhaps beats have to be "useless" in order to qualify for this sort of narratological significace?

Yeah you're right Tim - I don't really hear the alleged "stiltedness" of Skinner's vocals on this because it just seems like he's talking in the manner he would if he were actually in the situation he presents himself as being in; it's just every so often he'll rhyme a word. A better angle than the "poetry" line that critics trot out might be single-actor monologue performances.

Why do you emphasize "literally" so much? How else can it be taken?

On one level I bitterly resent the construction of the album because it's gotten to a zone of dangerous familiarity in less than a fortnight when The Avalanches took me almost six months!

This seems as good a time as any to note that our own Tico Tico has an excellent feature length piece on the album that's up at the Seattle Weekly.