codemonkeyx.org

Enjoying some southern rock!

Well it's been a while since I have bought an album of any kind.  But "Crazy", by Gnarls Barkley, has me hooked like a fiend, so I downloaded the album to preview it.  I've now listened to or at least sampled all of the tracks and have to say that I’m impressed.  The entire album is every bit as good as the "Crazy" single.  One song of particular note, if you like "Crazy", is "Just A Thought".  I won't go into the details, but lyrically it struck me in the same way that "Crazy" did.  There seems to be a lot of hype surrounding "Smiley Faces", but in my humble opinion "Just A Thought" has much more potential to reach "Crazy" high on the charts.

Another thing that I really found interesting was the cover of "Gone Daddy Gone" originally by Violent Femmes.  The song was changed very little aside from Cee-Lo singing the lyrics, and maybe a minor instrumental change.  All in all the album was great, but there are some oddities here and there.  Only 4 songs on the 14 track album break the 3 minute mark, and 2 of them don't even make the 2 minute mark, and I’m not talking about intro's or outro's.  Of course this doesn't make the songs bad, it only leaves you wanting more just a little sooner than expected.  Who would have ever expected a southern rapper and a dorky mashup DJ from New York to put together a soul album?  All I can say is get ready for a genre smashing experimental trip.

Since I already have the mp3s i'll probably never even bother to take the wrapper off of the cd that I've purchaced through amazon.com, but they deserve my money as they have created an amazing album…

For a better review check here, here, and here…

Have you ever seen those "Now" music compilation CDs?  Rossanna recently bought "Now 21".  I was actually surprised that I liked a good half to three quarters of the songs on the CD.  I especially liked "If Its Lovin’ That You Want" by Rihanna.  It a great song to appreciate that down ass girl in your life by.  One of the songs however just about made be get into a car accident.  I won't say anymore…listen, then reflect on life a little.

Yea, umm….Charles Feelgood was dropping some hot tracks.  You can't really see anything in the picture but some random guy in front of me dancing in front of a light, but Feelgood tore it up!

<edit>I'm not sure if it was a new track or a live remix, but he was spinning this remix of "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, and it had the whole place jumping!</edit>

Great video…check it out…

So I log in today to see what’s happening on MySpace. And I see a little ad for a E-40 myspace exclusive so I click to check it out. I sit patiently through the 28 second intro, and then “Yay Area” starts to play. Suddenly I hear “Rebirth of the Slick” by Digable Planets, and I’m thinking “Ok, thats hot, wonder where they are going with this?”. A very simple hard bass beat drops and my head is bobbing, i’m getting excited cause I just know the hotness is coming. “We be to rap what key be to lock” loops in the foreground (go ahead bob ya head it ok…you gotta). I patiently wait for it to suddenly stop and some furiously slick lyrics to take over.

Then like a unsuspecting wrestler getting cracked in the back of the fucking head with a chair I get crushed with the shittiest lyrical skills I’ve heard in my entire life. The loop never stops and stays in the foreground constantly clashing with E-40 lyrics (if they can be called that). But the atrocities don’t stop there, while a sample of some of the best hip hop lyrics plays, some of the worst lyrics ever are see-sawed out by E-40. I can’t even continue…i’ll just leave you with a semi-quote from another one of the songs. I believe it was in the beginning of “Tell Me When To Go” and it went something like this: “Jesus had dreds so shake um…i aint got none but i’m planning on growing some”.

The Bloodhound Gang had some great advice that E-40 should heed. “Hold ya head up high…and…blow ya brains out!”