Oddisee: Alwasta EP
“These are good days for bad people,” begins rapper-producer Amir Mohamed, who grew up in the D.C. metro, spending his summers in his Sudanese-born dad’s homeland, before moving to Brooklyn with all the other single-origin coffee fans. He got more attention last year for a solid-ish instrumental album than for this EP from last spring on which he was motivated pretty directly by Trump to lift his game. The opening track continues with a history of pre-modern Britain, in which the Anglo-Saxon melting pot triumphs until a Randy Newman punchline. “Lifting Shadows” starts out describing how fraught dealing international travel was for him long before the latest executive order, before making both the emotive and the economic case for refugees better than any 2016 Presidential candidate. On his new album, The Iceberg, he claims “I’m from black America, this is just another year.” He’s half-right.
Grade: A (“Lifting Shadows”, “Asked About You”, “No Reservations”)
Swet Shop Boys: Cashmere
One of these years Heems will find an equal to spar with, and it’s at least plausible that Riz MC might grow into the role like he grew into saving the galaxy in Rogue One. In the meantime, enjoy Redinho’s beats as a call to prayer and protest, Riz recapping his mean tweets and counting Zayn’s virgins, and Heems lecturing on timely subject matter, like other people’s diarrhea and how he hopes the toilet isn’t dirty when he has to shit. But with him, there are always twists — the woman whose sampled “he’s so charming” ends the international players’ anthem “Aaja” was murdered by her brother in an honor killing.
Grade: A MINUS (“T5”, “Aaja”, “Half Man Half Mowgli”)
Ryan Maffei: Cold Civil War 7"
The anger of Bush II protest songs doesn’t feel right, inasmuch as the 2000 electorate could at least argue they didn’t know what they were getting into. The standouts at capturing the new bewilderment: Mac from Superchunk’s “Happy New Year (Prince Can’t Die Again),” and these seven inches of Soundcloud by my Facebook friend and yours, whose combined play counts I’ll push into three digits myself if I have to. Setting aside a respectable effort to cover a song by a singer a hundred times better leaves two songs: “Cold Civil War” achieves community by having one man overdub a bedroom of instruments over himself, reminding us that whatever the fuck we did, we’re in this together now. “Don’t go a killing spree” is just good bipartisan advice.
Grade: B PLUS (“Cold Civil War”, “Killing Spree”)
YG: Still Brazy
It’s unsurprising this Dre funk descendant is conservative both socially — he and his deplorable buddies all but call for chastity belts on “She Wish She Was” — and economically — he takes house-in-the-hills as sine qua non even more literally than most Southern Californians. In a less racially partisan era he would’ve endorsed Nixon like James Brown. But this isn’t 1972, so I’ll repeatedly listen to him calling out murderous cops and chanting fuck Donald Trump — and, most usefully, Nipsey Hussle reminding ex-cons that they can vote in most states. Next, Nipsey should tell YG about the 19th Amendment.
Grade: B PLUS (“FDT”, “Police Get Away with Murder”, “Why You Always Hatin’?”)
M.I.A.: AIM
It took me months to appreciate her least visionary album — the best song is the one that’s reminds you how she could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool boy. But it’s hardly a negative that she what’s-up-with-thats rather than proposing solutions, because who the fuck has solutions you believe right now? Anyway, hers are mostly likely to be of the order of “put Zayn on the chorus,” which I guess beats a Lena Dunham verse. Even more than MAYA and Matangi, this is a collection of sounds and themes that reinforce each other, like Skrillex and/or Blaqstarr turning an Arabic children’s song into an auguring of the worldtown future whose construction is currently on pause. As for her vision, millions of urbanites in New York and London and Toronto live in neighborhoods straight outta Arular. They’re not a majority. But they’ll keep it alive.
Grade: B PLUS (“Visa”, “Go Off”, “Freedun”)
