![]() “In a little while, I’ll be gone,” sings guitarist Clay Frankel through his smirk, beaming at his own mortality in a manner distinctly YOLO. Down in Heaven is solid as a whole, but this tune sticks out for its particularly youthful sense of defiance. We just have to walk through that door, together.” If there’s one message fit to accompany ass shaking into 2017, that might be it.Īt the risk of typecasting myself with another punk-garage number, I’m going to have to include Twin Peaks’ snotty, Zombies-referencing hit of the summer, “Butterfly”. “This isn’t the time to be tumbling on the floor. “We don’t have to fight no more,” she sings. George plays the woman in the relationship, pleading for togetherness while Goldlink raps some jokey shit about leaving stains on her mother’s blouse, and the juxtaposition holds through Kaytra’s woozy, swooning beat. Big but simple statements of love and communion work well on a dance floor (See: “What Is Love?” or the lesser-known “Communion” from TV on the Radio’s Maximum Balloon), which means that every time Aluna George hits the word “together,” Kaytra’s crowds turn up. Man, I really don’t care for Aluna George, but Kaytranada’s track is such a perfect match for her vocals that this song hits and keeps hitting, and you can’t hate on it. ![]() ![]() It’s funky, nasty, near-pornographic-sounding bounce comes courtesy of Talib Kweli’s go-to producer from his Black Star years, Hi-Tek. Is this the groover of 2016? Andreson.Paak had one hell of a year, between dropping that Stones Throw mixtape with Knxwledge and guesting on Kaytranada’s straight fire debut, but this song, taken from his Malibu LP, showcases his dexterity at the half-rap, half-singing he’s currently owning. Anyone who tells you that protest music is pointless can suck it. That he spent his 71st birthday camping out with protestors, or that he penned a lengthy screed to Obama imploring him to take action to stop the DAPL, all feels significant now in the wake of a victory. The record opens with its titular track as Neil mournfully coos, “Under the rainbow teepee sky, no ones looking down on you or I.” It soon becomes an optimistic invocation, too, as Neil declares he’ll soon walk down the peace trail, to his old town. That’s why he recorded Peace Trail in a flash this year, with songs like “Indian Givers” and “John Oaks” bringing context to the struggle that the Standing Rock Sioux and fellow Water Protectors had to fight before their recent victory over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Post-election, many of his prior rants that casual fans dismissed as old fogie talk prove relevant, and Neil knows it. Uncle Neil does whatever the fuck he wants, and last year that manifested as a giant middle finger to GMO agri-business villains Monsanto via The Monsanto Years. We should all be so forthcoming and honest. This is his love-filled ode to his kid, and a mirror for his fears. This is Glover’s open letter to his newborn son, Ta-Nahesi Coates style. “Babies Makin’ Babies,” “Just Like a Baby”, and now we can insert “Baby Boy” into the cannon as well. On Instagram, Questlove claimed to have woken up D’Angelo at 4 a.m., writing, “The last sucker punch in black music I remember in which NOONE had a clue what was coming was Sly’s #TheresARiotGoinOn.” ![]() Then two singles of Prince and George Clinton-inspired grooviness, the he gave us Awaken, My Love! -a fuckable fixing of futuristic funk fusion. A night of performance he held in Joshua Tree called “Pharos”, inside a dome, producing out-of-body experiences aplenty. Has Sly Stone come back in from the cold? Is this the same young man who claimed to get his stage name from a Wu-Tang name generator?Īs early buzz rolled in for Donald Glover’s hysterically powerful new FX show, Atlanta, there were rumbles of something else.
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