Tuesday, June 17, 2025

 








Today is the 3rd annual Baltimore Club Music Day and I'm very happy to announce that my first book Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music will be out on August 19 via Repeater Books! The book is up for preorder pretty much anywhere books are sold, but don't hesitate to reach out (my email is shipley.al@gmail.com) if you have an independent bookstore or media outlet or podcast or really anywhere I can sell this book or get the word out about it, I am very excited to finally share this thing with the world! I interviewed 50 people over a span of 18 years for this book and I'm really proud of it. 

12:10 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 389: The Beach Boys

Monday, June 16, 2025

 





Brian Wilson died on Wednesday at the age of 82, two days after Sly Stone, who was also 82. People have compared it to when David Bowie and Prince died in the same year, but I don't know if we've ever lost two titans of popular music in the same week in unrelated deaths like this before. As this series stretches into nearly 400 volumes, I've covered most of the big names I could possibly cover, but there are always certain indispensable artists I haven't gotten to yet, and the Beach Boys are one of those that stayed at the top of my to-do list, I just kept putting off the exciting but daunting task of trying to boil down this catalog to 80 minutes. Kinda wish I'd gotten it done before Brian passed away, but it gave me a reason to dig in and work on it finally. 

The Beach Boys deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Heads You Win, Tails I Lose
2. Chug-A-Lug
3. Farmer's Daughter
4. Catch A Wave
5. No-Go Showboat
6. The Warmth of the Sun
7. All Summer Long
8. Merry Christmas, Baby
9. She Knows Me Too Well
10. In The Back Of My Mind
11. Girl Don't Tell Me
12. Let Him Run Wild
13. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
14. I'm Waiting For The Day
15. Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
16. Wind Chimes
17. Vegetables
18. Aren't You Glad
19. Let The Wind Blow
20. Busy Doin' Nothin'
21. Be Still
22. Our Prayer
23. Cabinessence
24. All I Wanna Do
25. Forever
26. 'Til I Die
27. Feel Flows
28. All This Is That
29. California Saga (Big Sur)
30. Back Home
31. The Night Was So Young

Tracks 1 and 2 from Surfin' Safari (1962)
Track 3 from Surfin' U.S.A. (1963)
Track 4 from Surfer Girl (1963)
Track 5 from Little Deuce Coupe (1963)
Track 6 from Shut Down Volume 2 (1964)
Track 7 from All Summer Long (1964)
Track 8 from The Beach Boys' Christmas Album (1964)
Tracks 9 and 10 from The Beach Boys Today! (1965)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) (1965)
Track 13 from Beach Boys' Party! (1965)
Tracks 14 and 15 from Pet Sounds (1966)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Smiley Smile (1967)
Tracks 18 and 19 from Wild Honey (1967)
Tracks 20 and 21 from Friends (1968)
Tracks 22 and 23 from 20/20 (1969)
Tracks 24 and 25 from Sunflower (1970)
Tracks 26 and 27 from Surf's Up (1971)
Track 28 from Carl and the Passions - "So Tough" (1972)
Track 29 from Holland (1973)
Track 30 from 15 Big Ones (1976)
Track 31 from The Beach Boys Love You (1977)

Growing up, the Who and Hendrix were a bit more important to me than the Beach Boys and the Beatles, in terms of me just having an immediate connection to the '60s music that was more about the raw energy of a band. So for me, part of my musical maturation has been caring just as much about studio craftmanship, in a weird way Steely Dan and Burt Bacharach were my gateways to appreciating what Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys did. 

Pet Sounds was the only Beach Boys album I heard as a teenager. I'd only just gotten into their great '70s albums Surf's Up and Sunflower and Holland for the first time in the past year and I was amazed, as many people have been, at how modern "All I Wanna Do" and "Feel Flows" sound. And this past week it was really fun to listen to the '60s albums in chronological order and really experience that incredible creative journey the band went on. Hearing how they got to Pet Sounds made me appreciate that album even more. I really almost opened the playlist with "Chug-A-Lug" because I love the idea of starting that journey with a song about drinking root beer. 

Of course, the big dividing point in the Beach Boys story is before and after Smile, the legendary 'lost' album that remained uncompleted after Brian Wilson reached a breaking point in 1967, despite the success of the lead single "Good Vibrations." Several tracks written for Smile appeared on other Beach Boys albums over the next few years, sometimes in very different arrangements, including "Vegetables," "Wind Chimes," "Our Prayer," and "Cabinessence" on this playlist (I will say, I like the Smile version of "Wind Chimes" a lot more than the Smiley Smile version here, but both are good). 

Smile was eventually completed in a couple forms -- with new recordings as 2004's Brian Wilson Presents Smile, and with the original tapes as 2011's The Smile Sessions. Listening to those, I don't think Smile ever would've surpassed Pet Sounds -- I think it would've been a great follow-up to their pinnacle, the Wish You Were Here to their Dark Side of the Moon. It still feels like one of popular music's great what-if albums, though. I think the band would've been commercially and creatively a lot better off if they'd finished Smile in '67 and released that instead of the comparatively lo-fi Smiley Smile.  

Stephen Thomas Erlewine's excellent Stereogum piece about some of Wilson's best deep cuts included some of these tracks ("Farmer's Daughter," "The Warmth of the Sun," "Let Him Run Wild," "Busy Doin' Nothin'," and "The Night Was So Young"). Given that the Beach Boys made 29 albums over the course of 50 years, I thought about whether to try to cover that entire run or cut it off somewhere. And seeing that 1989's Still Cruisin', the album that contained the band's divisive last #1 single "Kokomo," isn't on streaming services kinda made me feel free to end the playlist somewhere earlier, and '77's The Beach Boys Love You seemed like a good place to stop as one of their last well regarded albums.

6:00 AM

My Top 50 Movies of 2021

Friday, June 13, 2025































1. Annette (Leos Carax)
2. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
3. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
4. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum)
5. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
6. No Sudden Move (Steven Soderbergh)
7. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen)
8. Passing (Rebecca Hall)
9. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
10. CODA (Sian Heder)
11. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp)
12. Dune (Denil Villeneuve)
13. Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)
14. Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King)
15. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Questlove)
16. The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright)
17. Pig (Mark Sarnoski)
18. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
19. There’s Someone Inside Your House (Patrick Brice)
20. Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro)
21. The Green Knight (David Lowery)
22. Malignant (James Wan)
23. The Survivor (Barry Levinson)
24. The Mitchells vs The Machines (Mike Rianda)
25. Val (Leo Scott and Ting Poo)
26. Encanto (Jared Bush and Byron Howard)
27. In The Heights (Jon M. Chu)
28. Last Night In Soho (Edgar Wright)
29. The Suicide Squad (James Gunn)
30. X (Ti West)
31. No One Gets Out Alive (Santiago Menghini)
32. The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
33. How It Ends (Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones)
34. Mixtape (Valerie Weiss)
35. Good On Paper (Kimmy Gatewood)
36. The Harder They Fall (Jaymes Samuel)
37. Moxie (Amy Poehler)
38. Locked Down (Doug Liman)
39. Eternals (Chloe Zhao)
40. Language Lessons (Natalie Morales)
41. Reminiscence (Lisa Joy)
42. Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
43. Luca (Enrico Casarosa)
44. Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder)
45. Ron’s Gone Wrong (Sarah Smith and Jean-Philippe Vine)
46. Antlers (Scott Cooper)
47. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)
48. Being the Ricardos (Aaron Sorkin)
49. Jolt (Tanya Wexler)
50. Tick, Tick… BOOM! (Lin-Manuel Miranda)

I recently rewatched both Annette and The Sparks Brothers while working on my Sparks piece and those are both a good time. I am pretty grouchy about late period Wes Anderson but I think The French Dispatch is easily my favorite since his first three movies. 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

3:09 PM

My Top 50 Movies of 2022

Thursday, June 12, 2025





























1. Nope (Jordan Peele)
2. Barbarian (Zach Cregger)
3. Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Ostlund)
4. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
5. Elvis (Baz Luhrmann)
6. Women Talking (Sarah Polley)
7. All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)
8. The Menu (Mark Mylod)
9. Emily the Criminal (John Patton Ford)
10. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Eric Appel)
11. Bodies Bodies Bodies (Halina Reijn)
12. The Northman (Robert Eggers)
13. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)
14. Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)
15. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado)
16. RRR (S.S. Rajamouli)
17. Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert)
18. Tar (Todd Field)
19. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
20. The Invitation (Jessica M. Thompson)
21. Prey (Dan Trachtenberg)
22. Do Revenge (Jennifer Kaytin Robinson)
23. Talk To Me (Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou)
24. Kimi (Steven Soderbergh)
25. Men (Alex Garland)
26. Dual (Riley Stearns)
27. To Leslie (Michael Morris)
28. Windfall (Charlie McDowell)
29. Personality Crisis: One Night Only (Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi)
30. Day Shift (J.J. Perry)
31. Smile (Parker Finn)
32. The Woman King (Gina Prince-Blythewood)
33. Call Jane (Phyllis Nagy)
34. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Sam Raimi)
35. Turning Red (Domee Shi)
36. Cha Cha Real Smooth (Cooper Raiff)
37. Metal Lords (Peter Sollett)
38. Dog (Channing Tatum and Reid Carolin)
38. When You Finish Saving The World (Jesse Eisenberg)
39. Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinksi)
40. Hustle (Jeremiah Zagar)
41. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler)
42. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormican)
43. Rosaline (Karen Maine)
44. M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone)
45. Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde)
46. All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen)
47. Terrifier 2 (Damien Leone)
48. Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi)
49. Pearl (Ti West)
50. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman)

As I've said previously, these lists are kind of one of my first attempts at really clarifying my taste in film, but I'm not really overthinking it and rewatching much, I'll reserve that for if I do decade-wide lists with blurbs. But 2022 was one of my heaviest years for dabbling in being a movie critic, as I reviewed a number of features for Consequence, including a few on this list (Elvis, Call Jane, Day Shift, Metal Lords). 

10:46 AM

My Top 50 Movies of 2023

Wednesday, June 11, 2025






























1. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
2. May December (Todd Haynes)
3. They Cloned Tyrone (Juel Taylor)
4. Past Lives (Celine Song)
5. His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)
6. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
7. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)
8. Priscilla (Sophia Coppola)
9. Bottoms (Emma Seligman)
10. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
11. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
12. Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
13. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)
14. You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)
15. Evil Dead Rise (Lee Cronin)
16. American Fiction (Cord Jefferson)
17. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)
18. Rye Lane (Raine Allen-Miller)
19. Theater Camp (Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman)
20. Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster)
21. Nimona (Nick Bruno and Troy Quane)
22. Barbie (Greta Gerwig)
23. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie)
24. Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)
25. Dicks: The Musical (Larry Charles)
26. Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger)
27. The Killer (David Fincher)
28. No Hard Feelings (Gene Stupnitsky)
29. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Jeff Rowe and Kyler Spears)
30. Nyad (Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)
31. How To Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker)
32. Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)
33. Leave The World Behind (Sam Esmail)
34. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
35. The Creator (Gareth Edwards)
36. No One Will Save You (Brian Duffield)
37. The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols)
38. Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
39. I Used To Be Funny (Ally Pankiw)
40. The Marvels (Nia DaCosta)
41. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Johnathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley)
42. Elemental (Peter Sohn)
43. Rustin (George C. Wolfe)
44. Anyone But You (Will Gluck)
45. The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin)
46. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (James Gunn)
47. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (Paul Briganti)
48. Saltburn (Emerald Fennell)
49. Maestro (Bradley Cooper)
50. The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Andre Ovredal)

Last month I made kind of my first list of favorites movies a year ever, for 2024, and now I'm working my way backwards. I've always just kinda let myself like what I like in film and not overthink it as much as I do with music, so it's a little uncomfortable but a little fun to try and articulate my taste and personal canon a little more, the respectable stuff I like and the genre movies and multiplex franchises. I think this was a particularly good year for Oscar flicks. Some of these movies, when I wrote about them here after watching them, I was a little nitpicky or unenthusiastic, but with some time and perspective, I have to say okay, they deserve to be here. 

10:45 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 388: MC Lyte

Tuesday, June 10, 2025


 



















I've had this playlist in the works for a long time, and finished it a few days and planned to post it today, not even realizing it would be the morning after the BET Awards, for which MC Lyte has been doing voiceover announcements for years, maybe decades at this point. It's kind of funny that that's what a whole generation or two of people know her for, but I'm just glad they know her, she's a legend. I actually met her last year when she was hosting an event in D.C., I only exchanged a few words with her but it was still pretty exciting to be face to face with a hip hop legend.  

MC Lyte deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. MC Lyte Likes Swingin'
2. Kickin' 4 Brooklyn
3. Lyte Thee MC
4. Shut The Eff Up! (Hoe)
5. Throwin' Words At U
6. Survival of the Fittest (Remix)
7. Slave 2 The Rhythm
8. Kamikaze
9. Like A Virgin
10. Search 4 The Lyte
11. Fuck That Motherfucking Bullshit featuring Big V
12. Can I Get Some Dap
13. Steady Fucking featuring KRS-One
14. Two Seater
15. One On One
16. Druglord Superstar featuring Da Brat
17. Keep On Pushin' with Bahamadia, Nonchalant, and Yo-Yo
18. Want What I Got featuring Missy Elliott and Mocha
19. Propa featuring Beenie Man
20. Closer featuring Space Nine 

Tracks 1, 2, and 3 from Lyte As A Rock (1988)
Tracks 4, 5, 6, and 7 from Eyes On This (1989)
Tracks 8, 9, and 10 from Act Like You Know (1991)
Tracks 11, 12, and 13 from Ain't No Other (1993)
Tracks 14, 15, and 16 from Bad As I Wanna B (1996)
Track 17 from Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Dangerous Ground (1997)
Tracks 18, 19, and 20 from Seven & Seven (1998)

Track 8 from The Very Best of MC Lyte (2001)
Track 9 from Da Underground Heat Vol. 1 (2003)
Track 10 from Legend (2015)
Track 11 from The Best of Vintage Hip-Hop: The Lost Tapes Series, Vol. 1 (2019)
Track 11 from 1 of 1 (2024)

MC Lyte's latest album 1 Of 1 made my best of 2024 list. But since the availability of her post-'90s catalog is spotty on streaming services, I decided to just focus on the first decade of her career for this playlist. She was the first solo female MC to release a solo album or be nominated for a Grammy ("Ruffneck" was my jam when I was 11). And I think still has one of the best catalogs of them all, even now -- and easily the best of the generation before Missy and Lil Kim, both of whom were very heavily influenced by Lyte and have spit a lot of lyrics. For one reason or another, a lot of the most famous female rappers have pretty small catalogs of only 3-6 albums, but Lyte has 9, and most of them are excellent. 

Lyte was kind of a pioneer in sampling herself -- the biggest hit from her second album, "Cha Cha Cha," sampled part of its hook ("Kick this one here for me and my DJ") from a deep cut from her debut, "Kickin' 4 Brooklyn." "Shut The Eff Up! (Hoe)" was sampled on a whole bunch of songs by the Lox, Common, TLC, Digital Underground and others. That Audio Two beat with the Meters sample sounds so awesome. Annoyingly, almost half the songs on Eyes On This are unplayable on Spotify, so that limited what I could use from arguably her best album, but I still got a few great tracks from that. 

"Slave 2 The Rhythm" is an Antoinette diss. And after Roxanne Shante dissed Lyte and a bunch of other artists (Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Yo-Yo, Salt-N-Pepa) on "Big Mama," Lyte replied with "Steady Fucking" and that's a great super disrespectful diss track. This playlist has great production from Prince Paul ("MC Lyte Likes Swingin'"), Parrish from EPMD ("Slave 2 The Rhythm"), The 45 King ("Kamikaze" and "Like A Virgin"), The Neptunes ("Closer"), and Audio Two (a bunch of tracks). 

10:44 AM

The 2025 Remix Report Card Vol. 2

Monday, June 09, 2025
































If you missed it, I recently wrote a massive update of my old Complex list of the 50 best rap remixes since 2000. 

Here's Vol. 1 of this year's Remix Report Card and the Spotify playlist of every remix I've covered so far this year. 

"Alone (Remix)" by Trae Tha Truth featuring Lil Poppa and Kocky Ka
I don't know why Trae Tha Truth popped up a couple months ago with a remix of a 2022 album track, but "Alone" is a pretty good song with a Spanish guitar loop and one of those sticky Trae melodies. Florida teen rapper Lil Poppa and Brooklyn rap singer Kocky Ka both sound fine on teh song but don't add a whole lot to it. 
Best Verse: Lil Poppa
Overall Grade: B-

"Dark Nights (Remix)" by Kocky Ka featuring Meek Mill and Fridayy
I never even heard of Kocky Ka before I started putting this Remix Report Card together and wound up with two songs he's on right at the top of the post. Can't say I'm a fan. In fact his voice annoys me in a similar way to Fridayy, although Meek and Fridayy kind of get on the same vibe as their recent hit together, "Proud of Me." 
Best Verse: Meek Mill
Overall Grade: B+

"Egypt (Remix)" by Westside Gunn featuring Doechii
Last year, Doechii mentioned Westside Gunn as one of her favorite artists in an Apple Music interview. And in April, WSG sampled that interview in his song "Egypt," and Doechii posted a pretty charming video of her all amped up about hearing her voice on one of his songs, and a couple weeks later an official remix dropped with a verse from her. I love when things like that happen in hip hop, you get this mutual appreciation than turns into a cool collaboration, she sounds great on a Griselda track and really adds to the whole growing repertoire of reasons she's one of the best MCs out right now. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: A-

"First (Remix)" by KenTheMan featuring Monaleo
KenTheMan and Monaleo are both from Houston, kinda make similar music, and are at similar levels of fame, so this remix doesn't put the song in any kind of new light or take it to a new level. But I like the synergy of them working together, and it's a solid addition to the great run of features Monaleo has been on. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"For Me (Remix)" by Loe Shimmy featuring Brent Faiyaz
Loe Shimmy is a Florida rapper, and "For Me" is the kind of melodic trap song with trap pianos that's less than 2 minutes long that you've heard a hundred times before. But it was his biggest song to date when he released it last year, and got even more streams for a remix with Brent Faiyaz, which makes the song significantly more listenable. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"4 Kampe II" by Joe Dwet File featuring Burna Boy
It's interesting to see how Afrobeats and dancehall and all these different styles intermingle throughout the diaspora, Joe Dwet File is a French-Haitian artist and he got one of Nigeria's top stars on the remix to his international breakthrough. Burna Boy is such a smooth, subdued presence that I feel like he doesn't really do much to add to a song when he jumps on it besides starpower, though. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+ 

"Hard Fought Hallelujah (Remix)" by Brandon Lake featuring Jelly Roll
Brandon Lake is a pastor-turned-recording artist who was big on the CCM charts for years before "Hard Fought Hallelujah" became his first Hot 100 hit a few months ago. Jelly Roll is a huge secular star who's also pretty religious and says a lot of inspirational stuff. So this is a smart collaboration, but it's a pretty pointless new version where a guy with a similar voice who happens to be a lot more famous sings the same lyrics on the second verse. And I don't really care for either version of the song and am just kinda sick of hearing Jelly Roll on everything. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C-

"Laho II" by Shallipopi featuring Burna Boy
Another Burna Boy remix, this one for a fellow Nigerian artist, and I feel like he brings a little more flavor to the song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Love Me Not (Remix)" by Ravyn Lenae featuring Rex Orange County
"Love Me Not" is kind of a sleeper hit that blew up on TikTok a couple months ago and put Ravyn Lenae on the Hot 100 for the first time. But she already released a remix last fall when it was a new song that hadn't really done anything yet. Maybe she should go back and do another remix with a big star now, Rex Orange County is, I dunno, basically Shawn Mendes with indie cred, pretty boring remix, two people with weird voices who don't sound particularly good together. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D 

"Mine (Remix)" by Amerie featuring Consequence and Caiden The Crownholder
Here's a rarity in this column, an actual remix with a different beat from the original track. In this case, Amerie swapped out the mellower original "Mine" track for a sample of DMX's "Party Up" and verses by Consequence and his 13-year-old son Caiden The Crownholder, who is apparently been recording for years and is some kind of kiddie rap sensation. Kind of a weird mix of vibes going on here that doesn't really cohere, nobody really expected or wanted to hear these artists on an old Swizz Beatz track or even on a song together. 
Best Verse: Consequence
Overall Grade: C

"Mutt (CB Remix)" by Leon Thomas featuring Chris Brown
Last year I covered the first remix of "Mutt" featuring Freddie Gibbs before the song popped off and became a radio hit. And while I don't really like this remix either, I'm not mad at Leon Thomas circling back to get an actual famous person on the track, the Gibbs verse was weak anyway. I never really liked the vocal reverb on Thomas's voice on "Mutt," but Chris Brown's voice has the same effect on it so at least I can say it's a deliberate choice. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Nasty Work (Remix)" by Yah Yah & Domo featuring Tank
"Nasty Work" is kind of a schticky song with a lot of sleazy explicit lyrics over an '80s R&B-style LinnDrum groove. Tank has done some corny 'toxic' R&B like this to stay relevant in recent years, so he's at least a good fit for the remix, I suppose, and he tries to switch up his cadence and hit some high notes, but his voice is pretty similar to Domo's, so the remix more or less sounds the same as the original to me. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C

"New York Knicks Anthem (Remix)" by Busta Rhymes featuring Joey Bada$$, Papoose, Nems, Swizz Beatz, and DJ Scratch
The Knicks got knocked out of the playoffs in the second round this year, but the Knicks have sucked for so long that New Yorkers collectively acted up like they won a chip. That's kind of also the way the NYC rap scene has acted about Joey Bada$$ battling a bunch of undercard West coast rappers after he tried and failed to provoke a response from Kendrick. So there's just kind of the stench of mediocrity and desperation all over this, the remix to Busta's Knicks-themed remix of his 2006 single "New York Shit," which also had an official remix featuring Papoose back then, and the fact that Papoose is still prominent enough to be on the hometown pride posse cut is enough of an indictment of the state of New York. And the only relative new blood on here is a guy who had a minor hit called "Bing Bong" a couple years ago. 
Best Verse: Papoose
Overall Grade: D

"Shameful Game, Pt. 2" by Pale Jay featuring Conway The Machine
Pale Jay is I guess one of these singers who wears a ski mask and is secretive about his identity, there are a lot of artists like that these days. The original "Shameful Game" was released way back in 2021 and this version sounds a little slowed down and run through the Griselda aesthetic, and I'm not a superfan of that stuff but it sounds pretty cool here. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Streets Ain't the Same (Remix)" by Icewear Vezzo featuring Warren G
The original "Streets Ain't the Same" featured a JetsonMade-flip of the "Regulate" beat, and naturally it was an opportunity for Warren G to pop up on the remix. Kinda predictable but it sounds good. Would've loved a Michael McDonald guest spot too, though. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Timeless (Remix)" by The Weeknd featuring Doechii and Playboi Carti
This combo seemed better on paper when I heard this remix announced than it turned out to be. I do wanna hear more rappers on this beat, though, it's a shame posse cut remixes are so completely out of style. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Whim Whamiee (Remix)" by Pluto featuring Sexyy Red
"Whim Whamiee" is one of those catchy surprise hits from a charismatic amateur that bubbles up now and then, and it was just a couple years ago that "Pound Town" was one of those. Sexyy Red is a little more polished than she was then, or than Pluto is now, but still, putting her on this remix is like a hat on a hat, it would've been nice to get one seasoned rapper on this nice Zaytoven beat. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Whoa (Mind In Awe) (Remix)" by XXXTentacion featuring Juice WRLD
Apparently Juice WRLD did his unofficial version of this XXXTentacion song ages ago and it's only just gotten an official release this year, and I have to say, it's one of X's better songs and Juice WRLD sounds good on it. Still, it's so weird to keep getting 'collaborations' between rappers who've been dead for several years. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Yey Yey (Remix)" by E.M.E featuring LaRussell
LaRussell is just kind of corny and putting him on an Afrobeats track was a terrible idea. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F

10:43 AM

Friday, June 06, 2025

 




Dapper Dan Midas and Kotic Couture are performing at the Inner Harbor on Saturday to kick off the Baltimore By Baltimore summer concert series, and I interviewed them for the Baltimore Banner. 

9:34 AM

Wednesday, June 04, 2025

 




I ranked every Sparks album and every Who album for Spin. I also wrote about Nels Cline and Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals for Spin's list of the best albums of 2025 so far. 

2:53 PM

TV Diary

Tuesday, June 03, 2025

 




"Sirens" is a really entertaining Netflix miniseries with Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock as sisters, and Julianne Moore as Alcock's boss who comes between them. And because you're meant to not really know whether Moore is a sinister or sympathetic character at first, she's kind of entertainingly aloof but Fahy and Alcock are great and really feel like stars in it. Fahy played poised, classy characters in "The White Lotus" and "The Perfect Couple" but goes against type as kind of a grungy, rough-around-the-edges character in "Sirens," and boom, I am way more attracted to her now, which feels kind of funny and predictable to me. It was based on a play and is only five episodes, but I found myself wishing there was more of it or that it could continue with a second season, because it's really in the last couple of episodes that you get this great ensemble cast interacting, including Kevin Bacon, Glenn Howerton, Josh Segarra, and Bill Camp, and a standout Felix Solis. 

Like "Sirens," "The Better Sister" is about two estranged sisters with very different personalities, one upwardly mobile and the other struggling, in this case played by Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks. This story is a bit darker and more fraught, though, with a murder mystery and sort of a love triangle. I'm only a couple episodes in but pretty interested to see how this whole thing unfolds. 

Netflix doesn't make a lot of shows that feel like HBO-level prestige TV, but occasionally they have a miniseries that's of that caliber, and "Dept. Q" is the third one created by Out of Sight screenwriter Scott Frank, after "Godless" and "The Queen's Gambit." The premise of "Dept. Q" feels a little like a network procedural, with a police officer who survived getting shot in the line of duty being put in charge of an inauspicious cold case department, but the writing and acting really elevates it. The therapy scenes with Matthew Goode and Kelly MacDonald are so compelling, and the reveal about Chloe Pirrie's character at the end of the first episode was some brilliant storytelling. 

FX's new sitcom about twentysomethings has been compared a lot to "Overcompensating, the Amazon sitcom about college students that I wrote about last time in this space. Both shows co-star Owen Thiele and have similar marketing. I think both shows are a little hit-and-miss but "Adults" is funnier and more overtly satirical, the third episode in particular got some big laughs out of me, and Lucy Freyer and Amita Rao are both really cute. The 'five or six young guys and girls in NYC' genre of sitcom is a little stale but at least it's closer to "Broad City" than "Friends," even if both those templates are probably a bit dated at this point. 

"Lost" is one of those shows that made so many actors into stars. But 20 years later, we're finally at a point where the "Lost" cast doesn't feel ubiquitous anymore, outside of maybe that one antivaxxer lady who plays the least popular superhero in the entire MCU. And Josh Holloway was such a charismatic standout on the show that never really seemed to spin that into bigger projects, so I'm glad that J.J. Abrams has created a show that seems expressly designed to show Holloway at his best, as a getaway driver for a criminal enterprise in the '70s. It's just good pulpy fun with a great cast (and, as always, Greg Grunberg as the Abrams charity case). Rachel Hilson's character is from Baltimore and Holloway calls her 'Baltimore' the same way he used to call Kate 'Freckles' on "Lost." 

Scoring a TV series with popular music is a delicate art and I had a lot of fun diving into that world for a piece last year. And "Motorheads" is a prime example of how it can go wrong, with nearly every scene in the first episode soundtracked by a recent Top 40 hits by Teddy Swims or Olivia Rodrigo and so on (and not a single Motorhead song!). It's already a pretty mediocre show about street racing teenagers, but the wall-to-wall pop hits just makes the whole thing feel dumber and more pandering. 

Not a great show, but considerably more high quality than any other Tyler Perry sitcom I've seen, Terri J. Vaughn is a good lead. 

Very happy this show is back. I hope Rian Johnson keeps creating new projects, but I wouldn't mind terribly if he just went back and forth between new Knives Out movies and seasons of "Poker Face" for a decade. The episode with John Mulaney and Richard Kind was particularly entertaining and kind of closed the door on one plot point in a good way so that Natasha Lyonne's character isn't just on the run in every episode. 

I've never really watched any Gundam stuff so I didn't really understand what was going on this new one, I just thought it was funny that the title looked like someone just mashed their head on the keyboard. 

This Chinese drama on Netflix is kind of sweet, about a woman who sees her high school crush again as an adult and they become roommates. It's got 32 episodes in one season, though, so I doubt I'll keep up with it. 

This Thai show is literally about a florist investigating a murder, so I feel like the title is spot-on. 

This Korean romcom is about a potato researcher falling in love, and while the title isn't as evocative as "Death and the Flowers," I would say once again it's a good name. I kind of wish American shows had more premises like these shows. 

This Colombian thriller gets right to the point, opening the first episode with a sexy scene on a yacht and then the yacht exploding. I didn't really care enough to keep watching and find out what's really going on, but I appreciated how they hit the ground running. 

This is a 'retro' Korean variety show on Netflix, so I guess it's kind of like that old Comedy Central show "Viva Variety," or at least that's my frame of reference, it mostly just makes me feel like I don't understand the Korean comedic sensibility. 

A charming, wacky show about Korean nightlife, from the perspective of the titular host who doesn't usually spend time in social clubs. 

Paul Reubens filmed 40 hours of interviews for a documentary about his life before he died in 2023, and he never even told the filmmakers that he had cancer. And I kind of like that director Matt Wolf includes a lot of candid moments of Reubens and Wolf talking in between takes, fighting a little for control of the film, Reubens still just comes off so brilliant and funny even when he's just screwing around and antagonizing the director. I was 9 years old when Reubens was arrested, and it left a strong impression on me as a kid, that I didn't really understand the controversy that derailed the career of the star of one of my favorite shows. And I respect him as a performer and artist even more now after watching this, and loved the look behind the curtain at how it all came together, it was cool that they got to interview Tim Burton about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I hated seeing that Reubens and Phil Hartman had stopped speaking and Hartman said some negative things about him after the arrest, though. 

It's only been three years since Naomi Judd committed suicide and left behind a note asking that her daughter Wynonna not be allowed at her funeral. So man, this is another really emotionally raw docuseries, I'm a little surprised Wynonna and Ashley wanted to do something like this, but it's interesting stuff and has some happy memories and fun show business lore too. 

Conan O'Brien was never exactly a straight man in his comedy, but on "Late Night" he was ultimately the host in the suit who mostly bounced off people in interviews and sketches. So what I really enjoy about his late career renaissance and things like his "Hot Ones" episode and "Conan O'Brien Must Go" is that he really gets to ham it up and be the chaotic person that other people bounce off of and react to. It feels like they're sneaking more celebrities into the second season but I don't mind, the Javier Bardem bit in the Spain episode is great. 

A docuseries about women getting a chance to break into the very male-dominated field of Formula One racing, pretty cool. 

On a similar tip, this Freeform series is about women's bull riding, feels a little slicker and less like a documentary but not necessarily in a bad way, just a different storytelling approach. 

Most competitive cooking shows inherently involve yelling and high pressure situations and big personalities, but I think it's pretty corny that NBC put together this show where they explicitly sought out cooks who have anger issues or problems working others and slapped the catchphrase from "The Bear" on it as the title. 

A lovely little nature doc about penguins. There's one very stressful scene where one of the little adolescent penguins can't keep up with his group and they have to leave him behind, and it's such a relief when he pulls together and catches up, I really thought he was a goner. 

Apparently Ewan McGregor has done several travel series with his friend Charley Boorman since 2004's "Long Way Round" where they go on motorcycle road trips together. I'd never seen any of the previous ones, but this one where they ride through Scotland is fun, I really want to see Scotland in person one day. 

Most Netflix dating shows are pretty braindead, but this one's worse than usual. 

The Chicago incidents of people dying after taking Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide happened in 1982, the year I was born, and remained such a huge deal for so many years that I definitely remember hearing about it a fair amount as a child. But I really didn't know what happened in detail, and god, the interviews with people whose loved ones died are just wrenching. 

It's kind of funny to me that Costner blew up his late career renaissance on "Yellowstone" partly to direct a few movies but also I guess to do this low budget History Channel filler. 

2:52 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 387: Angie Stone

Monday, June 02, 2025

 







Angie Stone died at the age of 63 in a car crash in March after a concert in Alabama, so I wanted to look back at her catalog, she was a hugely talented vocalist with a pretty interesting career. 
 
Angie Stone deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. 20 Dollars
2. Lovers' Ghetto
3. Bone 2 Pic (Wit U)
4. Perfect
5. Begin Again featuring Dave Hollister
6. Come Home (Live With Me)
7. Pissed Off
8. Green Grass Vapors
9. My People featuring James Ingram
10. Sisters
11. Easier Said Than Done
12. You Don't Love Me
13. High
14. Man Loves His Money
15. The Ingredients of Love featuring Musiq Soulchild
16. I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will be Forever)
17. Why Is It
18. Gonna Have To Be You featuring Jaheim
19. Take Everything In

Tracks 3, 8, and 14 from Black Diamond (1999)
Tracks 1, 7, 11, and 15 from Mahogany Soul (2001)
Tracks 2, 6, and 12 from Stone Love (2004)
Tracks 9 and 19 from The Art of Love & War (2007)
Track 17 from Unexpected (2009)
Track 10 from Rich Girl (2012)
Track 5 from Dream (2015)
Track 16 from Covered In Soul (2016)
Tracks 4 and 18 from Full Circle (2019)
Track 13 from Love Language (2023)

By the time Angie Stone released her first solo album, she was almost 40 and had already made a lot of music. She was in The Sequence, the first all-female rap group on wax, which released three albums on Sugar Hill Records in the early '80s. In the '90s, she was in an R&B trio, Vertical Hold, that released two major label albums with a few charting singles, and made an album with the group DeVox that was only released in Japan. And she co-wrote several songs on the first two albums by D'Angelo, who she was in a relationship with and had a child with. 

So Angie Stone was kind of part of hip-hop soul and neo-soul as those sounds were developing, and you can hear a lot of that in solo work. There's not a lot of guest rappers on her albums, aside from the one big single she did with Snoop, but some of my favorite tracks by her were with hip-hop producers. "Bone 2 Pic (Wit U)" was produced by Ali Shaheed Muhammed from A Tribe Called Quest, and "Perfect" was produced by Kay Gee from Naughty By Nature. "Lovers' Ghetto" also makes good use of the sample from Camp Lo's "Luchini AKA This Is It." "Pissed Off" and "Easier Said Than Done" were some of her most frequently performed songs that weren't singles. Her 2016 covers album Covered In Soul featured a rendition of one of my favorite Stevie Wonder deep cuts. 

6:00 AM